The Fantastic 30

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!