Whether you’re wanting to begin a new practice challenge in your studio or a seasoned pro, we thought it would be useful to compile a list of common questions about the ever-popular 30 and 40 Piece Challenge! We release a new colorway every year, and this year’s beautiful charts are coming out August 4th!
All of the past designs of our charts are linked below, and with this list of common questions about the 30 and 40 Piece Challenge, you’ll eliminate guesswork and be ready to roll out the Challenge this year in your studio!
The whole aim of the 30 and 40 Piece Challenge is to help your students learn more music accurately and beautifully so that they can become better readers, musicians, and even acquire skills faster to make better progress. So giving your student lots of music is integral to their success. However, you have to make sure that you are giving them music at 3 different levels:
- Music at their level – This would be music that’s teaching them current concepts like their method or classical pieces they can learn within a few weeks
- Music above their level – Recital and festival pieces, challenging pieces, pieces they are memorizing
- Music below their level – Don’t overlook this category! It’s where some of the real magic of this Challenge happens. These are pieces that can’t be sightread perfectly, but will only really take a week to learn if practiced correctly. Short Sheets® are great for this! But here’s the reason this is so important:
Reading more music will improve reading music!
However, we don’t want them to just read through music is a quick and flippant way. We want them to learn it, pay attention to the details (which is much easier when the piece isn’t hard), and learn to play even easier pieces musically. And the 30 and 40 Piece Challenge is a great way to do this.
So without further ado, here are common questions about the 30 and 40 Piece Challenge.
How Does the 30 or 40 Piece Challenge Work?
The basis of the challenge created by Elissa Milne is that you challenge your students to learn 30 or 40 pieces in a year. We have created beautiful charts (with Elissa’s blessings) that can help your students track their progress in their practice notebook and on the wall of your studio. This wall chart also helps stoke motivation and display the studiowide practice challenge.
One of the reasons Elissa created this challenge is that she noticed many teachers have students spend months learning long, difficult pieces. Sometimes this means that they are not working on much other music during this time. And this lack of new music, rhythms, and melodies, often causes students to feel deflated and feel like they are not making progress. Challenging them to learn 30 or 40 pieces during the school year helps them learn more pieces more quickly, it exposes them to different types of music, and it helps their sightreading by being giving them more music! When students feel the progress of learning many pieces, they feel motivated, making the 30 and 40 Piece Challenge a source of intrinsic motivation.
I’m not sure my students will be motivated to complete 40 pieces. What do I do?
Definitely feel free to assign your students the 30 Piece Challenge instead of the 40 Piece Challenge. Both sets of files are included in our free resource, but you still have the choice to decide what’s best for your studio. In fact, if it’s your first time doing the challenge, we recommend going for 30 pieces instead of 40.
How do I explain the challenge to students?
You can say:
This year, we’re going to do the 30 Piece Challenge which challenges you to accurately and beautifully polish 30 pieces during the year! These pieces will be a combination of pieces that are difficult, at your level, and even review pieces that you might think are pretty easy! But I want you to have 30 pieces that you can play beautifully for yourself or for others!
I’ll be the judge as to when the piece gets accurate and polished enough to be counted.
You can also explain your other criteria that you might have. For example, if technique pieces don’t count, if the piece has to be more then 16 measures long, etc.
How do I use each of the charts in the free download?
Each of the “editions” from the various years may have different designs – that’s why we recommend using the newest years available for the most improved experience. Included with the 2024 30 and 40 Piece Challenge Charts is:
- A teacher wall chart: This editable PDF allows you to type all of your students’ names on the chart – and this year they were grouped by every 5 pieces for the first time! Once you enter your students names, you can print it on your home printer, or send it to a print shop and ask them to print it in a bigger format to hang on your wall.
- The student chart: Each student gets a copy of their own chart for their notebook where each of their piece titles are written. After every five pieces, a motivational phrase gives them a boost to keep them moving forward!
- The stamp card: This is a small card that the student can clip to their binder to see their progress at a glance. Many teachers don’t use this, so don’t feel like you have to.
- The student certificate: A beautiful certificate the student receives when they finish. The best part is that you can type their names in with Adobe Reader and print!
Do the pieces need to be memorized?
Learning to memorize is an important skill for every piano student; however, we don’t encourage memorizing every single piece they learn. So, for the 30 and 40 Piece Challenge, memorizing some pieces is a great thing to do, but it’s not required for every single piece. Having your students memorize several of the shorter pieces in their Challenge gives them music that they can play on the fly at a friend’s house or during the holidays!
How polished do the pieces need to be to count?
