I know I’m not the first person to teach this way and you all probably already do this, but I am finding it INCREDIBLY helpful lately.  So here you have it. 

I like to point out the repeating patterns in songs to my students.  A lot of my students (especially the beginners) see a long song and freak out. 

“Oh no!  I can’t do this.  This is way too hard.”  I see the shoulders start to slump, the head sink into the chest, the tears welling in the eyes and know I have to act fast or we’re never going to make any progress. 

So I take a small section of the song and surprise them with how easy they can manage it.  I then point out all the times that section repeats itself throughout the song.  Sometimes the section repeats itself a ton.  So we count all the measures where the section does NOT repeat itself and the student is really excited to see that they really only have a few more measures to learn. 

Today, one (originally scared) little girl even said she thinks she can memorize the whole song!  Yay!