When they sit down to practice, most students will just start at the beginning of their piece and play straight through to the end. And they’ll do the same thing every day.
This is not the most effective way to practice. But students will only learn more effective practice techniques if we take the time to teach them. It is worth the time investment to coach students on specific practice strategies. And we’ll be most effective if we teach, review, and emphasize practice strategies often.
I have compiled a list of “practice tricks” and placed them inside my students’ piano binders. I ask students to use at least one trick from the list every week, and report back to me which trick they used. This way, students have specific strategies for mastering their pieces, and they train themselves to use these strategies every week.