Category: Student Incentives

SUMMER PIANO PRACTICE

6/19/2024

We are on break for 3 weeks after a very successful piano year. Yay! Summer class begin mid-July, but about half of our students take a break from piano classes over the summer.

For the younger students, telling them to "play the piano throughout the summer" has better results if they have some way of logging their practice.

This is a practice log chart for our primer/level 1 students. Feel free to download it and use it with your students too!

Chick-Fil-A challenge

1/3/2024

This piano year, we have been running a Chick-Fil-A practice incentive. It is our most motivating incentive so far!

Students earn "Chick-Fil-A" practice points for playing at recitals, starting a new book, performing their memory pieces, showing up to the lesson with all their books etc. The first 4 students to reach 100 points each win a $10 Chick-Fil-A gift card. Before Christmas, we had 4 winners, and they were all excited to get their gift cards in the mail.

This week we started a new Chick-Fil-A Practice Challenge. This time, students get to choose from ColdStone Creamery, Chipotle or Chick-Fil-A gift cards (but we're still calling in the Chick-Fil-A challenge because the students get super excited about the prospect of getting Chick-Fil-A).

I even made some cut little "chick" stickers to log their progress on the charts this time. I'll make some ice-cream stickers this weekend if I have time. That will keep the ice-cream lovers motivated!

Download the chart and edit it to fit your studio. Choose your own criteria for points. We take new students year-round, so we only wanted the challenge to last 3 or 4 months so that new students can take part without being behind those that were in lessons at the start of the year. With our criteria, we expect to have our 4 winners by Easter and then we'll start again in April.

You can also download the "Congratulations" cards to attach to the gift cards.

You can use any stickers to log progress. Last time we used star stickers from the store. If you want to use our new "chick" stickers, you can get them from our Etsy Store.

Note Ninjas Escape Room

2/19/2023

Yesterday we had our note learning event! We made it a kind of Escape Room - so the students had to work together to find the code to unlock the box of goodies.

Most of our students are online, so it was great for them to actually be in-person with the students from their online groups.

Ten students attended and 3 of our teen students came to help out and man our 3 Note Drill stations:

iPad Note Drills (using the Flash Note Derby and Piano Notes Fun apps)
Worksheet Note Drills (writing note names beneath the notes)
Note Puzzle Note Drills (a puzzle to match the staff note to its alphabet name)

There were so many other activities that we could have included, but we had just one hour, and we didn’t want to add too many activities and run out of time. The main thing was for the activities to be very different from each other to keep the students focused and interested.

The students were arranged into 3 teams:

Rockin’ Reds
Sunny Superstars
Green Machine

The teams had 15 minutes at each station (which definitely wasn’t enough - next time we will make the event longer).

At each station, all students in the team had a given number of note-learning challenges to complete in order for the team to earn a musical clue. (The clues weren't actually related to the note-learning activities, but they were based on music theory).

They then had to work together to decipher the clue and write the answers on their “Clue Calculator” sheet.

On completion of their Clue Calculator sheets each of the teams ended with a single digit number. Those 3 digits were the combination to the lock on the box of goodies that they took home with them.

The kiddos were super excited putting their digits into the lock, and delighted when the lock finally opened, and they could grab the goodie bags from the box.

Our Ninja Prize Box

It was such a fun event! We got such good feedback from the parents, and it was encouraging seeing the students' scores improve on each repetition of the activities. We will definitely be doing another "Escape Room" again.

A Cute Christmas Gift

10/20/2022

In September a whole bunch of new kiddos signed up for lesson with us. It has been a delight teaching them. This Christmas we are planning a mini-recital during the last lesson of the year, and we put together cute sticker/candy packs with encouraging greeting cards for each student to collect after the recital.

The stickers and cards are available on the Piano Together Etsy Store.
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Piano Stickers Galore

8/12/2022

Students love stickers.

Piano students love piano stickers.

This year, we're finally returning to in-person lessons for new students, and we have made personalized stickers for them to put on their folders and music books. We'll also be adding stickers to the Piano Packs that we mail to online students.

This summer, we tested different styles of stickers on some of our summer students. They were such a big hit - even some of the older teens (14, 15, 16 year olds) were delighted with them, so we are making them available to others on the Piano Together Etsy Store.

