Newly Designed Challenge Charts for the 30 and 40 Piece Challenge!

We’re so excited about the newly designed challenge charts for this year! If you’ve been a part of the ComposeCreate “fam” for a bit, you’ll know we delight in releasing new PDF editions of the 30 and 40 Piece Challenge Charts each and every year! We’ve released a breadth of colors and different features over the years.

But this year’s complete redesign might be the best ever change!

What is the 30 and 40 Piece Challenge? 

First some background: 

The 30 or 40 Piece Challenge is a year-long program that challenges students to learn more music. As you know, when students play through and learn more music, they become better sight-readers. And the more exposed they are to different kinds of music, the more fluent they are in different styles, different notation, formats, and other such things. The 30 or 40 Piece Challenge was created by Elissa Milne, and we have created these charts over the years with her blessing.

The 30 and 40 Piece Challenge works best when you remember that three levels of music must be included:

1. Challenging pieces (Continue teaching the recital and festival music that takes weeks and months to learn and perfect).
2. Pieces at the students level. These would be like method book pieces.
3. Piece below the students level (never be afraid of using this music. Learning to polish even easier pieces helps students pay attention to detail and may even free them to work more on these details since the music is less difficult.

What’s Included in the Newly Designed Challenge Charts?

So, what do you get when you download 2024’s editable 30 and 40 Piece chart package? 

You get a document that you can freely edit, with an automatic beautiful look! When you type in any information to the editable fields in the document, you’ll see a font style that matches the design, without any work on your part. 

The best part is that you don’t have to keep typing in a repetitive field like “Teacher’s Name and Date” – it just appears on each page. You only have to type individual information, like your students’ names. Here is a list of free PDF items you receive when you download the charts:

1. The Teacher Wall Chart:
   Write (or type in Adobe Reader) students’ names on this chart to display in your studio. Some teachers have a large version made at a print shop. Students will mark their progress with stickers or other markers when they complete a piece.
2. The Stamp Card:
   This is an optional card that can be used for extra incentives – perhaps from a local business? You can use rubber stamps, hole punches, or small stickers to mark progress. The bubbles on this card, when printed on standard 8 1/2 x11” printer paper, are about the size of a hole punch diameter.
3. The Student Certificate:
   30 and 40 Piece Champions will be so proud to see their names typed in and printed out when they accomplish their goal! You can give this completed certificate to your students, or display them on your studio wall.
4. The Student Chart:
   This chart is placed in the student’s notebook. The student or the teacher can add the names of completed pieces.

What’s New and Improved in the Newly Designed Challenge Charts?

This year’s newly designed Challenge Charts have a sophisticated look with colors from nature, and feature bold graphics. Wendy’s happy place is the outdoors, so the cool brown and green tones of a  “Craftsman” color palette with a stately font were her inspiration for this beautiful design!

• The Teacher Wall Chart:
  You’ll notice the completed pieces are grouped in bubbles of 5. Does anyone else think these look like Lego bricks, or yummy chocolate bars? The taste of “sweet” progress is the idea behind these groupings. So many students love a mini-reward or short-term goal on their way to a longer-term achievement. We’ve found the numbered bubbles are about the size of a pencil eraser, so small stickers will work well.
  And of course, we carried over the nifty feature of being able to edit fields in the document, so you can type students’ names in the chart to keep the professional look!
  

• The Student Chart:
  What’s new this year is the format of the chart! Instead of it looking like a big wash of pieces, it’s now grouped in such a way that you can easily see groupings at a glance. It’s much more rewarding for students to feel like they’ve completed a whole section of pieces! And grouping the pieces in groups of 5 allows for this visual reward so much more easily. Plus, there are fun little encouraging words for each section. We love that students can measure progress in 5 piece increments, and see motivational statements for each “mini-milestone”! These look beautiful printed on cardstock for student’s notebooks. Students will be proud when they see it at the front of their piano binder. The extra dose of motivational encouragement is a wonderful conversation starter in your studio!

