Practice Chart (Music/Sport/Skill)

What to practise down the side, days across the top

Four to twelve items in the left column — scales, a piece, a specific passage, whatever is being worked on — and five to fourteen day columns across. One box per item per day.

With minutes on, the sheet asks for the number of minutes in each box. Switch it off and it becomes a tick chart, which is the version for a young child.

The item list is what makes it a practice chart

A blank log records that practice happened. This records what was practised, and the difference is most of the value.

Twenty minutes playing a piece from the top until it goes wrong, then starting again, is twenty minutes of practising the first eight bars. Twenty minutes on the four bars that keep failing is a different activity with a different outcome. Naming the items in advance is what steers a child towards the second, because the row is sitting there waiting to be filled in.

Write specific rows. "Bars 17–20, hands separate" beats "the piece", and it removes the decision that stops most practice sessions before they start.

Minutes or ticks

Minutes suit anybody old enough to watch a clock, and they give you something to look at over a fortnight.

Ticks suit a five-year-old, for whom writing 15 in a box is a bigger obstacle than the practising. A tick is also more forgiving — three minutes counts, which is the right message early on.

Look at the blanks, not the total

Six days of fifteen minutes will beat one session of ninety, and the grid shows which of those happened.

Skill consolidates between sessions rather than during them, and sleep does a real part of that work, so six nights is not equivalent to one however the totals compare. Count the non-blank columns first; the sum of the minutes is the less interesting number.

Not only for instruments

Anything practised in small regular amounts. A language. Handwriting. Times tables. A sport. Physiotherapy exercises, where adherence to a home programme is famously poor for precisely the reason this sheet addresses — nobody remembers whether they did Tuesday's set, so it is easy to believe they did.

Fourteen day columns turns it into a fortnight, which suits a physio programme better than a music week.

Sizing it

A title, the student's name, the item list, item count (4–12), days (5–14), and minutes or ticks. A4 or US Letter.

Keep it where the instrument is rather than on a desk, and fill it in immediately after practising. A chart completed at bedtime from memory has gone back to being an estimate, which is the thing it was printed to replace.

Print at 100%.