Teaching Strategies for Struggling Students
(Published in California Music Teacher, the biannual journal of the Music Teachers Association of California (MTAC), Volume 29, Number 2, Fall 2025, pp 29-33.)
When music students struggle to learn or develop a skill, consider that there may be factors at play that we music teachers can remedy and improve. If a student is not learning or developing skills, here are some places where we might look for answers:
Are we going too fast?
Have we adequately assessed prior knowledge?
Have we properly sequenced instruction?
Have we appropriately chunked the learning and practice?
Is there a meaningful context to learning?
Is the content or skill relevant to this student?
Does learning and practice bring satisfaction, joy, and short-term rewards to this student?
This article explores strategies for answering these questions.
Slowing Down
As teachers, we often go too fast. We talk too fast. We sing too fast. We count, demonstrate, and show examples of others doing things too fast. We go to the next step too quickly. If we teachers want to see improvement in progress, the first thing to do is to slow everything down. Way down. Way, way, down.
For example, when teaching scales to a beginner, consider counting to four for every note: C-2-3-4, D-2-3-4, E-2-3-4, F-2-3-4, G-2-3-4, A-2-3-4, B-2-3-4, C-2-3-4.
That slow!
Think of the music as half notes and quarter notes or whole notes and half notes rather than quarter notes and eighth notes.
Teach a concept, discuss, and receive verbal feedback from the student before expanding on the concept or putting it into practice. Also speak more deliberately. Enunciate more clearly. Pause longer between phrases and sentences. Take meaningful breaks between activities. Relax the pace.
Another way to slow down is to use Wait-Time strategies and practices. Wait-Time refers to two specific practices where instructors deliberately pause. Wait-Time-1 constitutes a 3-5+ second pause between asking a question and soliciting an answer. Wait-Time-2 is a 3-5+ second pause after a student response. (Do they have more to say?)
Many students benefit from longer wait times as long as 30 seconds or more before they are ready to answer a question. We often answer too quickly for a student, cut them off prematurely, or make them feel bad for not answering fast enough—before the student has sufficient time to think, recall, remember, form thoughts, words, and sentences, and speak.
Assessing Prior Knowledge
The next strategy is assessing prior knowledge, which is knowledge the student already has prior to learning the thing you are about to teach them. It is not uncommon for teachers to inadequately understand their student’s prior knowledge or level of mastery.
We all experience situations when we ask a student to do something with their right hand and they respond with their left hand, and vice versa (even teenagers and adults!).We need to stop for a moment, practice and reinforce the right hand versus left hand, and then proceed.
Additionally, when learning note reading on the staff, we may assume that a student understands that notes go up or down on the staff the same way they go up or down on the piano—or that a student understands that notes go line-to-space-to-line-to-space and letter by letter according to the music alphabet. Yet, students may believe that the notes are organized randomly (mnemonics reinforce a feeling of randomness). Note the Aha! moment when a student realizes the notes are indeed alphabetically sequential.
Similarly, we often expect students to understand the meaning of certain words in musical contexts. We may tell a student that legato means smoothly, when they have little understanding of what “smoothly” means in relation to making music.
We may also assume that students can execute certain skills-based instructions when in fact they struggle to know how to begin. Can this student actually “relax” or “release” the part of their body we are referring to? Can they take control of or even feel that part of their body?
The same occurs with our assumptions about patterns in music. We understand that a particular pattern will remain constant, yet the student believes it could be different each time. Things that seem obvious to us won’t always be obvious to them.
When we see puzzlement on the faces of our students; when we experience their hesitation; when they answer questions in ways that surprise us; we should step back and figure out if there are holes or gaps in their understanding, knowledge, or skill and work on filling things in before moving forward. Back up to what they actually know and can do, and layer new knowledge and skills from there.
Sequencing Instruction and Chunking the Learning & Practice
Sequencing and chunking can also help fill gaps in understanding. Sequencing suggests teaching skills and concepts in the right order. Will we take a “sight before sound” approach to understanding this rhythmic notation and focus on the math? Or will we take a “sound before sight” approach and listen to samples first?
Chunking suggests breaking objectives into small pieces. Some may appreciate the adage: Q: How do you eat an elephant? A: One bite at a time. The bites must be appropriately bite-sized; the steps must be small enough increments—baby steps.
