CASE STUDY

videos, lesson plans & reflections Genevieve (age 11)

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Sharon writes . . . Genevieve is 11 years old and has just started secondary school. She has been learning the piano with me for approx. 3 years, having initially started piano lessons with another teacher. I teach Genevieve and her 2 sisters at their home.

Genevieve took her Grade 2 piano exam in June 2015. Despite achieving a distinction, I felt that there were various musical concepts and pianistic skills that needed to be reinforced and developed before moving on. Subsequently we have spent the last academic year exploring a range of repertoire and developing technical and musical skills, instead of moving ‘up’ to grade 3 challenges.

As a result of this consolidation period, Genevieve has become a more intrinsically-motivated pupil, developing confidence in her pianistic and musical skills. Last term her parents reported that she would play the piano, unprompted, before going to school most mornings.

During this case study period, my aim is to enable Genevieve to play (and write) from memory June Armstrong’s piece Waterfall from The Nine Glens of Antrim. I want her to gain a deep understanding of the structural features of this piece that will allow her to not only memorise the music – but to enable her to compose her own short piece of music in Eb major (a key that she hasn’t yet much experience of). We will also work on technical issues associated with this piece (e.g. alignment and pedalling).

Module 3 | The Curious Piano Teachers ©