At every lesson with every student, I write notes for them, in a notebook solely for this purpose, about what they need to practice during the week, and most important, how they need to practice. I explain the steps they should do (I call them stepping stones) to build towards being able to play the piece well. This will almost always include some amount of "outlining" (see previous posts), that is, starting with the skeleton of the piece and gradually adding the details. It may include some "set-ups" which are brief technical exercises, derived from the piece itself, to gain experience with a particular technical skill. I also remind them what other areas to focus on. I may remind them which measures need note corrections or a fingering change, or attention to the dynamics, phrasing, etc. I make sure they understand everything I wrote before we conclude the lesson.
The notebooks will contain all previous weeks, as well as instructions about how to learn chords, etc., so we can always refer back to earlier material as needed.
If the student is quite advanced and has been with me many years, I no longer write notes for them, because they are familiar with my approach, and, hopefully, have been practicing for enough years that they know what to do. But for intermediate and beginners, it is essential to write notes. Otherwise, after they go home from the lesson, I guarantee they won't remember everything that was said and done at the lesson.
You wouldn't expect your elementary or middle or high school student to come home from classes with no written instructions regarding their home work. It's the same with music lessons.
I recently took on a 14-year-old, who had 7 years of lessons with another teacher. Apparently the teacher seldom wrote any notes at the lesson. Perhaps the teacher was a bit lazy, or didn't understand the importance of writing them. But the more likely problem was that the lessons themselves did not go into enough depth or detail to have much to write. Many teachers just assign pieces, go over them briefly at the lesson, and then just instruct the student to "learn" them at home. The next week the teacher may correct note or rhythm errors by circling them in the sheet music, maybe tweak a few other things, and so on each succeeding week. This approach does not lead to high-level playing, or even the possiblity of playing at one's potential, in all but a very few rare students.
An adult student of mine told me that his teacher of many years ago wrote out the list of pieces he was currently playing and all the pieces he had played in the past -- at every lesson! That's it -- just the names of the pieces and nothing else. Crazy, right? She could have had a running list and added it once a month or so. Or the student could have easily kept the list himself. Instead, she used lesson time to write this list, by hand, which means she wasn't spending that time on something more productive.
Sometimes the student might be confused about what I have written. In those cases, I urge them to email me for clarification. I don't want them to struggle or go off on the wrong path for a whole week when a simple explanation would help them.
I don't teach younger children anymore, but when I did, I could always tell if they even read my notes during the week. (They often didn't.) Of course if they didn't read the lesson notes, their progress was much slower, maybe non-existent. At home they just opened their sheet music and started playing "the notes." Obviously I tried to nip this habit in the bud, but sometimes the child just didn't seem to have the ability to stick to the plan of reading my notes first. It even happened with adults sometimes.
It seems like a small thing, for the teacher to just write down some notes based on what she observes at the lessons and what needs to be done. But without it, a great deal of the benefits of lessons are lost.
