I know exactly how busy you are right now with the holiday season upon us. Which is why this episode is short, sweet, and to the point. We’re going to talk about some top tips for encouraging your students to practice at home over the holiday breaks.
Regular listeners know that I’m rather against doing practice cards, having students track their practice at home, requiring parents to sign them, and creating all of that paperwork for yourself. There are some great ways to track practice, like SmartMusic! All the student has to do is login and play, and SmartMusic provides that data for you. Not only will it track how long they practiced, but also how well they do on their assignments. Playing along with the background of the song makes it fun, too.
To help me come up with even more ideas for how to encourage students to have fun practicing over the break, I turned to two resources: Lou Ann Pope, education specialist for Tonara, and some of our band director friends from Facebook.
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Topics Covered
- Why don’t students practice at home over break?
- How you can keep them engaged
- The benefit of running “challenges”
- How to get technology working for you, not against you
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An experienced K8 music educator, Elisa Janson Jones specializes in helping music educators build, manage, and grow thriving school music programs and have long and happy careers. She holds a bachelor of music from Brigham Young University and a master of business administration from Western Governors University. Elisa uses her vast and diverse skillset to help nonprofits, businesses, and music educators around the world. She serves as conductor of her local community band, a columnist for SBO Magazine, and maintains a private lesson studio. Elisa is a nationally-recognized speaker, the host and producer of the Music Ed Mentor Podcast, founder of the International Music Education Summit, and author of The Music Educator’s Guide to Thrive.