How Can I Help My Band Student?
- Encourage them to look at their weekly This Week in Band sheet for what to practice, and to fill in their practice minutes at the bottom. Even though not all sounds are beautiful at this age, ALL practice is beneficial for students, so try to be supportive of whatever you hear.
- Help your student set a ten-minute timer on their phone, and ask to play their instrument just for those ten minutes. The hardest part of practicing is just getting the instrument out of the case, and a huge misconception is that you have to practice for hours for it to be beneficial. The skills and muscles we are building benefit more from shorter practice sessions more frequently than large chunks of practice time at once with long stretches of no practice in between.
- Remind students to sign up for RTI practice time in the band hall each week!
- Ask students about their Practice Steps (see below)! If students break music down into these basic steps, they can learn to play ANYTHING! You can ask them to show you a practice step of any measure of their music – “John, can you clap and count that measure for me?” “Lori, can you tell me the names of all of the notes in this measure?” Practice steps are posted all over the band hall and every student has this page in their band handbook in the back of their binder.
How Can I Help My Singer at Home?
Encourage your student to practice singing their major scales at home with their handsigns! Practice makes progress, and we are training our brains to think in solfege in the Choir room. Even singing one scale a day can help solidify that inner hearing skill we are developing daily, as well as create muscle memory for when we are singing.
Orchestra Practice & Playing at Home
Students should be playing their instrument at home multiple days a week. Help your student set a ten-minute timer on their phone, and ask to play their instrument just for those ten minutes. The hardest part of practicing is just getting the instrument out of the case, and a huge misconception is that you have to practice for hours for it to be beneficial. The skills and muscles we are building benefit more from shorter practice sessions more frequently than large chunks of practice time at once with long stretches of no practice in between.
