Sensible Guitar: For Teachers: Assignments

This website is a companion to the book Sensible Guitar, an instructional method book for all guitar students...written primarily with teachers in mind. Most of the site is dedicated to providing supplemental material for students and teachers using the book. All of the material is provided by the book's author, Chris Cass, a long-time music educator who teaches guitar in Southern Connecticut. Any subjective viewpoints or recommendations are the author's own. Your questions, responses, or differences of opinion are welcome via email. (Click on the "contact" button at left.)

Teachers: If you find the following information useful, helpful, informative or well presented, please consider using Sensible Guitar with your students.

I'm using the pages designated "for teachers" to offer some tips and ideas about guitar teaching. There are also links to a few recommended resources, and an opportunity to submit your own comments. I hope you'll find this material useful, and that you'll use my method book, Sensible Guitar . It's written with teachers in mind, and I'm sure it will help you run your lessons more efficiently. ~C.C.

Assignments
...the importance of ensuring that your students know what (and how, and how much) to practice.

If I could impart just one recommendation to guitar instructors, it would be to write down a clear, concise, legible, dated assignment for (practically) every student, (practically) every lesson. I feel this is the cornerstone of private guitar lessons, and I'm often dismayed at how many teachers fail to consistently write out a clear practice assignment for their students.

(Forgive me for repeating some of this on the "10 tips" page, but I really feel this is critical. It's my #1 "tip", and gets it's own expanded page here.)

Also please note: The following assumes that you're teaching beginner to fairly advanced (not professional level) students in a weekly private lesson format. If not, the concepts still apply; simply adjust any references to "weekly lessons", etc, as appropriate.

Why this is so important:
Because it addresses so much about teaching the guitar. In order to write a clear, appropriate assignment, you must know what to assign. In order to assign homework, you must do your homework. Your homework as a teacher is to learn how and what to teach. As a teacher, you must devote time and energy to learning the profession-the practice - of teaching. It's not sufficient just to practice your guitar. The ability to write a proper assignment is (in large part) what separates a great guitarist who teaches guitar from a great guitar teacher.

Also, your assignments will provide a written record of your work; an illustration of your curriculum, and the degree to which it has been achieved by the student. If a parent (or anyone) ever questions the content of your lessons, you should simply be able to say "each week's practice assignment is clearly written down in the book."

Basically, I'm encouraging guitar teachers to behave more like teachers and less like guitarists. Throughout a student's formative years, learning songs and jamming during lessons has a limited value. (Not no value...you clearly need to teach songs, build repertoire, and accompany your students to approximate jamming/ensemble situations...but these elements are easily overemphasized simply because they're more fun for the instructor.) Look at public school teachers: They get enormous pressure to have lesson plans in place, ensure that fundamental skills are taught, utilize effective books, and manage daily tasks like keeping attendance records. They are also required to familiarize themselves with the learning styles of various "types" of students, and to implement proven educational techniques. They spend hours every week working outside of the classroom, preparing lessons and evaluating students, so that things run smoothly in class. Private guitar teachers have practically no accountability. On the whole, we would do well to impose some of these requirements on ourselves. And an easy way to ensure this (at least to some degree) is simply to learn to write appropriate, legible, dated practice assignments.

Oh, and one final reason it's important to write an assignment for each student every week: so they know what to practice. I've had opportunities to do lots of substitute teaching of private lessons. It's unbelievable how many students can't provide an answer to the question "what were you supposed to work on this week?".

What you'll need:

A book you can write the assignments in. I simply use a book of manuscript paper. (I like the Passantino "No. 85", 12 stave, 9 x 12 spiral bound, 96 pages.) This way, I put all songs, supplemental material and the practice assignments all in one book. If I need to write tab, I simply draw a sixth line below the existing staves. I don't mind writing my assignments between the staves. If you prefer, simply have your students get a regular old notebook, or use one of the many commercially available books dedicated to the filling in of weekly practice assignments. (Note...all students should still have a book of blank manuscript paper for you to write musical examples, etc.)

