The Buddy Lesson Blueprint for Progress, Playfulness, and Productivity

Have you ever considered teaching partner or buddy lessons instead of teaching one-on-one? Or perhaps you’ve thought about switching to group teaching so you can better leverage your time?

Buddy lessons can be a fantastic best of both worlds scenario for music teachers. In the buddy lesson format, students share part of their lesson time but keep some individual time with the teacher as well. It looks something like this:

• Student A: 30 minutes
• Student A + B: 30 minutes
• Student B: 30 minutes

The bit in the middle, “Student A + B,” is what’s called the “buddy time.” Many teachers are interested in trying the buddy lesson format so that they can increase their students’ lesson time without increasing their own teaching hours, as well as provide their students with a more social, creative, and interactive learning environment.

But then we get to the planning , right? What are we actually going to do in this buddy time once we’ve carved it out?

I’ve been teaching almost entirely in buddy lessons for several years now and absolutely loving it. I’ve shared some ideas for what you can do in buddy time in The Ultimate Compendium of Buddy Lesson Activities .

It’s not just about finding stuff to do though, is it?

We need to find a way to structure the buddy time so that we’re using it effectively and our students are making progress. And we need to do this in a way that’s flexible enough to work when the two buddies are not at the same level.

That’s what this buddy lesson blueprint is for: to give you a framework to put together activities for your buddy or partner lessons that really work and help your students be successful.

The 4 Elements of Great Buddy Lesson Time

For me, the questions I’m asking myself when thinking about whether a lesson activity belongs in buddy time or solo time are:

• Would this be more fun with a peer?
• Would I be able to make this work for students at different stages of learning?

With that criteria in mind, there are only really a couple of things that have to stay in the solo time: repertoire and sight-reading...that’s it, really! Everything else can work during buddy time.

For your sanity, we’ll divide all the “other stuff” into 4 essential elements of buddy time, in the order I teach them each week:

1. Technique
2. Rhythm
3. Aural
4. Theory

Let’s go through each of those in turn to see what they would look like in action.

Technique

Technique is usually the shortest portion of our buddy time but it may run longer if a student is preparing for an exam and needs to review lots of scales/arpeggios.

Beginner Buddy Technique

For my beginning students, the technique portion involves reviewing the technique exercises from their piano method.

Even if I have a brand new beginner and a level 2 or level 3 student paired together for buddy time, this still works very well. The student who is further ahead uses this as a review of the basic techniques and movements and can be the one to explain the key things we’re looking for in each exercise.

Intermediate/Advanced Buddy Technique

For most intermediate and advanced buddies, this time is used for scales , arpeggios, and chord work . Technical exercises really can be fun when they’re done with a friend!

Rhythm

Rhythm skills are probably the most important thing for a convincing performance. When the tempo is erratic or the student isn’t sure of the rhythm patterns in a piece, we feel it in our bones .

And yet, rhythm skills are normally the weakest area in most students I meet because we simply don’t get enough time to spend on this vital ingredient.

Having buddy time is really valuable here because you can go over and over rhythm patterns in so many different ways through games and movement activities so that your students truly build up a comprehensive rhythm vocabulary. Just 5 minutes a week can make a huge difference.

Aural

Have you ever had a student going in for an exam and rushed to do some aural tests at the last minute? We all know that’s not really sufficient ear training, but there’s just never enough time, is there?!

Though we do some notated duets in buddy time, the majority of the playing we do is actually by ear. We practice:

• Singing folk songs
• Translating them into solfa
• Figuring them out on the piano
• Transposing them to different keys
• Coming up with a simple duet by harmonizing with chords (just root notes I and V for beginners)

This is not just about training students to play-by-ear. Working on songs in this way and using solfa as a tool improves students’ overall musicianship and understanding .

Theory

If you’re familiar with my blog or Vibrant Music Teaching membership, it’s probably no surprise what the theory component of my buddy time consists of...

Games, games, games!

Fun is a serious business as far as I’m concerned, and my buddy students love playing games together to learn new things and review and consolidate older learning.

There are too many theory concepts you can teach through games to go into here but if you want some of my favorite free piano teaching games, check out this roundup post on Colourful Keys .

Bringing it All Together

Once you have something for each of these four elements in your buddy lessons you should be well on the way to your students having a blast each and every week and making amazing progress in their music studies.