Better Practice Blog- 50 Ways To Motivate Music Students
50 Ways To Motivate Music Students
Better Practice isn’t just a practice tracker! We put our main focus in motivating students to want to practice - hence, all of our motivational tools built right into the app! We’ve separated the list below by motivation types - read this article first to see which motivation types your students are. Then, use our handy guide below to see what small things you can do within the app to get your students logging in and having fun practice every day!
SOCIAL
1. 30-Day Practice Challenge See who can log the most practice in 30 days!
2. Atta-boys Using chat, send motivating messages to the student midweek. Students love receiving messages.
3. Put Name in Lights Highlight students by putting their names in the announcements that appear on the top of the app. It could be something great they did in lessons or a recent achievement.
4. Who Practiced Today? Located on the home screen, socially-motivated students enjoy seeing their friends practice that day and a reminder that they’re not alone in their practice.
5. Become a Practice Champ Seeing their friends practicing songs (each song has its own champ) many times, especially hard ones, can be motivating. Not only does it show that it is possible, but there’s nothing like wanting to beat a friend’s high score.
6. Beat the Teacher Contest Give a prize for who can practice more than the teacher. Use Scorecard to see if they qualify!
7. Compilation assignment Record each student playing a piece. Add it to the assignment in a custom book so that the next students get to hear all the previous students play it. Students can learn a lot from each other, too!
8. Changing avatars As a kid, changing your ‘profile picture’ for a social site is super exciting. Socially-motivated kids use this to communicate their mood or to change their picture to coordinate with one another. This gets them logging in to their practice list - which is half the battle!
9. Record and share Let your students show off their ability.
INTRINSIC (growth)
10. Improving chord practice times Use the chord module to get faster and faster at playing and identifying chords.
11. Recordings show progress Store recordings in assignments to see your progress.
12. Track goal achievement Visually being able to see the goals you’ve reached is a great boost.
13. See practice time improve Seeing your practice time chart move up is a great motivator to keep it trending in that direction!
14. See repertoire grow Visibly see the list of songs you've learned grow!
15. See performance history Seeing your achievements (performances) visually build up is a great motivator!
16. Playing through repertoire It’s great knowing you have a lot of songs in your arsenal to show off whenever!
EXTRINSIC (incentives)
17. Celebration animations The animation when you finish practice changes every time, so there’s something to look forward to!
18. Set short term goals …and give prizes for reaching them.
19. Set intermediate goals …and give prizes and announcements for reaching them.
20. Set longer-term goals …and give prizes and recognition during recitals.
21. Positive feedback midweek Students can share recordings and get positive, encouraging feedback mid-week!
22. Positive feedback from parents Parents can check up on good practicing and give encouragement/positive feedback.
23. Quiz midweek Send out a quiz using announcements. Have students reply over chat with their answer. Reward right answers.
24. Thinking critically Have the students record an assignment and listen to it. Then have them write their own critique in the notes. Give stickers for each critique.
ACHIEVEMENT
25. Streak See how many days of practice in a row you can keep up!
26. Longest daily Badge Have the longest practice of the day in your studio and get this badge!
27. Most daily Badge Have the most items practiced of the day in your studio and get this badge!
28 . First daily Badge Be the first to practice in your studio and get this badge!
29. All badge Complete all current assignments and get this badge!
30. Meet daily time target Set goals for how many minutes a day you should be practicing at a minimum, and make sure they’re reached!
31. Meet daily items target Set goals for how many items a day you should be practicing at a minimum, and make sure they’re reached!
32. Practice Champs Get on the list of practice champs for each song! Try to get to the top by practicing a song the most number of times.
33. Awesome rating You gotta feel great about your practice to rate it as “Awesome”. And being able to rate a practice that high feels awesome in return!
34. Setting a personal best for a chord type Set a PR for identifying and playing chords fast in our chord module!
35. Setting a studio record for a chord type Set a studio record for identifying and playing chords fast in our chord module!
36. Complete the chord marathon Learn all the chords and play through them in our chord module.
37. Learning terms Learning all the terms for a level in the music dictionary
38. Complete your assignments Playing all the current assignments on the weekly view
39. Get good progress reports Let your parents see how hard you’ve been practicing!
EMPOWER
40. Play along with favorite artists Learn some of your favorite songs and play along with the track (which you can upload right into your assignment)!
41. Create custom assignments Want to learn something outside of your assignments? Create your own assignments and add lead sheets/videos to play along with!
42. Set lists Now students can create their own custom practice lists, so they can focus in on specific things they want to work on.
43. Composing Come up with and record a new riff each day. Write a song incorporating the best one each week and record it.
44. Practice less, play more See this article. Avoid burnout and keep the joy in music by allowing them some freedom in their practice schedule.
45. Arrangement Put out a standard song and have students come up and record with their own variation in a different style
46. Choosing your own assignment Ask the student to add their own assignment before each lesson. Go over it turn it into a lesson and assignment that’s appropriate for where the student is at.
47. Be The Teacher Make an assignment of where video themselves teaching a lesson. Share that lesson with the next student that gets the assignment. Have the next student create a teaching video. Continue the cycle.
FEAR
48. Recording and sending assignments Make students record and send a part of every assignment. Fear-motivated students don’t want to send bad recordings and will most likely play through a few more times to get it right.
49. Set countdowns Don’t let procrastinators procrastinate! Make sure they see the countdown to important events (e.g. recitals) every time they log in.
50. Clean up the Did Not Practice list When the teacher reviews the practice for the week at the start of lessons, don’t get caught not having practiced a specific Current Assignment for the week.