Practice Spot Cards & Repetition

I’m always thrilled when a parent asks me for advice about how to practice better at home! I try to make it clear in parent education that this is something I like to help with & that parents need not struggle through alone. It’s always great when someone takes me up on the offer to problem solve together. Often I have ideas that I’ve come up with, that I’ve heard from wonderful colleagues or we try out new ideas together.

With that in mind, over this past year I heard from a couple of frustrated parents in my studio that their child only wanted to play through a challenging practice spot once in practice. Reminders from the parent about doing a number of repetitions, in order to practice well, were causing fights and making practice very unpleasant.

This was after us practicing how to practice in the lesson (often with dice, playing the echo game many times or some other way to practice many repetitions) and talking together about the need for this kind of practice at home.

The parent understands it needs to be played many times & the student was willing to try it many times in a row with me in the lesson but at home it is not happening without it becoming an argument . . . “help!”

Students very often react very differently to me telling them what to do in the lesson vs the parent telling them at home & I would highly recommend Edmund Sprunger’s book Helping Parents Practice for gaining a better understanding of why that happens.  Just acknowledging this is true can be very helpful!

In addition to re-discussing that topic with parents, I knew I needed to come up with a better way to teach my students how great repetition is for mastering new skills.I came up with a very simple way to get around the “only play it once” issue that I wanted to share on the blog – practice spot cards.

As an experiment I wrote down three ways to practice an assigned practice spot (there are endless variations of this, this is just the three I made up on the spot).  At the lesson I presented the cards to the student with these instructions: they could pick a card at random & be surprised or they could choose to pick one that appealed the most to them that practice, but they needed to use the cards for practice that week.  It worked!

The practice parent no longer had to act as enforcer of repetitions and the game also used one of my favorite parenting strategies! When my children were young, I learned the priceless strategy of offering them two acceptable choices rather than telling them what to do (especially if I thought it was going to start an argument or create resistance of some kind).

Do you want this pair of shoes or that one? rather than “Put on your shoes”

Do you want a salad or green beans?  rather than “You need to eat your veggies!”

This technique didn’t prevent every power struggle but it drastically reduced them & I felt like I was coaching them on good choices vs giving out instructions or orders (not my idea of fun!).

I think these cards do the same thing – there is choice involved and we can all be happy with the outcome . . .  which does not include play through once and move on.

Its a very simple idea but has worked for a few of my students this year and I hope it may spark a solution to a practice issue at your house or in your studio!

I’d love to hear what other practice cards you might come up with!