New printable lesson resource: Creative Challenges | Live and Teach Guitar

Previously, Live and Teach Guitar Members had access to two main types of printable lesson materials: lesson plans and worksheets. We've just released a new type of resource that fills in the learning gaps from the other two type of resources: Creative Challenges.

To understand why Creative Challenges are so important, let's first have a quick look at the other two types of resources and how they affect your student's development:

Lesson Plans

Guitar Lesson Plans usually present the student with an overview of a certain topic or technique on one or multiple pages. A simple technique such as bends may only require on page to convey all the information on how to perform a bend, while a topic such as music theory can take multiple lesson plans as it's a massive topic.

From a teacher's point of view Guitar Lesson Plans allow you to discuss a topic in detail and give your student the first steps to understanding that topic. Many teachers use Guitar Lesson Plans exclusively - similar to teaching out of a method book, however this presents a problem. Guitar Lesson Plans do a good job of explaining the overview of a topic, but don't allow you as a teacher to get into the details of a topic or look at the topic in multiple ways. When you only use Guitar Lesson Plans (or a method book), you're only giving your student lessons from one perspective and in one format. Students need a variety of different materials to help understand a topic in depth.

Worksheets

Worksheets provide a way for you to go deeper into a topic as well as a way to test your student's understanding. Unlike Guitar Lesson Plans, which mainly present information to the student, Worksheets require the student to get involved and think about the topic. So if you're covering music theory, your student may feel they understand the topic after going through the Guitar Lesson Plan, but when faced with a Worksheet, they often find out their understanding is limited. The Worksheet allows you to uncover any gaps in your student's understanding and work on them.

Using a combination of Lesson Plans and Worksheets will prevent your student from mistakenly believing they understand everything when they do not. Since Worksheets are usually completed outside of the lesson, they give you a true indicator of the student's understanding as well as their dedication to practice.

Creative Challenges

'Creative Challenges' are what we call short tasks that require the student to think creatively and work out their own solution to a given problem. The student needs to think about the topic in new ways or else they won't be able to solve the challenge. This gives you excellent insight into how your student thinks about a certain topic, it reveals any misunderstandings or knowledge gaps the student may have and it forces the student to be creative. This can't be accomplished with Lesson Plans or Worksheets or any method book.

By presenting an unusual challenge to your student, you are basically testing their knowledge and skills. If they fail at the challenge, it gives you the opportunity to work on the skill or topic. Think of the challenges as a way to uncover any gaps you missed in the past. They're also very effective in motivating your student. Students will often 'switch off' mentally when presented with a scale exercise, lick or drill because it's so mechanical they don't need to think about it after the first couple of times. But when they're presented with one of these challenges, they are forced to focus because the solution isn't clearly spelled out. The student needs to come up with their own solution.

Creative Challenges are very different to typical lesson materials guitar teachers often use so that's why we've created an entire podcast episode explaining why they're important and how to use them. Check out Episode 13 of our Podcast for more details.

Our Recommendation

There are some guitar teachers who continue to teach out of standard method books. While we believe it's good to incorporate method books into your curriculum, we don't recommend centering your lessons around the content in the book because 'one size never fits all' when it comes to a student's learning needs. The only way you can fully meet each student's needs is to use a combination of Lesson Plans, Worksheets and Creative Challenges.

Using a combination of these materials, you will be able to cover topics in multiple ways and test your student out in different ways. You will also have the flexibility to change your curriculum at an instant and give your student relevant materials as needed.

We're constantly creating new Lesson Plans, Worksheets and Creative Challenges so you will never run out of new material for your students. Check out our new Creative Challenges section to see how these resources are so different to Lesson Plans or Worksheets.