Hello everyone. This is my first post and I'd be grateful for your comments/advice.
I've been wondering how other people approach preparing their pupils for exams in terms of organising presenting the material and setting a time schedule.
Most of my pupils work steadily and conscientiously and get to grips with their scales, pieces, etc, fairly easily and I'm happy to let them work at their own pace and to enter them for exams when I think they are ready.
One challenge I face is with those pupils who are unwilling to work on anything which is not exam related (post-Grade 1). I feel they would benefit from exploring a wider repertoire in developing their sight reading skills, musicianship and technique but they are just not interested/motivated unless they have an exam goal to work towards. Do other people have the same problem and, if so, how do you tackle it?
Another challenge is with those who seem to take ages to get ready for exams. I'm experimenting with presenting small chunks of only one piece at once as these pupils don't seem to respond well to learning each hand separately and then together to the end or to working on more than one piece at a time. What do other people consider to be a reasonable amount of time to allow for preparing for each grade (in other words, how slow is too slow), how do you present material to those who are rather slow to understand, assimilate and master it to make it easier for them and do you set goals to be met by certain times along the way?
Sorry this is rather long, but I'm really interested in how people learn and teach effectively and other people's take on this!
Full Version: Preparing For Exams
Hello Musica Viva,
i was going to present a similar thread on exams! Firstly, your queries:
I usually decide with the parents and pupils whether they'd like to do an exam. If they do, we get the books and start work. I don't schedule how long I think it'll take them but go with their individual needs. I always structure my lessons so they do pieces, scales, aural and sightreading. This avoids the problem of geting 2 weeks before an exam and freaking that they haven't done it. This has proved successful, although if i'm honest, my results have reflected this - they've got merits and all round marks but not excelled in any one thing.
Conscientious pupils tend to be ready in six months. My lazy pupils have taken about a year - a year and a half! I usually tell them the options of when the exams are. most of them want to do it in the summer as they are geared up that this is exam time anyway. I usually start them on grade stuff in September with a view to doing the exam in the summer. From July-Sept I then vary their repertoire diet by spending time away from exams.
In order to get them to vary their repertoire and stay interested you could try and do duets - they will let you / the other pianist down if they don't practice. Or just make sure you're giving them repertoire that they really enjoy. Sounds obvious but i had one pupil who had had a previous teacher who'd kept him playing a piece he really hated that wasn't for an exam. I don't see the point in doing that. the fun is in making music you enjoy.
I've also spent time doing history of music lessons and simply listening to music, discussing how they sound different, listening to pop stuff and seeing how that relates to dots on pages.
I've rambled on now, but i hope that some of this might be of some use to you,
Cadenza
i was going to present a similar thread on exams! Firstly, your queries:
I usually decide with the parents and pupils whether they'd like to do an exam. If they do, we get the books and start work. I don't schedule how long I think it'll take them but go with their individual needs. I always structure my lessons so they do pieces, scales, aural and sightreading. This avoids the problem of geting 2 weeks before an exam and freaking that they haven't done it. This has proved successful, although if i'm honest, my results have reflected this - they've got merits and all round marks but not excelled in any one thing.
Conscientious pupils tend to be ready in six months. My lazy pupils have taken about a year - a year and a half! I usually tell them the options of when the exams are. most of them want to do it in the summer as they are geared up that this is exam time anyway. I usually start them on grade stuff in September with a view to doing the exam in the summer. From July-Sept I then vary their repertoire diet by spending time away from exams.
In order to get them to vary their repertoire and stay interested you could try and do duets - they will let you / the other pianist down if they don't practice. Or just make sure you're giving them repertoire that they really enjoy. Sounds obvious but i had one pupil who had had a previous teacher who'd kept him playing a piece he really hated that wasn't for an exam. I don't see the point in doing that. the fun is in making music you enjoy.
I've also spent time doing history of music lessons and simply listening to music, discussing how they sound different, listening to pop stuff and seeing how that relates to dots on pages.
I've rambled on now, but i hope that some of this might be of some use to you,
Cadenza
QUOTE(Cadenza1818 @ Oct 18 2006, 04:00 PM) 
Conscientious pupils tend to be ready in six months.
I took less than three months to prepare for every one of my piano grades, including Grade 8, and got all Distinctions. Granted, I am a quick learner, but I do believe that, with hard work and a knowledge of the instrument that is slightly above the grade being prepared for (as it should be if one wants to obtain a high mark), it shouldn't take longer than 4-5 months.
QUOTE(Cadenza1818 @ Oct 18 2006, 04:00 PM)
I had one pupil who had had a previous teacher who'd kept him playing a piece he really hated that wasn't for an exam. I don't see the point in doing that. the fun is in making music you enjoy.
Cadenza
Wow, that sounds like my old bassoon teacher! He chose all my pieces for me - and all his pupils played the same ones - and I feel that I missed out on so much enjoyment because of that. I hated some of the pieces but I had to play them. I would gladly have paid for music that I enjoyed. I'm sure that contributed to my giving up the bassoon in the end... My piano teacher, on the other hand, knows me very well and knows the kind of pieces I like. She usually presents 4 or 5 pieces that she thinks I'll like, and I can choose, or alternatively, I can suggest something. It's so much better that way!