• The Stamp Card:
  The stamp card is an optional, but fun addition to the newly designed Challenge Charts that some teachers choose to utilize. The design of the stamp card forms vertical columns with 5 pieces grouped together – once more, inviting students to work hard to complete each mini-goal of 5 pieces on their way to the final 30! Some teachers find local businesses to donate goodies to students. Then they reward their students at the completion of a certain number of stamps or stickers on their card!

• The Student Certificate:
  This year, every student who finishes the challenge is called a Champion!

Although last year’s design looked good enough to eat, this year’s looks good enough to be framed and put on the wall. On a practical note: simple type in the completion date once, and it will appear automatically on every page. Students’ names will be typed in individually at the top of the page, displaying a unique and beautiful look they will love. 

How to Start the 30 or 40 Piece Challenge

Starting the Challenge is quite easy! Simply download and become familiar with the documents, using the handy guides at the start of each PDF. With a printer, some paper, a hole punch or special stickers (optional), and some incentives, you’re good to go! Please feel free to  chime in in the comments section with the special way they implement the piece challenges. 

What is the Biggest Success Ingredient of the Challenge?

You’ll want to start this challenge remembering that it’s of utmost importance to include 3 kinds of music in 30 or 40 piece challenge:

• Music at their level:
  This would be what we normally have in a lesson. 
• Music above their level:
  These are typically pieces that take many weeks to learn, like a recital piece
• Music below their level:
  This is the music that most teachers forget to include, but it’s some of the most important. The reason is that students always need to feel like they are making progress. When we give them music that is always above where they are, it’s hard for them to feel that. So giving them music below their level helps them not only gain confidence, but it also and especially helps them to become more fluent sight readers and get exposed to different styles of music. You’ll find that especially your older and more advanced students need this and are MUCH happier and more motivated when they have at least one piece below their level. What’s more satisfying than pieces that help students see how far they’ve come, and the skills that they have, literally, at their fingertips?
• Shorter music:
  This is related to pieces below your students’ levels. It doesn’t apply to early level students as much, since all their music is short, but students late elementary and beyond especially need pieces they can master in one to two weeks! They’ll feel so motivated as they move more quickly through the challenge.

What Music is Perfect for the Challenge? 

You already have the perfect music for about half of the challenge – just the normal music that you use in lessons! But Short Sheets® are the perfect solution for giving shorter pieces of music below your students’ levels.  Our beautiful collection of Short Sheets® is available for students from pre-reading to late intermediate level! Peruse the entire collection here. 

Short Sheets® work well for the 30 and 40 Piece Challenge because they are sets of 3 one-page pieces that are pedagogically sound, but concise! So students can easily complete them in 1-2 weeks, giving them momentum because they are “passing pieces.” But you’ll know that these aren’t just fluff pieces to “pad” the challenge. These contain all the elements of a good piece of pedagogy music, so you can be confident they are advancing and honing their skills. 

I can just imagine myself as a teen, knee deep in tackling new music that is longer and more complex than I’ve experienced before, with week after week of critiques and notes of things to refine and fix. I would have so loved fun, interesting, but short pieces that utilized patterns and scales in which I was already proficient. And of course, students starting off their musical education journeys will love the clever and endearing lyrics and themes found in the earlier levels of Short Sheets®!

What are your thoughts about the newly designed Challenge Charts?

We would love to know how you feel as you approach using these materials. Feel free to comment below to discuss any of these questions! 

• Have you already used them season after season? 
• When do you start your challenge? 
• Is this your first year using the challenge? 
• Does your studio have any fun traditions associated with utilizing the 30 and 40 Piece Challenges? 

Let us know your thoughts about the newly designed 30 and 40 Piece Challenge Charts! And let us know what questions you have so we can help in a future blog post! 

Read More about the 30 Piece Challenge:

• Take the 30 Piece Challenge
• Interview with Elissa Milne on the 40 piece Challenge!