The new 30 and 40 piece Challenge Charts for 2021 are available – and they’re my favorite ones yet! There are charts for both 30 and 40 pieces, and the colors are vibrant – perfect for younger or teenaged students. Whether it’s your first year trying the challenge or your tenth, I think you and your students will love these new charts!
What Is the 30/40 Piece Challenge?
Elissa Milne created this wonderful challenge, and it can easily be used year after year. The general idea is that when students are learning lengthy, challenging pieces, it can mean they’re stuck with the same piece for weeks on end. This leads to students becoming stagnant, and even falling behind in other areas. Challenging students to learn 30 or 40 pieces during the school year helps students learn more pieces; it exposes them to different types of music; and it helps their sight reading just by being given more opportunities to sight read! Students want to “finish” pieces, and this is a way to give them the momentum to do so.
The key to the 30/40 piece challenge is to mix in music that is at students’ level, slightly above their level (for a challenge), and slightly below their level so they have quicker wins. Short Sheets® make wonderful 30/40 piece challenge pieces because they’re only one page, but are pedagogically sound!
Wendy has written many posts on the topic of the challenge, so there are links at the bottom of this post with more information!
What Comes with These Charts?
- Separate Student Chart PDF. This makes it easy! Just email the 30/40 piece challenge chart to students to print and put in their notebook. This is especially handy if you’re teaching students online.
- Separate certificate file. Instead of typing a student name, printing, deleting the name, and starting the whole process over, there’s a file with 10 certificates. This means you can type in 10 names at a time and print! The best part? You only have to type the teacher name and date one time – the fields are automatically filled in for all ten certificates!
- A second wall chart page. If you’ve got more students than will fit on one page, there’s a second page you can print that fits under the first.
- An option to type in students names. If you open the file in Adobe Reader (you can get it here for free!), you can type in student names.
Should I Use Rewards?
My personal experience is that students are motivated just by seeing how they (and other students) are progressing. It’s a good mix of personal motivation and friendly studio-wide competition! However, I do think it’s appropriate to celebrate benchmarks along the way. This particular challenge covers a span of several months – which can feel like forever when you’re young!
but they are part of the package in case you want to use them!
I typically have extra incentives at the 10, 20, 30, and 40 piece mark. Here are some incentive ideas:
- These gel highlighters. I don’t know what it is about these things, but students are obsessed with them! Even my 19 month old wants to draw with them constantly. They’re a gel consistency, glide across the paper, and don’t dry out if you leave the cap off (huge bonus!). I’ve tried a few brands, and students always tell me they like the Sharpie brand highlighters best.
- Allowing students to pick the order in which we do things during lessons. Students get a kick out of getting to choose the cadence of the lesson themselves.
- One teacher said she planned to give her students a new music book (you could also do a ComposeCreate gift card). It’s the gift that keeps on giving, and a wonderful idea!
- Elissa has suggested giving medals out to students who complete the challenge at a spring recital.
- Ice Cream Parties – Some teachers have told us that they throw parties at the end of the year or midway through the year to those who have completed the goal.
- Give in to a weird request. When I used to teach in students’ homes, a student was dying to bring his pet bird to a lesson, because the bird would watch him practice at home. This is something I would never usually do – but it was a free, and made him practice like you wouldn’t believe! He was so excited to have that bird in his lesson – and the bird was very happy to sing along. When a student has been wanting to do something goofy in lessons, it can make a wonderful incentive!
If you’re looking for a way to put a spin on the 30/40 piece challenge, Elissa suggests having a new theme each year. She eventually ties the theme into the spring recital – it’s such a creative idea!
How to find music for the 30 and 40 piece challenge:
Short Sheets® are perfect for this challenge because they are one-page pieces that students can learn quickly, but still are pedagogically sound. So you can use Short Sheets® music below, at or above the students level to help them learn more music while they are also learning the bigger pieces you have assigned.
The Free Student Solutions Catalog helps you find music specific to student problems, needs, or interests. It’s a catalog unlike any piano pedagogy catalog available today!
Have You Done the Challenge? Let Us Know!
Teachers are always asking specific questions about how to do this challenge, so if you have already done this challenge with your students, please leave a comment with any tips or ideas you have!
Read More About the Challenge:
Once again thank you for the colorful motivational charts. When I downloaded this however the new 2021 fall color doesn’t seem to be in the file. Should I be looking elsewhere?
Hi Saundra,
I’m so sorry that you didn’t get the correct charts. I did check the links and it appears to all be working okay. So I just resent it. If you try it again and it doesn’t work, please send an email to [email protected] and send a screenshot of which link in the email you clicked and what what the charts look like and we’ll be happy to help!