The Heart Strings Method was created by Heart and Mind Pathways Founding Director Bronwyn Buckley. Bronwyn believes that every child is gifted with their own unique talents and abilities. She firmly believes that early music training develops the heart and mind of each student, preparing them for lifelong learning and enabling them to reach their full potential.
What is the Heart Strings Method?
The Heart Strings Method is an explicit, sequential and multisensory daily instructional music method that introduces young students to the joy of playing a stringed instrument. While initially written as a classroom program, it may also be implemented successfully with individuals. Students have fun, absorb excellent pedagogy and enjoy collaborative learning while neural pathways are created that lay the foundations for lifelong learning across the curriculum and beyond. More than just teaching the violin, the Heart Strings Method is a tool that helps students socially, emotionally and academically.
Why is the Heart Strings Method important?
Investing twelve minutes a day implementing the Heart Strings Method can positively impact student learning, particularly literacy learning, by simultaneously engaging every part of the brain. Research shows that the ability to hear and manipulate sound is the key indicator of reading success. The Heart Strings Method introduces students to key components of sound such as beat, pitch, rhythm and music notation through daily singing, clapping and the repetition of learned sequences which they then learn to play on their instrument.
The Heart Strings Method involves every part of a student’s brain as they learn to hear sound, see what it looks like, say and sing it and play and do it on their violin. Students learn to identify and remember sound as they listen to it and imitate it, thereby learning to manipulate it. The uniqueness and success of the program is in the daily practice video sessions which reinforce critical skills. Students grow in self-awareness and self-confidence as their auditory processor is trained and neural pathways essential to literacy and learning are developed. Additionally, attention spans are increased as students develop focus and self-regulation. Social and team skills are fostered and improvements are made in memory, behaviour and wellbeing.
How does the Heart Strings Method work?
A Heart Strings licence can be purchased for use either by a school or by an individual, allowing access to the daily online instructional videos. If implemented in a school setting, all the learning takes place as part of the daily curriculum. Classroom teachers are provided with weekly video links that guide their class through a ten- to twelve-minute daily practice session, supporting students’ focus and learning throughout the day. Although all pedagogy is embedded in the videos, students can additionally participate in a weekly half-hour small group lesson with a Heart Strings trained instrumental specialist to reinforce skills learned. Classroom teachers need no formal music training but can rest assured that they are facilitating a quality classroom music method.
The Heart Strings Method can equally be implemented in an individual setting through purchasing a separate licence.
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Additional Information
The Heart Strings Method contains eight levels of violin instruction, and each level takes one school term to complete. It will therefore take two years of instruction from the time of starting to complete the whole Heart Strings learning program.
There are eight weekly practice video lessons in the first introductory level, and ten weekly practice video lessons in each remaining level. Each video lesson is intended to be practised for five days before being marked as complete, allowing students to move on to the next lesson. There is flexibility for some weeks where this may not be possible. A minimum of eight video lessons must be completed before moving on to the next level.
Sample of the Heart Strings Method
