Intermediate Piano Lesson Planning? Do we need to plan and set goals for each student? After years of working with students and various technical educational resources, I developed a simple planning system that helps me organize daily lessons effectively. Each lesson for the level 5-8 piano students is 45 min long and has to include three learning blocks: technique/warm-ups, repertoire, and musicianship.
Technique/Warm-ups – 10 minutes
This block includes fingers and hand stretches, fine motor skills exercises, scales, etudes and brain warm-ups. As a Technique block takes around 8 min of the lesson, only a few elements can be used. The choice depends on the student’s mood and the current lesson’s repertoire plan.
Repertoire – 27 minutes
Repertoire block takes the most significant chunk of the lesson time, 27 min and consists of learning a new piece (8 min), work in progress (14 min) – detailed work on parts of the piece, and mastery (5 min) – polishing already learned the piece.
Musicianship – 8 minutes
Musicianship block includes listening, clapping back, playback, theory and sight-reading elements. It is impossible to go through all those elements in each lesson, so I usually split them in half, go through one in one class, and work on another half the week after. The actual sight-reading and theory are assigned as homework, which allowed me to do a quick check of them each other week.
Structuring the intermediate piano lessons in blocks allows us to cover all essential learning elements and develop a customizable and efficient lesson road map. Depending on the student’s mood and physical state, home practice efficiency, and unexpected learning challenges, this arrangement awards the flexibility to implement changes to the lesson plan with ease and on the go, add, move, or reassign any part of the lesson to the next lesson and keep track of learning, planned and mastered concepts. Also, this type of lesson architecture allows me to choose how to start and proceed with the lesson since I can move all elements between the blocks to support effective learning.
Intermediate Piano Lesson Planning Aids
Additionally, if you need some help with organizing technique homework, try our Scale Practice Cards:
Scale Practice Cards, RCM Level 3
Scale Practice Cards, RCM Level 4
Scale Practice Cards, RCM Level 5
Beginner Piano Lessons
Looking for piano method books for young students? Piano Heroes Method is designed to raise well-rounded musicians!
