The point of being in private music lessons is to focus on our individual playing skills. As the musician, we want to know that we’re improving on our tone, taking strides in our technique and adding to our repertoire library well. When we change roles and go from being the student to being the teacher, it is our job to communicate how our students are doing with our budding musicians and their families.

One way to do this is through a regular progress report! Read on for what this looks like in my studio and to gain some ideas for what it might look like in your own.

Progress Reports…. Do you use them?

When I think about progress reports, I immediately think of report cards. Something stressful and something that could cause a lot of anxiety for my violin and viola students. So let me be clear right off the bat: That is not the purpose of progress reports for my studio!

Although I’ve had a draft of a progress report stored away for years, I’ve only recently used them in my studio. Today I’ll share my experience and how I plan to use it in the future!

Why do a progress report?

I definitely do not intend to use them in a terrifying way for my studio! I do hope to use them to document how we are playing at a particular point in time. By tracking that information, my goal is to address areas where we want to focus our efforts and improve in a practical and frank way.

Another area I’m hoping they’ll improve is opening up communication with studio parents and their children, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. I am so grateful to have a studio of parents and families who are so closely involved in our music lessons. As families deal with the changes to their home life through virtual learning, shifts in jobs or child care, communication has been trickier to manage despite our best efforts. My thoughts were that this would provide an easier way to share current abilities and get everyone on the same page.

The final reason I had for adding progress reports was to see patterns over a long period of time! Over time we’ll be able to go back and review what we were doing throughout our time together in lessons. My hope is that each progress report will highlight the ways we continue to struggle, but also ways that we’ve improved!

What should you include?

For my studio, I tried to keep things basic. Areas of evaluation were:

Scales
Etudes
Solo Repertoire
Sight Reading
Lesson Preparedness

I felt using these areas gave us enough leeway for students no matter whether they were beginners, intermediate or advancing! For each area I used the following grading code:

E = Excellent
S = Satisfactory
I = Improving
N = Needs Improvement
U = Unsatisfactory

Next to their code, I left space to handwrite additional notes.

In addition to these areas, I left open spaces to include what extra studio opportunities they’ve recently taken advantage of, what my favorite part of their lessons are and some general comments. I appreciated the flexibility this set up gave me, which meant I could make it appropriate for students of all levels.

When and where should they be conducted?

For the areas using the grading code, I assessed them based on how they played each area during their regular lesson time. With the exception of sight reading, we regularly include material that fits this outline. That made it easy to just use our regular lesson material, with no more preparation than usual.

For sight reading, I selected pieces from supplementary material we don’t always get to use and assessed students on how well they played the song the first time they’ve seen it.

Example Template

I created my progress report online through Canva.com, a free resource for graphic and publishing design. You can view an editable version of this document here. Please save a copy for yourself so others may use it, too.

Feel free to use this to start your own report that suits your studio best!

Future Uses

I’d love to keep this going for my studio going forward, regardless of whether lessons are online, in person or any combination of those two. I’m planning to include these three times a year to match the biggest shifts in my teaching schedule. For my area, those times are in January, June and September. Sticking to the natural rhythms of studio life will make it easy for both new students as they enroll and for my established studio families’ who might be experiencing changes in their own schedules.

Thoughts?

So my question to other music teachers is: What would this look like in your studio? Do you have something in place? If you don’t, why not?

More than ever we need to be creative in how we keep communication lines open with our students and their families, and this has been a useful tool for my studio.

Let me know your thoughts here in the comments, on Instagram @shawstrings or by email to renee@shawstrings.co!

Progress Reports for Private Music Lessons