Wendy recommends that students polish the piece to where it’s “beautiful and accurate.” That means that a piece that was left behind because it’s too hard, or a piece with notable mistakes (like incorrect rhythms or passages) should not count. “Beautiful and accurate” has some leeway to it, which can account for different teachers’ preferences.
How can my intermediate and advanced students complete the challenge since they practice longer pieces?
It can definitely be more challenging for advancing students to do the 30 and 40 Piece Challenge, but it’s not impossible! Remember that the challenge should include music at their level, above their level (like a recital piece) and especially below their level. All 3 of these levels provide benefits for students. This music shouldn’t be perfectly playable on the first reading, but it should be music that they can easily work up in a week or two.
The early intermediate Short Sheets®, mid-intermediate Short Sheets®, and late intermediate Shorts Sheets® are especially effective because they are substantial piano literature with musical depth, but they’re short (1-2 pages).
What kind of music should I use?
Music below their level, music of various styles, 1 page pieces, and even method book pieces, even though we recommend pieces be longer than 16 measures! Tune Up Tunes® and Short Sheets® are a great place to start, as well as the useful and free Student Solutions Catalog, which groups pieces by level, concept, category, and series.
Can I use method book pieces?
This depends entirely on what you want to do for your studio, but criteria is important. For example, for beginners, you may want to specify that each piece is a minimum of 16 measures long. For elementary or later elementary students, you might want it to be 20 measures or more. But that will help even the playing field for students since short, 8 measure method pieces won’t work. Some teachers choose not to use method book pieces, and some do.
But again, Short Sheets® makes this easy – they provide you with special, solid pedagogical pieces that are short and easy to learn quickly! Even music for your intermediate and advanced students!
Do I give my students rewards for this?
Each teacher may have their own flavor when it comes to rewards. Your free downloads of the files come with a lovely student certificate that looks very polished. This by itself and perhaps a small trinket or even a sticker will be enough for some teachers’ studios! Some teachers have partnered with local businesses (or Wendy has even seen ice cream trucks!) to reward students for a completed stamp card. This year, I’m choosing to give small prizes after every 5 pieces (I have a small studio)!
Every teacher is different, so tell us in the comments – do you use rewards for the 30 and 40 Piece Challenge?
Do I add the completed piece after they pass it, or before?
For the student chart (the one in their notebook), adding the piece the piece to the list when it is first introduced, rewards them for starting a new piece. But the piece should be taken off the chart if the student stops learning it, or if it’s not learned “beautifully and accurately”. Many students choose to learn pieces independently (especially busy teens concerned with staying on track for the challenge), so this is a great way for them to keep track of what they are learning.
For the teacher wall chart though, students and teachers should wait to add a sticker/star/mark until after the student has polished the piece.
Do the pieces need to be memorized?
No, but here’s what Wendy says about that:
While I say, “most of them don’t,” I would qualify it with a quick reminder that we should be having our students memorize some of their pieces so that they can perform them “on the fly” or at performances and festivals. Most teachers have their students memorize several pieces during the year for recitals and festivals, and it’s important to remember that the discipline of memorizing skill that we should teach! Having your students memorize several of the shorter pieces in their Challenge is a great way to give them music that can play on the fly at a friend’s house or when someone asks them to play during the holidays!
Remember that “beautiful and accurate” should be the criteria! If you want to add memory to a few pieces, go ahead!
What are some pieces I can easily use to get started?
Short Sheets® and Tune Up Tunes® are really excellent for the 30 and 40 Piece Challenge because they are short (about 1 page each until the mid intermediate level which are 1-1.5 pages) and come in sets of three pieces under one title. Download this year’s new and free Short Sheets® and Tune Up Tunes® Teaching Guides to see which pieces are perfect for your studio.
Other highly recommended pieces are the Beautiful Places series (perfect for teens) and the Rote and Reading® series. While these pieces typically longer than Short Sheets® or Tune Up Tunes®, they’re fun, engaging, and pattern-driven, so they’re definitely “learnable” in 1-2 weeks when you teach it below the student’s level!
Do you have any more questions about the 30 and 40 Piece Challenge?
Let us know in the comments! Also, we would love to know your criteria for using method book pieces for the Challenge, if you give out rewards, and how the 30 and 40 Piece Challenge has gone in your studio!
