Simpedia

Mark M., New York

In the intranet, under Studio Management – Materials and Suggestions from our Teachers, there are playlist assessment sheets, where it’s mentioned that one can score each song from 1-5 to keep a more conscious sense of where each song is. When I saw these long lists of songs going down the leftmost column with columns full of empty boxes to the right, I thought to myself, well, why use separate pages and do this only occasionally, why not just use the scoring system in the regular Playlist book instead of checks?

I’ve started suggesting that as an option for my students. Nobody else has given me feedback, but my daughter has taken to it a lot. She likes figuring out the numbers each time she does a repertoire song. She’s even inclined to do the scoring on current projects, but my feeling is that it’s probably better for current project to just have checks until they are “alive.” I think the scoring is more useful for ensuring that songs stay alive after they’ve entered the repertoire. It takes a bit of pressure off the current projects and helps keep a good distinction between “work” and “play” projects. Two different types of practicing, two different types of entries in the boxes on the Playlist.

So I personally feel like anything goes. As long as a box is being filled in to indicate a song having been practiced, it seems to me it hardly matters whether it’s a check, or an X, or a solid color box, or whatever else that could provide distinctions like the scoring system, etc. Coloring may have a little bit of an advantage in terms of visually drawing out the practice pattern a bit more clearly, but I’d be more inclined to get them into whatever habit we want them to have in the end rather than have them have to switch gears later.

Amber B., Michigan

I think anything that gets our students to utilize all the tools of the program is our goal. I routinely start students with stickers and weekly charts to emphasize the practice list but I like the color idea. Green color could represent a polished song and over the month you could see the transition from red (new song), to yellow (still working), to green. This would look cool on the chart to see the color bleed over time.

Susan M., Washington

Here’s what I made up for my own son, as he was having trouble with all the small check boxes. There are several sheets, but they are all linked to each other. Every week, after lesson, I add the new songs and rearrange the songs into the different areas according to how much practice he needs on them. (Only change the first sheet and it is automatically changed on all the others.) Change the name of the month and the number of the first day and the rest changes automatically (unlike the song names, the dates have to be changed on each individual sheet).

I’m re-sending the playlist I made for my 8yos. I’ve protected some cells that have formulas in them and also wanted to give further instruction. For the section “practice twice a month”, the color of the date squares needs to be changed every other week to indicate which songs to be practiced that week (white or pink). For the section “practice once a month”, the color of the date squares needs to be changed each week to indicate which songs to be practiced that week (violet, blue, yellow or white).