Sticker Challenges

I mentioned a few months ago that I was hoping to ween my students off of stickers, or at least reward less of them at the end of lesson. However, I can't deny that the promise of a sticker or two really gets them to listen well in lesson. So we've come to a compromise of sorts: sticker challenges.

Sticker challenges can only happen once a lesson, unless my supply says otherwise. Generally, sticker challenges involve small stickers only (stars are my current choice) and you get to put it on your music rather than your binder, book, or in some cases, all over your clothes. You receive this one sticker if you complete a technique challenge for a piece you are working on. For example: if you can play all the way through your piece with less than 4 buzzes per line(a staccato sound against a string that stops it and makes a noise), you have won your sticker challenge. This has really gotten my students to focus on the technique I want them to work on, and they count with me to see how many they've gotten. Many times, even after they've earned the sticker, they want to try again and beat their own record.

Putting the sticker on their music rather than their usual spots has helped motivate my students to keep improving that technique and to try improving other parts of their pieces as well. They want the day to come when they can play with zero buzzes, instead of 4 or less, and they love seeing a few stickers in a row where they know they accomplished something to improve on their music.

Rest assured, there are still end of lesson stickers (sparkly hearts this week). Every once in a while if I have a new sheet of stickers to reveal, they get an extra hard challenge, or a longer one than normal, for the honor of taking out a new sheet of end-of-lesson stickers. But now they are earning stickers for being excellent musicians, not just for following a teacher's directions, and I think they can really tell the difference.