Let’s face it, teaching private lessons can be tough. You only see your students from 30 to 60 minutes per week, and not only need to fit in as much instruction as possible, but make sure that students remember what you taught and motivate them enough to put it to use in their practice sessions. Writing useful lesson notes can greatly extend the contact that you have with students through the week. Over the last few years, quite a number of articles here on the Music Teacher’s Helper blog have dealt with the issue of creating the most interesting lesson notes possible and in what format to deliver them.
1. Not Just For Payments: 6 Ways To Help All Students (Ed Pearlman) – how to use the features of MTH to help you create a body of information not just for your students, but for your own lesson preparation.
2. Daily Summaries and Lesson Notes (Ed Pearlman) – tips on using both regular and private lesson notes when reconciling lessons.
3. Creative Use of the MTH Search Engine (Ronnie Currey) – if you have a large lesson history, try creating tags that can be later retrieved using the Lesson History search engine.
4. Practice Checklist for Students (Michelle Payne) – Michelle’s list is only one of many that can be incorporated into either typed or written lesson notes.
5. A Teacher’s Job Is More Than Teaching (Kristin Phillips) – lots of great home practice ideas here that can be incorporated into a student’s routine via lesson notes.
6. Help Your Students Prepare In Between Lessons (Amy Gould) – Amy’s article is all about little ways that you can get your students more prepared for that next lesson.
7. Stay Organized With a Lesson Notes Template (Chris Foley) – in the spirit of the DIY Planner, I’ve included a link to a customized template that you can use or tweak.
8. Organization Help for the Unorganized Music Teacher (Jennifer Thomas) – yet more reasons why you might want to consider Music Teacher’s Helper as a way to organizing your teaching process.
9. Music Teachers: How do you write lesson notes for your students? (Chris Foley) – in which I ask the MTH community how they deliver the lesson’s core information to their students in writing.
10. Poll Results: How do you write lesson notes for your students? (Chris Foley) – the results of the poll above, along with some fascinating ideas and opinions from teachers.
11. Ideas For Writing Lesson Notes (Ed Pearlman) – how to do it consistently, and how to do it well.
12. Music Teacher’s Helper Tip: Using Lesson Notes (Wendy Morgan Hunter) – how to keep them short and succinct.
13. Something To Write Home About: Using Lesson Notes in Music Teacher’s Helper (Nicole Murphy) – I particularly like Nicole’s idea about asking students what should be included in the notes.
And in case you’re still not familiar with the online lesson notes concept and how it can benefit your students:
14. MTH Feature Listing on Lesson Notes – the full description of how lesson notes can be added to individual lesson listings, and how the lesson reconciliation process can automatically trigger an email to the student (and/or parent) with an instant progress update.
Best of luck to all teachers and students as we head into the busy season of recitals, auditions, competitions, juries, and exams!