I haven't had a lot of experience preparing people for exams, but have had a lot of experience being prepared for them 
It can be incredibly dull if too much time is spent solely on exam pieces, and especially if a teacher leaps from one exam to the next without doing any interim stuff, as then you have to work that much harder having essentially leapt to the next grade without doing the work leading up to it.
I would agree that 6-18 months seems a long time, but it depends if someone means 18 months working just on the pieces and scales, or 18 months between exams - the former would be a cruel way to treat students (18 months on the same pieces??? ARGH!), the latter is fairly reasonable depending on the student.
I have tried with all the (very few...) students I've taught NOT to make them play stuff they hate, or if it is for a particular technical point, to only insist on them coming to grips with the "meat" of it, and not to expect them necessarily to perfect it. Usually there is an alternative if a teacher is willing to make the effort to find it.
It depends also on why the student is taking the exam and where they are in relation to the grade standard. At present I am helping a friend work towards grade 1 and teaching a student who's aiming for grade 3 in the spring. My friend is taking the exam almost solely for exam practice and confidence building, she is well beyond G1 standard, so actually working on stuff for the exam is just getting to grips with what is expected and practising weak areas: my grade 3 student is genuinely a grade 3 student, albeit, I think, a good one: therefore every area needs to be covered.
I think my G3 student is probably more typical. We do scales to some degree every week, and when she becomes confident in one octave, we add another, or we start a new scale. Aural work we do each week but not explicitly - just working at present on strengthening the areas she will need in order to cope with aural work later - as a non-pianist I hope to make use of Hofnote later to help her get the requisite practice of actual exam tests. Sight-reading we do little and often, both in terms of explicit "this is sight-reading practice", and in terms of her having pieces of music she has not seen before and being encouraged to "have a go".
Pieces: I have had her working on one exam piece consistently and a couple of other non exam pieces on and off. Once she got her head pretty much round the piece we've rested it, with the intention of returning to it later, and started a non-exam piece with a playalong CD as a bit of light relief, but at the same time I have her looking at a study which is potential exam material but also works on some areas she needs to look at, and I've also loaned her a cd with recordings of all the pieces from list A, which she hasn't done anything from, to see which ones she fancies.
As a flautist I have the disadvantage of not all the exam pieces being in the same book, but it can also be an advantage - pieces do not have to be presented as "exam material" unless I choose to present them that way, and as far as a student is concerned, unless they have gone away and read up about it, any piece I provide may or may not be exam territory.
I haven't done a lot of exam prep and I'm trying to walk the fine line between making sure she will be ready, and not wanting her to be bored of the pieces - hence my intention to make sure she has a good choice of possibles from the syllabus, and working on pieces for a while and resting them, so she has a bit of prep under her belt but is not working any one piece absolutely to death! As a student the two things I most hated were feeling underprepared or being sick of pieces (as a piano student I managed often to have both problems on the same pieces - very uncomfortable
) so I'm keen to try and avoid that scenario!
Hmm don't know if this helps at all or makes any sense, but as a novice teacher this is what I have been doing!!
It can be incredibly dull if too much time is spent solely on exam pieces, and especially if a teacher leaps from one exam to the next without doing any interim stuff, as then you have to work that much harder having essentially leapt to the next grade without doing the work leading up to it.
I would agree that 6-18 months seems a long time, but it depends if someone means 18 months working just on the pieces and scales, or 18 months between exams - the former would be a cruel way to treat students (18 months on the same pieces??? ARGH!), the latter is fairly reasonable depending on the student.
I have tried with all the (very few...) students I've taught NOT to make them play stuff they hate, or if it is for a particular technical point, to only insist on them coming to grips with the "meat" of it, and not to expect them necessarily to perfect it. Usually there is an alternative if a teacher is willing to make the effort to find it.
It depends also on why the student is taking the exam and where they are in relation to the grade standard. At present I am helping a friend work towards grade 1 and teaching a student who's aiming for grade 3 in the spring. My friend is taking the exam almost solely for exam practice and confidence building, she is well beyond G1 standard, so actually working on stuff for the exam is just getting to grips with what is expected and practising weak areas: my grade 3 student is genuinely a grade 3 student, albeit, I think, a good one: therefore every area needs to be covered.
I think my G3 student is probably more typical. We do scales to some degree every week, and when she becomes confident in one octave, we add another, or we start a new scale. Aural work we do each week but not explicitly - just working at present on strengthening the areas she will need in order to cope with aural work later - as a non-pianist I hope to make use of Hofnote later to help her get the requisite practice of actual exam tests. Sight-reading we do little and often, both in terms of explicit "this is sight-reading practice", and in terms of her having pieces of music she has not seen before and being encouraged to "have a go".