Celebrating all the years of 30 and 40 Piece Challenge Charts:
- 2025: Aquamarine and Blues
- 2024: Classic “Craftsman” – Warm Brown, Olive, and Cream
- 2023: Neapolitan Ice Cream
- 2022: Cool Blues and Greens
- 2021: Pink & Tangerine
- 2020: Blue and Gold
- 2019: Coral with Aquamarine Accents
- 2018: Eggplant and Ocean Blue
- 2016: Raspberry Pink and Green
- 2015: Purple and Chartreuse
I love the 30 piece challenge but with an average of 35 lessons per year and a few inevitable absences I do struggle to make it! I feel the kids need to make it to the end and sometimes start giving out stickers when their pieces are not really good enough. Are other teachers using it really strict and just say “too bad” if the kids don’t reach the 30? I worry about putting them off, especially when they are beginners and aged under 10.
I’ve added the option for a 20 piece challenge and just use a different certificate template. There was quite a range, from some students who completed the 40 piece challenge, while others barely finished the 20 piece challenge but in the end, the flexibility of this was a win-win as everyone pushed themselves.
I’m so glad to hear that, Elly! And it’s great that you adapted it to have a bigger variation for the needs of your studio. Thank you for sharing that idea for others to use if they want!
I have been doing this challenge for quite a few years and my students thrive on it. When it is over many ask “what is the next challenge”? Students that are new to my studio or students that do not complete the 40 piece challenge the year before are put on the 30 piece chart. Everyone that completes the challenge receives a beautiful medal from Crown Awards. My students love keeping track of their accomplishments. BTW, many younger students exceed 40 pieces in 8 months. One year everyone completed the challenge! Probably during COVID.
For younger students this is truly a 30 or 40 Piece challenge. For older students starting at level 3, I give them a tick mark for every 16 measures that they complete. My most accomplished students just made the deadline for the 40 piece challenge last year using this process. (They are no longer in method books) Most students complete the challenge and if they don’t, it won’t happen again the next year! They don’t want to be left out of the bling ceremony. I do feel bad when they don’t complete it, but it’s simply because they don’t practice.
Since I am not someone that creates charts or documents I also use the old studio chart for my scale challenge.
I’m hoping to use the 30 Piece Challenge in my studio this coming year. Looking forward to seeing–and hearing–my students’ progress with it! I like the idea of a small prize or token after every five pieces; my studio is small with only 22 or so students and many of them are reward-motivated, so this will be a great fit. Thanks for putting this together!
I did the 40 piece challenge in my studio last year for the first time. Of my 25 students, about half of them made it to 40 pieces in 32 lessons. There was a range in level – some were in method books but many were RCM students, one of whom was working on level 6-7! Of those who didn’t make it all the way to 40, only 2-3 didn’t get to 20. Most of the rest were in the 30-39 range.
I did rewards every 5 pieces- stickers, Halloween sized chocolate bars, pencils, key chains, etc- stuff that was easy to get in bulk for cheap either at the dollar store or on Amazon. For those that got all the way to 40, I bought them a $10 gift card (to a place their parent suggested they would like!) and presented these at my year end recital.
Benefits- it definitely motivated some kids to practice much harder! I found that students gained confidence in their sight reading and ability to tackle new repertoire with minimal instruction from me. I also found that we explored ALL kinds of music that had just been collecting dust in my shelves. And I was able to introduce them to new styles they might not otherwise choose as it was only for a week or two.
Drawbacks- I definitely had to do more planning! I also found that some students were bogged down by the challenge pieces and then didn’t really progress on their “at level” repertoire because they worked too much on the other stuff. Students who were preparing for piano exams also did not really get to complete the challenge because they had to be more focused on polishing specific pieces. I still gave them prizes for what they accomplished but it was no where near the 40 mark.
Would I do it again? Yes!
What would I change?
– I would count method pieces differently- maybe by measures not pieces.
– I would perhaps try some transposition of pieces and count it as a new selection if they can successfully achieve it – to encourage new skills!
– I might throw in some lead sheets or chord charts for more advanced students who are ready to handle this as it would boost their skills and their challenge count quickly.
Thank you for sharing all of that information, Amy! It’s really helpful to teachers to know what you did, and what you will do differently next time! I appreciate you taking the time to note all of these things!
So glad to hear that, Nicki! Let us know how it goes!
Thank you for sharing about your experience, Sally! That’s really informative for everyone wanting to do it. I love the idea of a medal at the end for those who complete it. And that’s an interesting idea about the tick mark for older students. I’m glad you are making it work for your studio!
Is there a cost to participate in these Challenges?
Thanks…Ann
So sorry for the delay in responding, Ann. No, there definitely not a cost. This is something that you challenge your students to do and you can use the free charts to help them keep track. But we don’t do anything in your challenge, we just provide you with the charts!