How quickly should I move on to a new topic?

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Knowing when to move on to a new topic with a student is important to get right. You need to find a balance between these two extremes:

  • If you move on too quickly, the student won't properly develop their skills and understanding
  • If you move on too slowly, the student can lose motivation or become frustrated

Every student will learn at a different rate so there's no one answer that works for everybody. So while you can't apply a set rule on how long to stay on a topic, you can learn how to identify when your student is ready to move on.

Understand the skill acquisition process

If you understand the skill acquisition process in depth, you will be able to identify how far along the process your student is with any skill. The challenge here is that most teachers think they understand this process when they really don't. A student properly performing an exercise doesn't mean he has learned the skill. Even if the student looks like they have mastered the skill, you need to dig deeper to find out if they really have.

To learn the skill acquisition process and how it applies to your students, start by working through the Fine Motor Skills Course.

This course will explain the entire learning process and how to identify what stage your student is at for any particular skill. The course includes plenty of examples so you can fully understand the stages students go through when learning anything new.

Once you understand these stages, you will immediately have a better idea on when to move on to new topics and when it's too soon.

Ask the right questions

After you complete the Fine Motor Skills Course, start working through the Questioning Fundamentals Course. At first it may not be clear why this is so important, but a massive part of your job as a teacher is asking the right questions. Asking the right questions will help you identify how well a student knows a topic.

Questions allow you to get a deeper understanding of your student's development that you wouldn't be able to get just by watching the student play an exercise or piece.

The course walks you through different types of questions and how those questions actually influence how your student develops. With a series of simple questions, you will be able to identify when your student knows a topic well enough for you to move on to a new topic.

Make haste slowly

Once you complete the two courses mentioned above, read through this guide on an important pedagogy topic. TPD-02 Make Haste Slowly explains a fundamental pedagogy principle relating to how quickly you should move a student through topics. At first glance it's a very simple principle, but as you spend time thinking about it, you begin to realize how important it is.

If you want to know when it's the right time to move a student on to a new topic, it should be clear now that to be able to answer that question you need to build up an understanding on the skills acquisition process. Once you learn how to identify which stage your student is at with any skill, you can make better decisions on when to move on and when to continue working on a topic.