Writing implements: I like mechanical pencils. If you use "regular" pencils, have an electric pencil sharpener at arm's reach. You'll also need pens in at least two different colors (black and blue). Red is handy also, but teachers are often advised to avoid the use of red ink because, to some students, it implies that something has been marked as "wrong". (For many years, teachers typically corrected tests with red ink...a paper bearing too much red ink was a sign of a bad job!). Having a few different colors available can come in handy (more on this below).

Wite Out, or some similar liquid "erasing" product, so you can write in ink without concern for an "unfixable" mistake.

Tape (or a stapler), because sometimes something important might wind up on a loose sheet of paper. You'll need to affix that into the book! (You should also have scissors handy: if the sheet you wish to affix is too large you can trim it or split it up.)

Paperclips: In case I want to refer to a "random" earlier page in the manuscript book. I'll stick a paperclip on that page so it can be easily refered to.

When don't I write out a new assignment?
Even I acknowledge that writing out a clear, specific, detailed assignment is time consuming and tedious. Clearly it is sometimes OK to take a few well-advised shortcuts:

If the previous week's assignment is still applicable, I think it's sufficient to simply write the new date next to last week's date on the top of the page. Of course, this should only happen if:

A. you intentionally wrote a multi-week assignment, or

B. you unintentionally assigned too much material, or

C. the student didn't get much practice in that particular week, or

D. The student is consistently failing to meeting appropriate, reasonable practice requirements. If I have already adjusted (minimized) the quantity of assigned material, and I'm confident that I'm assigning the correct material, with the needs, expectations, schedule and abilities of the student in mind, and there is still very little practice...I just write a new date on the top of the page. Then explain that compiling a list of dates, week after week, above a single week's assignment indicates an unacceptable lack of effort. Notify a parent when appropriate.

Sometimes, only minimal changes need be made to an assignment. You don't need to rewrite a long list of material. Just revise the previous week's list using a different color pen, or switch to pencil...or whatever. You want to be able to see one week's material from another, even if it's just a small adjustment to a larger assignment. By keeping a pencil plus blue and black pens handy, I can edit for up to three weeks, and tell at a glance when each item was assigned and how we've progressed with it. I often write an assignment with this in mind, knowing it's perhaps two or three week's work (with a few weekly adjustments). Always make a point of explaining this to your student, so this is not confused with a student's failure to meet your weekly expectations.

Sometimes, for more advanced students, I'll write long-term assignments. For example, in February, I might assign material to be practiced until the end of the school year. I may tweak it from week to week, but the "core" material (repertoire & technique) will remain the same. Such an assignment might include:
- a selection of note-reading material involving various positions and notated chord voicings, if appropriate;
- a detailed scale and/or arpeggio routine (possibly as a warm up) with metronome settings and specific picking indicated where appropriate;
- a few (or several) pages from Sensible Guitar;
- one or more concepts/approaches to apply to improvisation;
- a chord melody; a Real Book tune; possibly a fingerstyle song/exercise, and/or a classical piece;
- review of previously assigned material;
- whatever else seems appropriate, with the student's goals and abilities in mind.

This saves having to write an assignment each week, particularly for advanced students with whom you're trying to cover a relatively large amount of material.

The digital domain and our conservation efforts:
I've been assuming you're writing by hand. Many of you may have moved beyond the use of pens and pencils. Increasingly, teachers have computers and printers integrated into their lessons. If you have a computer (w/printer) at arm's reach, and can type faster than you can write by hand, all the better. Keep a folder for each student and use "save as" to update assignments (documents saved by date) from one week from the next. Be sure to include the date, print it out, and tape the sheet into the student's manuscript book. (You do know not to simply give out loose sheets of paper, right? Tape or staple everything into a sturdy manuscript book. Loose sheets get folded, spindled, mutilated and otherwise abused. The lucky ones just get lost. Tape 'em down. Is this the "greenest" approach to paper use? No. Redouble your conservation efforts elsewhere. You could also consider using email...if you're convinced a student is responsible enough to open and consult the email when practicing at home. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Also, many of your students who require a detailed written assignment will be minors. Prudent parents may not favor use of the internet as a requirement for young students. And opening the door to email exchange can be a slippery slope. It can also be a fantastic convenience. Remember that emails are easily saved for future reference, which is great...but stuff in the digital domain is permanently on record. Be sure you're assigning the proper material, and proceed with the utmost professionalism. That said, if conservation is a priority for you, transitioning all the recommendations here to an email or web-based format is a reasonable solution.

