I am starting to teach piano at a high school in September. As far as I can tell, the pupils have been used to learning through playing popular music (presumably by ear) using guitar chords to improvise an accompaniment, with notation not introduced until later. Has anyone any experience of teaching in this way? What are the pitfalls?

Sounds very similar to my experience when I started teaching at secondary school! A problem with introducing notation later is that I think students find it harder to discipline themselves to read notation when they can already play without it - after all why bother if they can work tunes out by ear? If they don't learn to read from the grand staff, however, it can can cause problems when they start co-ordinating right and left hand in more complex pieces. Many of us can only work out so much by ear.

On the other hand, it's only natural that teens will be interested in popular music, and I think there is great value in learning to play from chord symbols - I encourage both piano and keyboard students to develop their own LH accomp patterns. It can be very useful when putting together GSCE performance and ensemble pieces, which is maybe why you and I have both found this method taught in secondary schools.

I would suggest that the ideal would be to keep both forms of playing going, but you may well have an uphill struggle on the reading side!

All the best

While I quite like the Suzuki method for the very young, I think at Secondary School the kids should be learning to read music for both Treble and Bass clefs.

The other approach that you have found in place is generally a dead-end street. A jump-start to get a few pieces sounding impressive, but nowhere to go easily from there.

I think if you show leadership and provide the new challenges you will get a response. Just explain your approach to parents and students. You may lose some and gain others.

As the students get more confident with their skills and reading, well they will be better placed to experiment with popular music, entertainment, and own compositions.

It might be worth looking at the London College's Leisure Play Repertoire - not neccessarilly with a view to doing the exams, but to get ideas for popular repertoire at the right level. Exam candidates can choose from the standard Grade material, but there's an extra list to choose from too, which is often more appealing to teenagers.

Thanks for all the advice. I'll certainly have a look at the leisure play repertoire.

Some of my pianp pupils have been bored to tears having to do a similar thing as part of their class music lessons. They had to play the melody only of "Love Me Tender" and also a very few bars of the Pachebel canon and them did no more with it , or so they told me. Will you be teaching them to play the piano or teaching music as a subject to classes I wonder. If the former try to get them reading standard notation asap. They will be at a huge disadvantade otherwise.

Notation... well there's a luxury for you. I teach singing off backing tracks to people who can't read, but insist they buy the books too complete with notation.

But at some secondary schools you're lucky if the pupils can read at all let alone read music.

Guitar chords are useful, you can actually teach a semblance of harmony with them i.e. what chord works after G7. But these days pupil's performances and compositions are recorded, even for GCSE. They don't actually need to know any theory... until they get to the listening paper.