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Robin Keehn, Washington

The question has come up, “How do I review the playlist each week in a timely manner?”   I’d like to suggest some things and open this up to more of you contributing your ideas of how to manage this important component of lessons.

If you are having students keep their playlists in excellent order, you can move through the playlist review in a timely manner.  The best case looks like this:

“Okay, Eli.  Have a seat at the piano.  Let’s have you start Jackson Blues.  Remember, that at some point I am going to say, “freeze” and then I’ll ask you to start another song.  I may even ask you to start somewhere other than at the beginning.” So, Eli starts with Jackson Blues and I interrupt him after 10 seconds and I ask him to play Night Storm,  Minuet in G,  and The Pipes.  I don’t have him complete any of the pieces but in about a minute (if his playlist is strong) I have heard him play four pieces.  If he can start them, I am going to assume that he can complete them.  I make a little red check mark in the date box for today’s date so that next week I don’t ask him to play the same songs.

This has worked well and over the course of a month, I can hear quite a few pieces from a student.   My students are prepared to start and stop and even start in the middle.  Sometimes we play a game where I name a song and the first person to get to the bench starts this song.  I’ll say FREEZE and call another student to finish the piece.  It is especially challenging if I don’t let the other students stand and watch as the first student plays.  They really have to listen and follow along so they can pick it up midstream!

The other scenario is that your students do not have well maintained playlists.  This is where it gets ugly.  So,  lets say you haven’t been on top of playlist review.  You’ve let it slide, you don’t always ask to hear pieces and never check them off.  Now  Eli comes to the piano and you ask him to start Jackson Blues and he cannot.  So, you ask him to start Night Storm and he cannot remember the LH.  What are you going to do?

One thing you can do, in the moment, is to ask another student to come and play J Blues and ask everyone to come to the piano and watch as a review.  You can assign it as a review for the next week for anyone who is weak on it.  You can ask Eli for another piece and hopefully he will know it.

The bottom line is that you don’t want to be in the second scenario.  If you are, you have to take full responsibility for being there.  If you don’t require a clean and active playlist, it isn’t going to happen.  If you find your students there, you have to figure out how to fix the problem.  One way is to just tackle a few pieces each week (at home on the video–not in class!).  This would be assigned so that everyone is getting their pieces back.  This is very discouraging to parents and to students.  It is your responsibility to ensure that students keep on their playlists.

If you have one or two students who have poor playlists consistently, consider implementing a “Mandatory Playlist Review” lesson.  The second year that I taught I had this policy in place which said that, at my discretion, I could require a mandatory playlist review lesson.  The cost was $50 for a thirty minute review where I would sit and listen to the student play through their playlist and then tell them what they needed to work on.  It was not a time for me to reteach songs, rather to evaluate.  I did two of those lessons that year and never had to do another.  It was very effective 🙂

If you have ideas about hearing the playlist in a timely, effective manner, please share them.  I think this is an area that all teachers have to manage regularly.