Pieces: I have had her working on one exam piece consistently and a couple of other non exam pieces on and off. Once she got her head pretty much round the piece we've rested it, with the intention of returning to it later, and started a non-exam piece with a playalong CD as a bit of light relief, but at the same time I have her looking at a study which is potential exam material but also works on some areas she needs to look at, and I've also loaned her a cd with recordings of all the pieces from list A, which she hasn't done anything from, to see which ones she fancies.
As a flautist I have the disadvantage of not all the exam pieces being in the same book, but it can also be an advantage - pieces do not have to be presented as "exam material" unless I choose to present them that way, and as far as a student is concerned, unless they have gone away and read up about it, any piece I provide may or may not be exam territory.
I haven't done a lot of exam prep and I'm trying to walk the fine line between making sure she will be ready, and not wanting her to be bored of the pieces - hence my intention to make sure she has a good choice of possibles from the syllabus, and working on pieces for a while and resting them, so she has a bit of prep under her belt but is not working any one piece absolutely to death! As a student the two things I most hated were feeling underprepared or being sick of pieces (as a piano student I managed often to have both problems on the same pieces - very uncomfortable
) so I'm keen to try and avoid that scenario!Hmm don't know if this helps at all or makes any sense, but as a novice teacher this is what I have been doing!!
[quote name='__piano__' date='Oct 18 2006, 04:07 PM' post='409948']
[quote name='Cadenza1818' post='409942' date='Oct 18 2006, 04:00 PM']
Conscientious pupils tend to be ready in six months.
[/quote]
I took less than three months to prepare for every one of my piano grades, including Grade 8, and got all Distinctions. Granted, I am a quick learner, but I do believe that, with hard work and a knowledge of the instrument that is slightly above the grade being prepared for (as it should be if one wants to obtain a high mark), it shouldn't take longer than 4-5 months.
Wow! That is unusually quick I would say. I'm not in the least bit jealous
Seriously though, that does show you what hard work (and what sounds like geniune talent) can achieve. Best of luck with your playing whatever you're doing now.
[quote name='Cadenza1818' post='409942' date='Oct 18 2006, 04:00 PM']
Conscientious pupils tend to be ready in six months.
[/quote]
I took less than three months to prepare for every one of my piano grades, including Grade 8, and got all Distinctions. Granted, I am a quick learner, but I do believe that, with hard work and a knowledge of the instrument that is slightly above the grade being prepared for (as it should be if one wants to obtain a high mark), it shouldn't take longer than 4-5 months.
Wow! That is unusually quick I would say. I'm not in the least bit jealous
Seriously though, that does show you what hard work (and what sounds like geniune talent) can achieve. Best of luck with your playing whatever you're doing now.
[quote name='Cadenza1818' date='Oct 19 2006, 12:22 PM' post='410327']
[quote name='__piano__' date='Oct 18 2006, 04:07 PM' post='409948']
[quote name='Cadenza1818' post='409942' date='Oct 18 2006, 04:00 PM']
Conscientious pupils tend to be ready in six months.
[/quote]
I took less than three months to prepare for every one of my piano grades, including Grade 8, and got all Distinctions. Granted, I am a quick learner, but I do believe that, with hard work and a knowledge of the instrument that is slightly above the grade being prepared for (as it should be if one wants to obtain a high mark), it shouldn't take longer than 4-5 months.
Wow! That is unusually quick I would say. I'm not in the least bit jealous Seriously though, that does show you what hard work (and what sounds like geniune talent) can achieve. Best of luck with your playing whatever you're doing now.
[/quote]
Thank you
I'm now working hard for a local festival and after that, I'll probably start preparing for my DipABRSM. I think what helped me, though, was that I had been playing Grade 8 and diploma standard pieces for several years before taking Grade 8. When I came to learn my Grade 8 pieces, they seemed easy in comparison. I would really recommend this method!
[quote name='__piano__' date='Oct 18 2006, 04:07 PM' post='409948']
[quote name='Cadenza1818' post='409942' date='Oct 18 2006, 04:00 PM']
Conscientious pupils tend to be ready in six months.
[/quote]
I took less than three months to prepare for every one of my piano grades, including Grade 8, and got all Distinctions. Granted, I am a quick learner, but I do believe that, with hard work and a knowledge of the instrument that is slightly above the grade being prepared for (as it should be if one wants to obtain a high mark), it shouldn't take longer than 4-5 months.
Wow! That is unusually quick I would say. I'm not in the least bit jealous
Seriously though, that does show you what hard work (and what sounds like geniune talent) can achieve. Best of luck with your playing whatever you're doing now.[/quote]
Thank you
I'm now working hard for a local festival and after that, I'll probably start preparing for my DipABRSM. I think what helped me, though, was that I had been playing Grade 8 and diploma standard pieces for several years before taking Grade 8. When I came to learn my Grade 8 pieces, they seemed easy in comparison. I would really recommend this method!
Yes, I agree, learning Grade 8 pieces before is a great idea. I've just been looking at the DipABRSM syllabus and the repertoire list includes my Grade 8 Sonata. Great stuff - I can brush it up!
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