Saturday, April 30, 2022 | News

The 'PJC Practice Champion' Rewards Scheme.

Our Practice Champion Rewards Scheme encourages all students to not only practice the piano at home, but also to do the theory games, exercises and singing tasks that improve our students' overall musicianship. By collecting stamps on their chart, students can earn increasingly exciting prizes.

How Can They Earn Stamps?

All students can earn their stamps through the practice and theory exercises that they do at home, receiving a keyboard stamp for every day they practice the minimum recommended time, a clock stamp for every day they practice double the minimum recommended time, and a stave stamp for every day they do one of the suggested theory exercises. They therefore Young Beginners have the potential to earn up to 21 stamps per week!

Intermediates can also earn additional Sight Reading Stamps, by doing one sight reading per day. This only takes a few minutes and is an easy way to earn an additional 7 sight reading stamps per week (which is especially useful for those higher grade students who will find it harder to earn those clock stamps!)

What are the Recommended Practice Times for each grade?

Our recommended practice times start small and gradually increase until Grade 2 to 8, when you just 'add a zero' to the grade you're studying (i.e. Grade 3= 30 minutes, Grade 5= 50 minutes). The clock stamps (for double the practice time) do get harder to achieve in the higher grades, which is where students might focus more on the achieving the theory and sight reading stamps to bump up their numbers! 

How do I log the practice each week?

Each booklet will have a white sheet stapled into it. The starting date of each week of the year are down the left hand side, with each day across the top. If a student on their pink book does their recommended 3 minutes, tick the little keyboard on that day, if they do 6 minutes, they can tick the clock too. If they complete a theory task from the special PDF, they can tick the little stave column. The final column with the adorable little man reading a book is only for Intermediates who complete a sight reading exercise. Students can do this themselves if you wish- we will leave this to you as parents to judge whether your child is old enough (and trustworthy!). Once we have stamped their practice chart for the week, we will highlight that row in lesson time to show that this week has been stamped.

This is all honesty based, and we ask parents to do their best to make sure that students are truthful about their practice time in order to inspire them properly. 

What prizes can my child earn?
As well as the 25, 50 and 75 stickers, students can earn certificates sweets, musical stationary, certificates, musical jewellery, manuscript books to write their own music, and even a trophy.

When does the Practice Champion run?

Our PJC Practice Champion runs from September to September. This is to ensure that students continue to be inspired over the August Holiday to keep up their practise, knowing that prizes and awards await them in September when they return to us! In September each year they will receive a brand new card ready to start again. The Practice Log Booklets change each year in order to avoid confusion.

What should my child be practising?

In order to make practising at home as exciting and easy as possible, I have also produced a Piano Practice Sheet and a Theory Exercises Sheet for The Pink Book, The Orange Book, The Blue Book, and The Intermediates Stage of our PJC Programmes. Feel free to print these out if that is easier for you and your child but bear in mind that the PDFs contain lots of hyperlinks to our PJC Piano Practice Guide for Parents Videos, and many online quizzes in order to make our students' practice more interactive. 

Where can I find the theory exercises/games?

You can find these PDFs on our Facebook Parents Community Group, as well as being available on our online portal under 'Online Resources'.

What if my child doesn't do their recommended amount but still practices?

We want to encourage and reward all forms of practice, so if your child does half their recommended time, they can still achieve their keyboard stamp if they complete their recommended time another day that week (i.e. a Grade 3 student has a recommended time of 30 minutes. If they do 15 on Monday and 15 on Tuesday then they can achieve one keyboard stamp for both days!)

If my child does triple the amount of practice- do they get two clock stamps?

Only one clock stamp can be achieved per day- we're trying to encourage our students to practice little and often (so for an Initial Grade student, 10 minutes per day is miles better than 70 minutes on Sunday!) 

If you have any questions about this PJC Practice Champion Reward Scheme not covered in this blog post do please ask me and I can update this as necessary!

Take care,

Phillippa ♪

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