Our Piano Teaching Idea Shares have become something I look forward to with each webinar! If you haven’t heard of our Idea Shares, here’s a quick explanation: At each webinar, we ask teachers for their best ideas on different subjects. Our first Piano Teaching Idea Share gave tips about recitals, injecting energy into teaching, and games for online lessons. During our “Music to Lighten Your Load” webinar, we got hundreds of tips for Idea Share #2 on self-care, student motivation, and lightening your load.
We’d like to now offer you our Rhythm Idea Share! It’s our Idea Share #3, and it’s all about Rhythm Menagerie™ and Rhythm Cup Explorations®. I am looking forward to implementing some of these tips in my own studio this summer! One teacher who has experience in teaching rhythm to students with Autism even shared her email address and said to email her with questions! Just click the button above to get all of the ideas delivered straight to your inbox.
Here are the two questions Wendy asked during the webinar and some of her favorite answers:
What is your biggest or best tip for using Rhythm Menagerie™?
Here are just a few of Wendy’s favorite responses:
- Valerie: I use stickies to isolate 2 measure segments in Rhythm Menagerie. This is especially helpful for squirrelly students. 😊 (Then I teach them to move the stickies to isolate the final 2 measures.
- Peggy: We use drum sticks for single one and lh/rh rhythms. They love using the sticks rather than clapping. A drum is also a nice change.
What is your biggest or best tip for using Rhythm Cup Explorations®?
- Edna: When starting out [to help students keep track of which hand holds the cup], place a red bracelet or stretchy hair fastener on the student’s right hand. It’s very quick to refer to the red hand.
- Christina: I purchased hard plastic kid cups from Ikea! The kids can bang them as hard as they want and they don’t break!
- Anne: I use the rhythms to inspire composition as well. Start off on one note
Teachers also shared ideas for teaching rhythm online:
Many studios are a mix of both online and in-person lessons right now. In addition to the many ideas that Wendy shared, there were some helpful ideas from teachers as well. Here was Wendy’s favorite!
- Lisa: When using screen share on Zoom (at least on the paid version), after clicking screen share, and choosing what you want shared, go to the “Advanced” tab and choose partial (or something like that!) when you click to share, there is a box that is adjustable to show only what you want of a document. This might be really helpful if it’s too much for all the lines or measures is up on the screen. In real life, I’m always using post-it notes to cover up things that are distracting. This adjustable box is the next best thing on Zoom!
Thank you to everyone who participated in this Rhythm Idea Share! We love being able to connect teachers with one another in such a helpful way. It’s so fun seeing these sparks of creativity around the world in so many studios! If you have any ideas on using Rhythm Cup Explorations® or Rhythm Menagerie™, please write them in the comments below.
Want To Get These Articles In Your Email?
If you are a piano teacher and want to know when articles like these get published, please join our email newsletter! We send out weekly newsletters with articles, new music notifications, free webinar opportunities and free teaching resources! We’d love to have you a part of the ComposeCreate community.
