Lesson Schedule
The lesson schedule aligns with the 6-day rotation at Broughal. Your child's lesson will normally be on the SAME day each week (ex: every Day 6), during one of the related arts periods:
6th Grade - Period 4 or Period 8
7th Grade - Period 3 or Period 7
8th Grade - Period 2 or Period 5
Students must know their LESSON GROUP (ex: 4B) in order to follow the schedule below.
Please note that, in order to attend the Spring Music Trip (if possible), students must attend a minimum of 17 lessons (5 per marking period except for the 4th marking period). If you have any questions, please contact Mr. Stoltz (astoltz@basdschools.org).
practice Tips
PRACTICE is repetition with the goal for improvement. It allows us to perform with EASE, SPEED, and CONFIDENCE.
Mastery is achieved through both QUANTITY AND QUALITY of work!
EFFECTIVE practice is consistent, intensely focused, and targets CONTENT or WEAKNESSES that lie at the edge of one's current abilities.
How can we get the most out of our practice time?
Focus on the task at hand.
Minimize potential distractions. Turn off computers, tablets, and TV's. Put your cell phone on Airplane Mode.
Practice SLOWLY at first. Gradually increase speed.
Include frequent repetitions with allotted breaks.
Practice in your brain, in vivid detail.
Seek out instruction. A good teacher will help you understand the purpose of practicing and can teach you ways to make practicing easier and more productive.
Write out a schedule. A schedule helps you organize your time. Be sure to allow time to review the fundamentals because they are the foundation of all the complicated things that come later.
Set goals. Like a schedule, goals help you organize your time and chart your progress…. If a certain task turns out to be really difficult, relax your goals: practice doesnʼt have to be painful to achieve results.
Concentrate. You can do more in 10 minutes of focused practice than in an hour of sighing and moaning. This means no video games, no television, no radio, just sitting still and working…. Concentrated effort takes practice too, especially for young people.
Relax and practice slowly. Take your time; donʼt rush through things. Whenever you set out to learn something new – practicing scales, multiplication tables, verb tenses in Spanish – you need to start slowly and build up speed.
Practice hard things longer. Donʼt be afraid of confronting your inadequacies; spend more time practicing what you canʼt do…. Successful practice means coming face to face with your shortcomings. Donʼt be discouraged; youʼll get it eventually.
Practice with expression. Every day you walk around making yourself into “you,” so do everything with the proper attitude…. Express your “style” through how you do what you do.
Learn from your mistakes. None of us are perfect, but donʼt be too hard on yourself. If you drop a touchdown pass, or strike out to end the game, itʼs not the end of the world. Pick yourself up, analyze what went wrong and keep going….A
Donʼt show off. Itʼs hard to resist showing off when you can do something well…. But my father told me, “Son, those who play for applause, thatʼs all they get.” When you get caught up in doing the tricky stuff, youʼre just cheating yourself and your audience.
Think for yourself. Your success or failure at anything ultimately depends on your ability to solve problems, so donʼt become a robot…. Thinking for yourself helps develop your powers of judgment.
Be optimistic. Optimism helps you get over your mistakes and go on to do better. It also gives you endurance because having a positive attitude makes you feel that something great is always about to happen.
Look for connections. If you develop the discipline it takes to become good at something, that discipline will help you in whatever else you do…. The more you discover the relationships between things that at first seem different, the larger your world becomes. In other words, the woodshed can open up a whole world of possibilities.
Wynton Marsalis is an internationally acclaimed musician, composer and bandleader, an educator and a leading advocate of American culture. He has created and performed an expansive range of music from quartets to big bands, chamber music ensembles to symphony orchestras and tap dance to ballet, expanding the vocabulary for jazz and classical music with a vital body of work that places him among the world’s finest musicians and composers.