By Christin Cooper
As students across our studios are setting and achieving goals in pursuit of their Musical Milestones, we are highlighting some of the ways our group lesson suite utilizes this program to focus on reinforcing a strong foundation for beginners.
First up, we are learning more about the milestones students achieve in Studio Keys, our group piano program for ages 6-9 years.
Musicianship Takes Center Stage.
Our Studio Keys program emphasizes a well-rounded introduction to piano playing with an emphasis on creativity, musical literacy, and healthy technique. As students progress through these 8 weeks, they will perform four pieces for their teachers – two learned by rote and two learned through reading. In addition, they will demonstrate their ability to play with non-legato piano technique and to express themselves creatively through improvisation.
It is highly motivating for beginning pianists to utilize the full range of the keyboard and play more complicated pieces than they can yet read. Without the added complication of decoding musical notation, rote pieces provide students with opportunities to focus on developing aural, technical, musical, and memorization skills. Through improvisation and rote learning, students develop kinesthetic familiarity with patterns at the piano, which ultimately makes reading notation easier.
Keys to Success.
At the core of our mission as educators is a desire to equip students with the tools they need to become independent learners. For piano students, the central pillars of independence are mastering the foundations of keyboard geography and basic music-reading skills. Students learn to discern the patterns found between white and black keys, recite the musical alphabet and white key letter names, internalize their right and left-hand finger numbers, and identify landmark notes on the staff. In addition, students practice the transferrable skills of tracking visually on a page from left to right, applying symbol to sound, identifying parts of the staff including lines, spaces, treble clef, bass clef, and time signature, and learning to read musical intervals.
Connection Facilitates Learning.
Children create strong social bonds when they encourage, support, and help each other along the path of achieving each milestone. This is why we encourage students to continue onto a second year with the same cohort from Studio Keys Year 1. Students will add more techniques like wrist rotation and legato articulation to their toolkits, while enjoying additional opportunities to play cooperative games, expand their ensemble skills, and strengthen their music-reading abilities. When it’s time to move on to private study, these musical explorers will confidently embark on their first solo flight with the support of their peers and the skillset to help them soar!
NOTE: In February and March our entire studio focuses on Musical Milestones from Kindermusik Level 1 through our Adult Lesson Students. This article is part of a series where we highlight the what, why, and how of this program-wide event that spans 8 weeks each year.