Wow! It's been a while since I've blogged. I hope everyone is enjoying this spring weather. I know I am. I am SO proud of my students who took the statewide theory test this past February! Way to go for receiving scores of 95% and better! Also, congratulations to my students who participated in the winter festival who received "Excellent", "Superior", and "Superior +" ratings!
I found that testing my students with quick fun games most every lesson really helps them retain information from week to week. Here is a matching game I made up using multi-colored pegs purchased from "U.S. Toys" (intersection of Independence and Parker Ave.) or
www.cptoys.com. They remind me of shish kabobs when they're put together so I named this game Key" bobs. Ha! Funny, right? OK, maybe not that funny but I thought it was a cute name for it. Anyway, I drew or wrote musical terms on a sheet of blank sticker paper and typed up the answers on another sheet of sticker paper. I cut out the pictures and words and taped each of them to a peg. I purposely made the matches different colors so my younger students wouldn't try to match the same colors together.
I place no more than 20 pegs on a table all mixed up like picture #2 above and tell my students to match the words to the pictures by snapping the pegs together like picture #1. It takes no more than 2 minutes to play this game. I normally test my students with a quick game every lesson. One week it's musical terms, the next week it's note identification. For my more advanced students, I also test them on melodic/harmonic intervals, major/minor 3rds and triads, major/minor scales, etc. with games. Games are a wonderful means of assessing what my students know and what we need to focus more on. Until next time, piano blogger signing off.......
Wow! It's been a while since I've blogged. I hope everyone is enjoying this spring weather. I know I am. I am SO proud of my students who took the statewide theory test this past February! Way to go for receiving scores of 95% and better! Also, congratulations to my students who participated in the winter festival who received "Excellent", "Superior", and "Superior +" ratings!
I found that testing my students with quick fun games most every lesson really helps them retain information from week to week. Here is a matching game I made up using multi-colored pegs purchased from "U.S. Toys" (intersection of Independence and Parker Ave.) or www.cptoys.com. They remind me of shish kabobs when they're put together so I named this game Key" bobs. Ha! Funny, right? OK, maybe not that funny but I thought it was a cute name for it. Anyway, I drew or wrote musical terms on a sheet of blank sticker paper and typed up the answers on another sheet of sticker paper. I cut out the pictures and words and taped each of them to a peg. I purposely made the matches different colors so my younger students wouldn't try to match the same colors together. 
I place no more than 20 pegs on a table all mixed up like picture #2 above and tell my students to match the words to the pictures by snapping the pegs together like picture #1. It takes no more than 2 minutes to play this game. I normally test my students with a quick game every lesson. One week it's musical terms, the next week it's note identification. For my more advanced students, I also test them on melodic/harmonic intervals, major/minor 3rds and triads, major/minor scales, etc. with games. Games are a wonderful means of assessing what my students know and what we need to focus more on. Until next time, piano blogger signing off.......
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