Our stickers come in sets of 8 or 16, and you can personalize each sticker in the set. For example, if you have 16 students, just select the style you want, enter the student names, and we'll set you 16 personalized stickers. I'm sure your student will love them just as much as ours do!

All stickers are 25% off through August 31. Yay!

The Fantastic 30

9/27/2021

This summer, we had a lot of fun with the PianOlympics piano practice incentive. The students worked hard in teams to gain as many practice points as possible, and the winners were super excited to receive their prizes in the mail. We are still online so the prizes were mailed out, but the students were delighted to receive a package addressed to themselves.

The only downside of the PianOlympics incentive, was the fact that a few of the members of the winning teams, hadn't actually contributed very much to the team. So this month, we started the Fantastic-30 practice challenge.

Students are being challenged to complete at least 30 pieces of music before the end of the school year. A piece is counted as 'complete' when the student has played it to recital level at 2 separate lessons. We ran this challenge a few years ago when we were in-person, but as we are still online, we are making the most of the visual effects of PowerPoint. At the start of each lesson, we share the Fantastic-30 PowerPoint on the screen so the students can see how they are doing compared to other students at the same level. They are really motivated to keep up with each other right now.

We're including pictures of the PowerPoint slides in our monthly newsletter, so that parents can see how their child is doing and encourage them in their practice.

We are also encouraging the students to select 2 or 3 pieces they really like, and to memorize them. Our recitals are pre-recorded online, so not much memorizing has been happening for a while, and we want to get back into that.

Prizes go to the first 3 students to reach 15 pieces, and then later to the first 3 students to reach 30. We will also have a prize at the end of the year, for the student who learned the most pieces of music. We are expecting big progress this year! Yay!

The Piano Games Summer Program

6/15/2021

This summer, we are running a super piano practice incentive for our students. After learning about the copyright on the word "Olympics", I settled for the title - "The Piano Games." I doubt the students will mind - they are more focused on the prizes than the title!

We are still online and won't be returning to in-person lessons for the rest of 2021, so our "score charts" are all on PowerPoint. (Even when we return to in-person, we will still use PowerPoint for games and charts - it is so easy to amend things and put together a quick game to reinforce concepts! PowerPoint rocks!)

First of all, a big "Thank You" to the fantastic music teachers on Facebook whose suggestions helped me to put this program together.

So we will be having team events and solo events. The students are split into 4 teams. We tried to make it even by having the same number of students at the same level in each team. We've also made sure that the students who practice a lot are not all in the same team, and the students who practice a lot less are also in different teams. The team events are:

Old Pieces: Play a previously learned pieces (at recital level) to earn a point for the team. Students can play as many as we have time for.
New Pieces: Each completed new piece earns a point for the team. In our classes, a piece is complete when it has been played well in 3 separate lessons. For the summer though, we will count it complete after 2 lessons.
Games: We play a lot of PowerPoint games in our lessons every week. Each time a student wins a game, they earn a point for their team.

When a student scores a point, we'll "color" one of the blocks for their team. The visual effect will be a big motivator. We did a similar thing with charts on the wall a few years back when we were in-person, and as soon as the students entered the room, they checked the charts to see how their team was doing :)

Solo events are:

Note Quizzes: We have a whole bunch of PowerPoint games for quizzing notes - Don't miss the bus, Elephant Face, Countdown, and good old flash cards! I will probably put together another one with an Olympic theme before we start in July.
Rhythm Quizzes: Beat Boxes is our big rhythm game. We will also use the students' pieces and have them clap sections of it.
Ready To Go: Our lessons are online, and we usually have someone show up without their camera set up properly, or without their books on the music stand. So many have to run off to find a pencil and some have "forgotten" to practice. Avoid any of these to score 2 points. We're giving the extra point here so we can eliminate wasted time!
Composition: I have been working on some small composition exercises. Students will have a picture or lyrics, and a set of notes to use for the melody. Complete a composition and perform it in the lesson to earn a point.

