The Piano Laboratory Book is Here!
The Piano Laboratory: Level 1 is available for pre-order now! With the release of The Piano Laboratory textbook, we thought it would be a good idea to explore our teaching philosophy and detail the features of The Piano Laboratory. We hope you’ll consider pre-ording the book!
The Teaching Philosophy of The Piano Laboratory
The most fundamental aspect of the teaching philosophy in The Piano Laboratory is music education for every student. The high school piano lab classroom, especially a beginning piano lab classroom should be accessible to all learners no matter what level of music education they’ve had in the past. That’s why The Piano Laboratory is written to be flexible. It contains composition assignments which can be completed at beginner, intermediate, or advanced levels, bonus music you can linger over if your students need more time on a subject or skip over for accelerated learning, and listening assignments with critical thinking questions that will get both your novice and advanced students thinking. No matter who the students are in your class, there’s somthing in The Piano Laboratory for them!
Another core tennant of teaching philosophy in The Piano Laboratory is experimentation and discovery. We are in a laboratory after all! We believe that students learn best when teachers create opportunities for students to discover new ideas. That’s why we’ve carefully designed lesson pages that introduce new concepts through inquiry. By answering questions, students discover new ideas and concepts. Once students learn new ideas, they have a chance to experiment and play with those ideas in new contexts from practical application in repertoire, to creative composition assignments, to opportunities for written reflection.
Finally, we believe that student independance is critical for success in a piano lab classroom. You, the teacher, are only one person! You cannot stand next to every student to coach them through each new song and technique. That’s why we’ve strategically included reference charts, QR code technique videos, and carefully worded directions throughout the book. Everything the student needs to be successful, they can find on the page in front of them. This frees you up to move around the classroom helping students as needed.
A Book Written with High School Piano Lab Students in Mind!
How is our method book different from every other method book out there? In short: it’s not just a method book, it’s an entire curriculum designed specifically for high school students. One of the many ways we’ve ensured it meets the needs of high school students is by aligning The Piano Laboratory with the National Core Arts Standards for Harmonizing Instruments. While most method books over emphasize performance, we’ve incorporated all four creative modalities: creating, performing, responding, and connecting. This gives students multiple ways to be successful and provides variety, which keeps students engaged.
The Piano Laboratory also creates opportunities for students to learn collaboratively. We’ve done this in obvious ways, like including duets, trios, and quartets, and we’ve also done this in more subtle ways. For example, when introducing new topics, we’ve included critical thinking questions that can be used for class discussion. We’ve also included suggestions for collaboration in composition projects.
At The Piano Laboratory, we are very familiar with the restrictions you have in your classroom. That’s why we’ve kept the range of our music to a maximum of four octaves to insure that your students can play our music on smaller keyboards, or shared full length keyboards. We’ve also included plenty of shorter songs that can be learned in one-two class periods, because we know many of your students don’t have pianos at home they can use to practice.
A Book Written for High School Teachers by a High School Teacher
As much as we, at The Piano Laboratory, love teaching Piano Lab, we know that for many teachers that’s just one of many competing priorities. It’s not easy to plan fun and creative lessons when you’re in the middle of concert season! That’s why it was important to us to do the sequencing for you. Other method books ask you to buy four different level one books just to get the full curriculum. Then, once you buy the books you have to cross reference the theory book, and the repertoire book, and the sight reading book just to plan a lesson. We put everything in one easy to use volume. Only have 10 minutes to plan for Piano Lab this week? No problem! Just turn to the next page of The Piano Laboratory!
We also know that many high school music teachers are asked to teach every instrument under the sun! It’s just not possible to be an expert in every single one! That’s why The Piano Laboratory only assumes completion of college level class piano on the part of the teacher. We’ve written teacher accompaniments that are easy to play and included technique videos so you don’t have to worry about modeling the perfect piano technique.
Whats coming next from The Piano Laboratory?
At The Piano Laboratory our goal is to help you make every lesson geared for success! That’s why we’re working on a Teacher Edition of The Piano Laboratory. The Teacher Edition will contain teaching tips, teacher accomaniments, and tips for differentiation. Speaking of differentiation, we’re also working on an Advanced Student Companion Edition for that one student who took your beginning piano lab class but already has 7 years of private piano lessons under their belt. Sign up for our newsletter to get the most up to date information about information about release dates!