Any suggestions/advice would be most welcome here. Let me give you a little background: I've been teaching piano privately since October and am loving it. I signed up with the music service and landed a maternity cover from the Feb half term. This is keyboard lessons to groups of up to 4, one primary (from year 3), and one secondary. The books we have to use are Keyquest by Andrew Eales. Initially I thought they were a bit dire, but am trying to get used to them and see the good side. There is quite a lot of good stuff in them I think, if you use other stuff too.
But here is my problem. I am sure their previous teacher had her own methods and was great, but I feel that none of them really have a grasp of rhythm AT ALL. I think they've been learning largely by ear, which is great to some degree, but here they are with pieces that even have syncopation, when they don't know that a crotchet is one beat. Some of them don't know what bars are, the idea of a time signature is a mystery. Some of them can read some of the notes, but they are often reading the finger numbers so that playing a third when the fingers are numbered 1, 2 is a challenge. I can't go back to the earlier books. I have tried simple rhythmic card games, you know, peach apple pear plum, say the rhythm than play the tune, they think it's babyish, but neither can they really cope with the books. I've got rhythm flash cards which have worked to some degree but I don't know how to progress from here, keeping them interested. Do I simplify and transcribe loads of well known tunes for them and use up my entire photocopying allowance in one go? Do we plug on with the books?
I'm now seeing that the reading music will come eventually, but the rhythm thing is really bugging me. To me it's such a fundamental part of playing music I am amazed at how they can have got to this point without knowing at least a bit more about it.
Bit of an essay this I know, but the honeymoon period is over and I'm getting quite stressed out wondering where I go from here.
Charlotte