And now for the most important part, the prizes! I have a ton of miscellaneous prizes - note books, scented erasers, pencils, light up rings, pencil cases etc. from the Dollar Store, Five Below and Walmart - things my teenage daughter tells me are cool prizes . I also came across these eraser medals on the Oriental Trading website. They look better on the website than they do in reality, but the students will like them. Besides, we are packaging the prizes as we did a couple years ago, and that's sure to get everyone practicing lots, lots, lots 😀

So we will begin in July, and I'm pretty sure we'll amend some of the events before then - (we may incorporate some worksheet events or some coloring events), but this is what we've come up with so far. We will still be online through the summer so the PowerPoint charts will be instrumental in keeping the students motivated.

You are welcome to download the PowerPoint and to amend it to fit your studio. Create the events, determine which will be team events and which will be individual events, rename the teams if you like, and add your own students names. Even if you're doing in-person lessons, your students will enjoy seeing the scores each week.

Let us know if you need any help tailoring it to your studio!

No Piano Lessons This Summer?

5/18/2021

Every summer there are a few students who take a "piano-break." This is not something we encourage, but it is what it is :)

To keep those students practicing, we give them a Summer Practice Booklet. Inside we list all the pieces scales, flashcards they should work on over the summer, and they can check off the days they practice on the calendar inside.

In the past we have given prizes for those who practice 40 days or more (and sound like it!), but we won't be doing that this year. Instead, we will ask them to send in videos of completed pieces - just to keep them playing instead of doing mad practice the week before their lessons restart.

If you think it will be useful for your studio, click on the images and download the PDF. Print it double-sided, flipping on the short edge. If you would like the editable Publisher Document so you can personalize it for your students/studio, let us know and we will email it to you.

The Cat Is Back

1/4/2021

On a previous post, we shared how we used "Cat Coins" to keep our students motivated to practice. This month, we are doing it again with a new cat.

The Cat Coins incentive was a great success. We decided to run it again in September 2019, needed a new "Cat." I was delighted when I found this Cat Piggy Bank on Amazon. When we went 100% online, and the students could no longer put their own coins in the cat. To keep the motivation going, we changed the prize to be the Cat Piggy Bank itself.

Students earned coins for practicing well, coins for winning theory games, coins for behaving well during the lesson (necessary for the little ones with online group lessons), and at the end of the month, the student whose name was randomly picked from the cat, won their own Cat Piggy Bank. I was able to get a pack of 4 Cat Piggy Banks at a reduced rate on Walmart.com, so it was affordable.

At the school year end in June, we took a break from the cat, But this month, the Cat is Back! I will write the names on the "Cat Coins" and put them in the cat myself - in full view of the students. We will have different colored coins this time so the students can have fun selecting a cat coin color (I know we'll need to reserve 5 minutes of lesson time for the selection lol!) Then we will pick a name out every 2 months and the winner will receive their own "Cat Piggy Bank."

I am super excited to tell the students the Cat is Back. I know they will be even more excited about it than I am!

Piano Packs

12/13/2020

We have worked extra hard to keep our students motivated this year. In March 2020, we went from 5% online lessons to 100% online lessons, and with students being in front of a screen so much already, we wanted piano lessons to be very different from school. One of our motivators was to give the students Piano Packs at the start of he school year. The packs were different depending on the student’s level, but we included things that would be fun for them.

For example, our Mini-Mozarts students play an online game called Rainbow Keys - so they had rainbow shaped erasers in their packs. (They all noticed it looked like the rainbow on the game 😄).

Our pre-primer students are working on finger numbers and the musical alphabet, so they had thimbles -for our finger number games, and alphabet letter cards.

For the students that play Piano Bingo, we included counters for their bingo boards. Everyone got pencils, stickers and mini post-it notes. The post-it notes are great for marking practice pages and preventing the “I couldn’t remember which page I was supposed to practice” excuse 🙃.

We had a Piano-Pack-Pickup Day at the location where we used to have in-person lessons. Parents were able to drive through and pick up free Piano Packs for their kiddos. For those that were not able to make it, we mailed out the piano packs. (That ended up being a pretty expensive so next time we will probably have 2 pick up dates!)

We didn’t give Piano Packs to the teenagers - they are not particularly keen on stickers and erasers, but the packs are a big hit with our elementary school students!

Julia & Diana

Two sisters on two different continents, working together, creating resources that keep our students motivated and loving piano!

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Photos from wuestenigel (CC BY 2.0), Phil Roeder, gitsul., torbakhopper, University of the Fraser Valley, 401(K) 2013, wuestenigel