The Trials of Triads

As students progress from a single 5-finger position at the piano to extended hand positions, shifts, and jumps, they can grow confused by the number of elements they need to juggle in their minds. This is especially true around the time that triad shapes outside of the root position are introduced. Triads in root position and inversions involve both an expansion of the hand and hand position shifts and these can result in a fair bit of frustration for the young player.

I often teach an abbreviated triad pattern like the one in the Prep B of the RCM syllabus, but there can still be challenges when the full series of inversions up and down are added. I have found some helpful tools for these over the years. For the white key triads I use pom-poms to mark the keys - using a different colour pom-pom for the key played by finger 2. These guides allow students to focus solely on the fingering before they tackle the notes

When there are black keys involved I use sticky flags on the keys instead of pom-poms since those don't roll off onto the floor..

For home practice I have a template. It is not the most elegant, but quite practical:

The student plays the first box, then the first an second, then the first, second and third etc. I have them put check marks above the boxes that they play successfully. This helps isolate the problems so that they are more easily addressed.