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Using exams to keep your students engaged and excited in 2025 and beyond
Recorded in Christchurch New Zealand, April 2025.
Part 1
In this engaging session, Paul Myatt explores the challenges and opportunities of teaching piano to Generation Alpha—children growing up in a world of screens and instant engagement. Drawing on neuroscience and Whole Body Learning principles, Paul highlights the shift from traditional teaching to a more interactive, multisensory approach. He shares practical strategies for capturing attention, fostering engagement, and encouraging meaningful practice through movement, music, and technology. With humour and warmth, Paul encourages teachers to rethink how they connect with students, making lessons more effective, memorable and fun—while still grounded in solid pedagogical practice.
Part 2
In this lively segment, Paul Myatt uses a rhythmic chopstick activity to demonstrate how movement, voice, and beat activate the brain—proving multisensory learning is memorable, engaging, and effective. A fun yet insightful reminder that learning sticks best when students are fully involved—body, voice, and mind.
Part 3
In this part, Paul highlights how rhythm, lyrics, colour, and movement build musical memory and confidence. Through fun, low-risk activities—even on paper keyboards—students engage deeply, internalising music before touching the piano. Through structured play and clever repetition, Paul demonstrates how multisensory methods promote success, expression, and genuine musical understanding.
Part 4
How rapid, rewarding musical experiences build motivation and neural connections. Using Whole Body Learning and sound-before-symbol methods, students engage deeply and learn faster. The session highlights how neuroscience supports teaching strategies that prioritise sound, movement, and pattern recognition over early reading.
Part 5
The Reading Tree is a visual tool showing the complex, multisensory process of learning to read music. From beat and kinaesthetic awareness to visual tracking and aural feedback, it reveals why reading music is challenging and why students and parents will benefit from understanding the depth of the learning-to-read-music journey.
Part 6
Discover how playful embodiment activities using easy-to-access items and rhythm chants make teaching beat, rest, and time signatures easy. This multisensory, movement-based approach builds engagement, focus, and musical understanding, proving that rhythm can be fun, flexible, and effective for students of all ages and abilities.
Part 7
Demonstrating Stage 1 of the Whole Body Learning process: starting with beat, listening with purpose, chunking, and clever repetition. Students build musical understanding, memory, and coordination through singing, improvisation, and FastTRACK skeleton scores. It's a joyful, structured path to mastery, making learning efficient, creative, and deeply engaging for all learners.
Part 8
Paul demonstrates how movement, solfege, and FastTRACK skeletons support rhythm, form, and coordination. Through engaging group work and deliberate repetition, students develop confidence and a deeper understanding of music. He demonstrates how chunking complex passages and simplifying key parts leads to faster, more successful learning for beginners to advanced (exam-level) students.
Part 9
See how rhythm, form, and musical memory come alive through movement, mirroring, and FastTRACK skeletons at higher levels. With pieces from Trinity's Gr 3 syllabus, see how students sing, play, and anticipate musically, developing independence, pattern recognition, and confidence, all while having fun and staying deeply engaged.