What about students who forget their books?
For students who periodically forget their books, I photocopy their assignments every week. That way, when they periodically arrive without the proper materials, I can pull out the sheet and proceed with the curriculum. If you don't have a copier, just quickly write down a record of the assignment for yourself. This can be done in quick, sloppy shorthand, as it's only for your own reference if necessary, not the student's. Keep these copies of the assignments organized and accessible so you can refer to them quickly within the lesson. And again, this is also easily managed on your computer without using the extra paper.

What do I typically assign?
The beauty of private lessons is that you can tailor each week's assignment to the specific student. Consideration may be given to the student's interests, abilities, expectations, amount of practice that realistically gets done, etc.
As a general rule, I think if you assign some appropriate pages from a good note-reading method, and some appropriate pages from Sensible Guitar, you're presenting a pretty nice curriculum. Supplement this with student-specific stuff to enhance technique, improvisational skills, theory, etc. Of course, it's also important to teach songs. But often, I don't include a song on the list of things to practice, because I separate the playing of songs from "practicing". Practice is what you do in order to be able to play the songs. In many cases, the quickest route to being able to play a song is not to practice the song over and over. It is to focus on the specific technical skills that the song requires, and exercises specifically designed to develop those skills are often more effective. Admittedly though, sometimes you've just got to hammer out a song over & over. Also, sometimes working on a particular song may in fact be the best exercise for mastering a certain technique. So...sometimes I do include "playing a song" as part of the assignment...but not always.

Assigning pages from Sensible Guitar:
Using Sensible Guitar is largely self-explanatory. However, I still write down (in the manuscript book) exactly what pages (or portions of pages) to practice from Sensible Guitar. (I do the same for any & all other books a student is using as well.)

Note that Sensible Guitar is arranged more or less in order of difficulty, so you could theoretically take a beginner through the book in the order the pages are presented. However, one of the book's strengths is that it is designed to be easily navigated should you wish to "jump around". On the bottom of each page, you'll find the page numbers of the next (and previous) pages that address similar material. Say you just want to work on rhythms: Each page that presents strums tells you where to find the next page that addresses strumming, so you can quickly locate all of the appropriate spots within the book.
Also, I tend to assign bits of material from various parts of the book. A typical assignment might say:

Review top halves of pgs 4 & 6: work on quicker chord switching w/ mm at 112.
Pg 15: review all info; be able to locate/identify names of notes on 5th & 6th strings
Pgs 16, 18: Major scales: play daily in various keys
Pg. 19: Power chord exercises 1 & 2
Pg 32: Strumming exercises 1-4
Pg 38: Practice the minor pentatonic scale in various keys

Of course, that's just the Sensible Guitar stuff. Generally, there's something from a note reading method, and probably some other miscellaneous stuff as well.

As always, I hope you have found something helpful (or at least thought-provoking) on this page. I welcome your correspondence; please visit my "comments" or "contact" pages. ~C.C.

Here's what you'll find within the sections of this website designated "for teachers":

(CURRENT PAGE) My thoughts about assigning practice material;
A list of 10 bits of advice I feel are important but sometimes overlooked
A discussion of recommended books, and some tips on using them effectively
A few words on the teaching of technique; avoiding formation of bad habits
Some thoughts on teaching young beginners
Links to some other websites I feel are helpful
An invitation to submit your own comments, thoughts, ideas or opinions

Please remember: Playing and teaching the guitar are art forms which have many "right" approaches...even to the extent that what's best for one student or teacher may be contradictory to what's best for another. I'm offering my own opinions and observations here, which I feel may be beneficial to the broadest number of "typical" students and teachers. Alternative viewpoints may be equally correct. I welcome input from any guitar instructors, and will keep any correspondences confidential, or post them on this website at your discretion. Please feel free to submit your thoughts via email. (Again, it's chris@sensibleguitar.com).