Tips to engage music students in between lessons (featuring Tonara Studio)

Being a music teacher is a demanding profession. Not only do you need to teach, but you also need to personalize each lesson for your music students. Learn their individual needs and wants, and monitor their progress in between lessons. If you’re an experienced music teacher, then you know this takes up a lot of time and energy, but it’s always worth it in the end. To help you with your chaotic schedule, we’ve teamed up with Tonara to share five tips to engage music students in between lessons and help them progress in their musical journey more effectively!

Use fun rewards

Having a reward system is a great way to engage music students in between lessons. It keeps younger students entertained, enthusiastic about practice, and motivated to continue because they know there is something waiting for them at their next lesson.

One reward system you can implement is giving students stickers, pencils, or small candies. You can make it fun by theming the rewards, allowing students to build a collection of prizes. For example, you could use stickers representing different music genres or see how many pencils each student can collect by the end of the year. At the end of the year, it’s enjoyable to look back at all the pencils each student has collected and see the progress they’ve made!

Another reward system is to create friendly competition among students in your studio with a leaderboard. With Tonara Studio, your students can log their practice and earn points. The more they practice, the higher they climb on the leaderboard. This is an effective way to engage music students in between lessons. You can run a competition for a week or a month and reward the top student with something fun like stickers or even an ice cream party for the next lesson.

Teach them to take it in a lighter vein

Although competition in your studio might sound intimidating, it shouldn’t be. Remind your students that while it’s fun to see who is at the top of the leaderboard, consistent practice is more important for improving their playing than just earning points. Students can also compete with themselves, using the leaderboard to inspire them to practice more than they did the previous week.

Include fun pieces

Since you don’t see your students daily, you hope they’ll practice consistently for about 30 minutes a day. Unfortunately, not all music students are eager to do this every day.

One of the best tips to engage your music students in between lessons is to assign a fun piece or exercise for them to practice alongside their regular materials. Perhaps you want them to start practicing a piece they’ve been wanting to learn or a popular song they enjoy.

Inform your students that they can practice a fun piece at the end of their session after completing their assignments. While making practice enjoyable is important, they must still focus on the lesson material to be prepared for the next lesson.

Keep track of their practice progress

You’ve had your lesson, and you’ve given your students assignments to practice. But how will you know if they practiced? Many teachers have to wait until the next lesson to find out, which often results in spending the first part of the class reviewing what was learned last week and the second half teaching new material. This is where Tonara Studio comes in handy.

With Tonara Studio, you can easily manage your studio and motivate your music students to practice more in between lessons while making practice more fun and engaging. It rewards students with points, a spot on the leaderboard, stickers, and more based on practice duration and frequency. These fun incentives encourage students to practice more! Additionally, the app listens to their playing and tracks details like practice days, duration, and assignment completion. This information is stored and shared with you, so you can see each student’s progress when you log on. You can also message students within the app to provide extra encouragement or help them with challenging sections!

By the time the lesson comes, you can focus on the sections the student is struggling with and advance their training!

Get their parents involved

We’ve discussed how to make practice more enjoyable for students and how to track their practice progress. Now it’s time to involve their parents! Instead of having parents check in on practice sessions, you can use Tonara Studio for this. Engage parents in a fun way that enhances the experience for both the child and the parents!

A fun way to involve parents is to have your students teach them a section of one of their songs. This not only keeps students engaged but also allows parents to spend quality time with their children and participate in their musical journey. Who knows, maybe even the parents will want to start taking lessons!

Another engaging way to involve parents is by creating a small competition between them to see who can complete a section of a piece faster and more accurately. This helps get all of your students and parents involved and allows parents to stay updated on their children’s training without constantly asking for updates or checking the Tonara Studio app.

It’s a win-win-win solution!

Use metronomes to your advantage

During lessons, you likely have a metronome available, making it easy to use. But what happens when your student goes home? They certainly can’t take your metronome with them.

This is where Soundbrenner comes in to save the day! We offer a variety of wearable products, making it easy to find the right one that fits you and your students’ needs.

Core 2

The Core 2 offers a vibrating metronome, which minimizes distractions; a contact tuner, dB meter, smartphone notifications, multi-day battery life, and splash resistance. Plus, it has a sleek design and can connect to our free metronome app for additional customization.

Pulse

The Pulse features a vibrating metronome for haptic learning and multiplayer sync, allowing you and your student to sync up. You can also connect the watch with Soundbrenner’s app. Both devices are cross-play enabled, meaning you can sync up to five Pulses or Cores (or a mix of both) so everyone can play at the same tempo.

Both devices are excellent options to engage music students in between lessons, helping them stay in time during practice and enabling them to work on their assignments before their next lesson. Not having a metronome is no longer an excuse!

For music teachers and educators, Soundbrenner offers an exclusive affiliate program with significant discounts on their wearables. You can also earn money by referring Soundbrenner products to your students. For more information on our teacher affiliate program, click here.

This blog post is in collaboration with Tonara.

About Tonara:

Tonara is a music education company harnessing the power of technology to advance music education. Their flagship app and platform motivate and engage music students to practice, enabling teachers to track practice sessions and keep students engaged between lessons. Tonara Connect, their music education marketplace, simplifies the process for students to find the right teacher for their learning needs and for teachers to promote their online and local music lesson studios.