A Lesson Plan That Works Even When the Student Did Not Practise
Four concrete teaching tactics for music teachers who restart every week. No pep talk. No guilt. Just what works.
Last year I had a student who had not practised for three weeks. Not once.
First week back: nothing. Second week back: nothing. Third week back: he told me his brother had put his drumsticks away and he could not find them.
I had two options. Tell him off, restart the lesson from where we left off, and hope for better. Or adjust my approach.
The second option works better. Here is how.
Why practice does not happen (it is rarely laziness)
Before the tactics: the reasons students do not practise are almost never laziness.
- No concrete goal. “Practise your scales” is not an assignment. It is a direction.
- The exercise is too hard. Students stop earlier when success feels out of reach.
- No visible progress. If a student does not feel they are improving, they disengage.
- Barriers at home. Brother is next to the drum kit. Parents are asleep. Laptop is broken.
Understanding this changes how you respond.
Tactic 1: Ask two questions before you start
At every lesson where practice did not happen, I first ask:
“What did you do this week?” (Not: “did you practise?”)
And then: “What made it hard to practise?”
The first question resets the tone. The second gives you information. Some answers are excuses. Many answers are real obstacles.
A student who says “it did not work out because my friend always comes over” is different from a student who says “I did not know what to do.” First = external factor. Second = my responsibility as a teacher.
Tactic 2: Make the next assignment smaller
If someone has not practised for three weeks, the assignment is too big.
Not “practise ten minutes a day.” But: “practise this one thing, three minutes, on Tuesday.”
Concrete. One thing. Specific moment.
I write this in the lesson plan so the student can see it at home. Not in WhatsApp. In the lesson plan. Then they can show me the following lesson that they did it.
Completing an assignment successfully — even if it is three minutes — is worth more than ten minutes they do not do.
Tactic 3: Always start the lesson with something they can already do
If a student has not practised and you go straight to new material, they lose their sense of competence.
I always start every lesson with something they already know. Five minutes. Something they learned last year or the month before. They play it, it sounds good, they feel capable.
Then the new material.
This is not a pedagogical trick. It is neuroscience. A success experience at the start of a lesson increases the willingness to struggle with new material.
Tactic 4: Make progress visible, not just audible
Students sometimes hear that they have improved. They do not always feel it.
I use completion checklists. Not as grades or assessments, but as evidence. “Last lesson you could not do this. Now you can. Tick it off.”
Small ticks for small steps. A tick every lesson is achievable. Learning a new piece every lesson is not.
When the lesson plan tracks what has been done, you can literally show a student: you have learned 23 things this year. Even if you often did not practise.
That changes the conversation.
What this means in practice
A lesson plan per student — maintained, with assignments and progress — makes all these tactics easier.
Not because the technology does the work. But because you have structure in which the student can look back at what they did, what is scheduled, and how far they have come.
That is the role of a lesson plan. Not as administration. As a mirror.
Three questions for your own lessons:
- Does every student know exactly what they are going to do this week when they leave?
- Is that assignment small enough to do in three minutes?
- Can the student look up what the assignment was the following week?
Try Musicdott — First month free. Lesson plan per student, assignments with deadlines, progress per tick. See the three plans.
Questions? Email mail@musicdott.app or WhatsApp.
— Stefan, drum teacher and maker of Musicdott
Note: this piece started as an AI draft (Claude), rewritten by Stefan. Scenarios based on twenty years of teaching.