Teaching the right sequence in small enough chunks helps students master skills and concepts one step at a time so that the steps feel easy. Easy steps will lead students to achieving difficult and complex challenges without being overwhelmed or feeling hopeless.
Sometimes extra-small baby steps can be useful for students. For example, some beginner piano students struggle to play hands-together. Anxiety increases when they imagine playing a whole song or piece. You can help a student overcome this anxiety with well-sequenced-and-chunked instruction. For example, have your student follow these steps:
Play:
1. Any note on the piano with your right hand.
2. Any note on the piano with your left hand.
3. Any notes on the piano with your right and left hand at the same time. Play them a bunch of times. Repeat.
4. The notes I select with your right hand and left hand at the same time (make it easy). Play them a bunch of times. Repeat.
Repeat steps 1-4 with any two notes in each hand.
And finally:
5. Play the four notes I select (two in your right hand and two in your left hand) at the same time (make it easy). Play them a bunch of times. Repeat.
Notice two things: one, done well, this process will feel very easy for a student; two, keep going in this direction and soon you will have the student playing a song hands-together.
Effective chunking considers the size and complexity of the sequenced steps.
Let’s say your goal is to teach the music alphabet to a toddler who does not yet know anything about reading or writing. You decide your steps are to teach one letter at a time with each letter as one chunk, so you create a series of activities that focus on one letter at a time.
Perhaps, for each letter (A-G), you have them: locate the letter in a picture book; color in an outlined letter on paper; paint the letter on a canvas (and then you frame it); draw the letter in the air with their finger; lay out block letters on the floor in alphabetical order to learn the relative position of this letter with other letters; [KD1] use puzzle pieces or other manipulatives to practice identifying the letter; become fluent speaking the letter; sing a song using the letter.
In this example, you’re not teaching the whole music alphabet at once, but one letter (chunk) at a time. (Consider, if the student does not yet know how to count, this is an absence of prior knowledge that you may need to fill in and teach.)
On the other end of the spectrum, let’s say that your advanced student is memorizing a full 50-minute recital consisting of challenging music. Like many students, they practice the music they know more, and the music they need to learn less. You help them chunk both the music and their time by segregating the music into 1) Learned-and-memorized; 2) Learned-but-not-yet-memorized; 3) Unlearned. You then assign a fixed duration for practicing each component, allocating more time to unlearned music and less time to learned music. This results in useful practice sessions consisting of defined chunks of music practiced for defined chunks of time.
Meaningful Context to Learning
The learning context is just as important as the learning method. Context is the circumstances that form the setting whereby something can be fully understood and assessed. It is very difficult to understand or see something out of context, or when there is no discernable context.
Have you ever met a person at the market whom you normally see in a different setting, and you did not immediately recognize them? This is because you were seeing the person in a context different from the usual, more familiar one.
Teaching things out of context, with no context, or in multiple contexts, increases the difficulty of learning.
Consider note-reading. Some students may be able to name notes more easily when using flash cards or a teaching aid but struggle to recognize those same notes on the music score. Due to a lack of context, the student may not fully understand that the grand staff in the score is the same thing as the grand staff on the teaching aid.
Perhaps the student’s home instrument or learning environment differs significantly from their school setting. It may be challenging to get one’s bearings on an unfamiliar piano or in a room with unusual acoustics. I have a piano/keyboard student who participates in a small group piano class with three other students who has sat at the same keyboard each week for over two years. Recently, one of the other students asked to switch places, and she agreed. When it was her turn to play her repertoire at her new spot, which features the exact same keyboard as her usual spot, she struggled. She spoke up, awkwardly, and said, “This keyboard feels different. I am not sure how to start my piece.” Her context had changed. We talked about this problem for a moment, and then she decided to give it a try. She started playing—but at an octave higher than expected. She heard the difference, stopped, shifted over in her seat, and started again in the correct octave. She also encountered several unusual missteps as she played the piece.
Difficulty in sight reading music can arise when students are presented with the same music with slight contextual differences. For example, a section that repeats but with smaller notes and measures, in different positions on the page, on different pages, or with different lyrics presents a different context. Students who sing while playing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on the piano might struggle to play the exact same song while singing “Merrily We Roll Along.”
