Group Piano Ideas: It's in the Bag

This past group week I decided to throw in a new activity. I have many students who are not quick to learn from a score. They are often reluctant to work on new music since the reading is a chore and as a result the progress - except by rote/ear - is quite slow.

I encourage students to learn music in sections, look for patterns, play several times listening for notes and rhythm, consider tapping tricky rhythms etc - and don't go on to a new section until one is learned.  What usually happens however, is the opposite. I get a plough through from start to wherever the student can read to. The opening 2 bars - or whatever we covered in detail in the class - is quite secure, but the rest often falls apart.

The playing is either prefaced with or followed by: "it was really hard" or "it was so confusing." Then when I ask whether my instruction were followed the response is: "kind of", or "I tried", or occasionally "No."

So - back to the group!

I took some pieces of music and copied them.
 Here is a Gigue by Samuel Arnold. Grade 1 level

I then decided the size of each section and marked the fingering for each hand at the beginning of the sections.

And I then cut them up with scissors into these sections.

Then I put them into a brown paper bag.

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During the class each student took out a piece of the music from the bag. They had to think about how they were going to play it; and when they felt they had it ready they came up to play it on the piano. There was no trying out first.

At first the activity was met with a lot of resistance since it involved really reading the music. During the course of the class though something really neat happened - they began to really read and learn much faster than usual. They were all very surprised.

At the beginner levels this worked even better when they did in in teams and one learned the RH and the other the LH and then they switched and then they played Hands Together. Next group week I am going to have the Intermediate players work in teams as well.