How do I plan future lessons?
It would be nice to say that there is a set path every student can follow and you just need to start at A and work your way to Z. But that's not true. Every student will need to take a different path and will end up in different situations. Trying to fit all students to one curriculum is asking for trouble.
The key to planning future lessons, creating a curriculum or figuring out what order to teach certain topics is by constantly referring to your student's goals. What does your student want to achieve on guitar?
Creating a curriculum that matches your student's goals not only helps the student stay motivated along the way, but it makes your job easier with planning.
As an example, let's say a beginner wants to learn a rock song with a fairly complicated solo. You would first take a look at the skills and topics the student needs to know to be able to play that solo. List all the skills, techniques, scales and exercises that can help the student learn that solo. Then while looking at that list, figure out the easiest path for the student to take through all of those items.
You might decide the student should start by learning the basic Pentatonic scale shapes and give him some basic exercises to get used to it. When you introduce the Pentatonic scale to the student, you would explain that the song the student wants to learn uses this scale, so learning the scale now will make it easier later on to learn the song. This is really important to explain so the student knows why he's being asked to learn this. If the student knows why it's worth learning and it matches his goals, then he will put more effort into practicing it.
You would then gradually work through the skills needed until the student is ready to take a look at the actual song and solo. Each skill along the way you would explain how it relates the the student's goals.
Here's a basic summary of this approach:
- Figure out the student's goals
- Work out what skills and topics need to be covered to meet those goals
- Arrange those topics in a logical order starting with the easiest and working towards the harder topics
- Start with the easiest areas and explain to the student why the topics are being covered
- Gradually work through the topics covering anything relevant to the goal along the way
By taking this approach you're ensuring that the student is constantly working towards their goals. If at any point you feel you want to teach a topic that doesn't relate to the student's goals, then it's really important you consider why the student should learn it. If you can come up with a good reason why it should be covered, then it can be added to the curriculum.
For more information on structuring lessons, check out TPS-03 Structuring Your Lessons.