Historical and cultural context can be important. When we teachers hear the word “Mozart,” we quickly associate familiar contextual information with the name: time period, people, clothing, architecture, landscapes, religious symbology, moods, styles, and our own experiences. A student hearing the word “Mozart” may have none of this context, and therefore lack the connection of the name to the genre and not play Mozart like Mozart should sound. This student may need far more musical understanding in a cultural context than they presently have about what Mozart music traditionally sounds like as compared with other styles, genres, and periods of music.
Context can help make learning more relevant.
Relevance
Relevance suggests having some relationship to the matter at hand. Relevant content has practical or social applicability. One way to think of relevance is that it is the opposite of irrelevance. Who wants to learn things that are irrelevant?
A Venetian Boat Song or barcarolle may have relevance to someone familiar with Venice, Italy; rivers and canals; gondolas and gondoliers. However, to most young Californians today, these things are little known and likely irrelevant. How many students today can associate the rocking of a boat with the rhythms of 6/8 time? We might simulate a boating experience in the lesson room using picture books, video and other multimedia, furniture and props, and directed off-bench activities.
When we think about making music education relevant to students, we often place emphasis on today’s music—the music they might listen to and enjoy outside school with friends. However, there is another way: to provide relevance to music they are unfamiliar with. Besides finding content that is already relevant, we can turn irrelevant content into relevant content by providing context and meaning.
For example, when teaching the folk song, Wayfaring Stranger, perhaps first study and talk about the lyrics. We can also present various artists—singers, lead guitarists, violinists, rock bands—performing this song in diverse ways. We can show age-appropriate videos, movie clips, and cartoons that feature or use the music. When students discover that the music they are studying is loved and performed by millions of people around the world, relevance increases. “I want to play that awesome music, too!”
One of my students recently fell in love with a piano arrangement of America (My Country ‘Tis of Thee) because he watched a military choir’s performance of the song. His heart and mind opened up not only to the song, but to the previously unsuspected beauty of choral music.
Satisfaction, Joy, and Short-term Rewards
Often when we speak of the benefits of music education, we note the long-term benefits: brain development, greater academic achievement, confidence, creative skills, memory enhancement, and admissions to prestigious universities.
Long-term benefits are wonderful and worth striving for. But they are not enough for the student who is taking weekly music lessons. Whether teaching a sixteen-year-old planning for college or a sixty-year-old wanting to improve their memory, it’s both nonsensical and unfair to present long-term benefits without facilitating short-term benefits as well.
People often deride short-term benefits. We have cultural sayings like “good things come to those who wait,” and “no pain no gain,” and we criticize people and businesses who see only the “short-term profits” and not the long-term growth.
But it’s not one or the other. It’s both. Music students, like businesses, need both short-term rewards and long-term growth.
Here is a partial list of things we can do to help students experience satisfaction, joy, and short-term rewards in their music lessons:
Help students reach milestones and celebrate them.
Reward achievements using stickers, certificates, prizes, cards, trophies, and more.
Make lessons fun, enjoyable, and rewarding experiences.
Have students learn and memorize a repertoire of music. Add learned pieces to the students’ developing repertoire and have them keep playing the learned pieces for long periods of time. Drop pieces only when the repertoire becomes too large or they’ve played something so much they’ve grown tired of it. Some pieces might be played for years or even a lifetime.
Assign some music at the student’s current level or slightly below. Students may experience music learning as tedious, never-ending work, and often the reason is because the steady rise in difficulty never ends. It is important for students to play music at their current level so that they can enjoy making music and even take a breather now and then while they also continue to progress and advance in difficulty. Don’t stop your students from playing Heart & Soul, Chopsticks, and The Knuckle Song. Encourage them.
Create friendly relationships and bonds with students. Students should view their teachers as guides, mentors, coaches, and friends. Don’t stop them from talking; let them share, enjoy their sharing, and learn all you can about them.
Advocate for your students. Be a person in their life who looks out for them and helps make things happen that they want to have happen. Never say anything negative about your students to anyone. Always say positive things to your student, and always say positive things to other people, to all other people, about your students.
Developing teaching strategies to help struggling students will improve your teaching for all students! The truth is that all students struggle some of the time. Slow down instruction, assess prior knowledge, sequence lessons in small, well-ordered steps, chunk learning into digestible pieces, present new knowledge and skills in meaningful contexts, make content relevant, and provide short-term rewards to foster joy and motivation. Overall, have empathy, patience, and plan lessons with intention to support students’ growth and enjoyment in music learning.