Developing Ownership in Practice

 

I am in the midst of expanding my parent education materials, for the new families in my studio, this year and the second week of materials will focus on what I think are the most important things to keep in mind about practice.

I narrowed it down to 7 items (I am sure there are more but these will get people started on the right foot in my experience).

They Include:

1. Practice Daily

2. Let Your Child Help Make Decisions

3. Set Realistic Goals at Each Practice

4. Keep a Positive Tone/Environment in Each Practice

5. Focus on One Thing at a Time

6. Please Don’t Jump Ahead to a New Thing

7. Reviewing Should Take up at a Huge Part of Practice Time

The one that stuck out to me the most as I was writing was Let Your Child Help Make Decisions.

I have given this advice to families before when they have a very independent student who really resists being told what to do in practice and it often helps a lot.

Beyond that though, I feel strongly that a sense of ownership over practice sessions make a big difference for all students. This can start in very small ways at first – especially at the beginning when practices really do need to be mostly parent led. When we don’t do this little by little it can become a problem for older students – especially when for them practice means “an adult tells me what to do.”  If students are depending on that to know what to do, they are going to struggle when they start to transition to more independent practice.

Here are some ways to give students some ownership from a young age:

1. Roll Dice or draw cards to practice assignments and number of repetitions

2. Let them pick which review piece they would like to play for you first after warming up

3. Ask them lots of questions instead of telling them each thing to do. (Maybe start with 1 each practice if this feels out of your comfort zone)

Some questions you can ask (and I hope students learn to ask themselves) are:

How did it sound?

What part did your teacher want you to make easier this week?

Did your bow thumb stay bent? (or some other posture/set up question)

What do you think we should work on next?

What is your favorite part of playing that piece?

 

 

Not all of these questions are going to be appropriate for every child & I think this works best from ages 4 or 5 up when they can be reasonably expected to be able to articulate some of this to you in practice.

True, all this question asking and discussion might get in the way of a speedy – streamlined – efficient practice. But not doing it gets in the way of developing a student who will ask themselves these questions at 13 or 14 when you are no longer practicing with them.

We want to work our way out of a job eventually and give our students and children the tools to be able to practice well and independently.

Like it or not – what we say during practices often becomes what they will say to themselves during practices later on. What do we want that to be? How do we want them to think about any problem to solve in their lives?

For me as a parent, I wanted to train the thought process of ” How did that go?” “What little piece of this task should I work on?” “What did my teacher want me to do there” or ” What do I know needs improvement” “I am going to fix one thing at a time” etc.

I did not want a running tape in their heads of “hurry up” “Ugh – that’s not correct” “It shouldn’t be that hard” and so on.

Getting over frustration – especially the frustration of hard things taking a long time to learn  – &  understanding the process of how to break things down and practice them effectively is a huge part of helping students succeed. I think a huge part of that process is giving them ownership little by little from the start.

I challenge you to think about how you are interacting and training your students or child(ren) to take ownership of their practice one day down the road. What would you add to the most important things to remember in practice?

 

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