[Teaching] Share experiences

Piano beginner student (level 1) :

1. Encourage students to sing and play at the same time. This is to practice their hearing and singing in pitch. 

2. To train them to know their mistakes by themselves. 

3. Let students try any kind of songs. This includes songs that they are familiar and unfamiliar. Let them find out how is the sound before teachers demo.

Piano beginner student (level 2) : 

1. We have to pay attention to train both hands. Left hand can play the melody line while right hand can in charge of accompaniment part during repeat. 

2. In that case, notes range that students have to master are low C to treble G. 

3. Repertoires of American songs can be replaced by Chinese New Year songs and popular songs during the time. Eg, Let it Go. 

4. Teachers are not advised to deny students through easily judgement. Students will feel that their hard work has been destroyed easily. We always try to find out their problems through discussions and let them discover it. 

Female students from primary 3:

1. In our cases, there are few girls that will nitpick. They do not mean to challenge their teacher but they cannot persuade themselves to agree with teacher that something they do not know. Please advise them to make things simple and never stuck in their own puzzles. 

2. Students are advised to take the responsibility of their own music. We have some cases that students play piano not for themselves. They never show their respect to music. 

Theory grade 1 above: 

1. We like to teach theory through our own notes and adjustment. This can help students to focus more in their weaknesses. We have tried chapter in Intervals. Student can be able to learn from degrees counting up to melodic intervals. 

Scales:

1. In many cases, students can not play scales with smooth, accurate and fast performance. One of the reasons that we found out is students refused to follow the fingering as they think they can play correctly yet slow. All their focus are on the black keys. 

Sight-reading:

1. In our case, student reacts slow and hesitation on key signature. So practice in specific key with different exercises.