A. I believe that the pacing of my lesson went very well.

Altogether it was about a

seventeen-minute lesson where my focus was to make students more comfortable with

7/8 time. The students kept delaying the 7th beat eighth note pick-up to each measure,

which is why I wanted to work on it. We began with having the metronome on the

Harmony Director at a slow tempo. I said a rhythm on the syllable ta and the students

would repeat. Then the students would play my rhythm on a unison concert C, since the

piece begins in C minor. Then we kept the slow tempo to work the beginning to rehearsal

letter B. My projected start time was a little bit later because Doug took longer than

anticipated on his warm-up but it was not an issue.

B. In this lesson, my strengths revolved around specific feedback. I have found that most

of my lessons are similar in this aspect. Many young bands have a difficult time playing

in mixed meter like 7/8 time. They tend to play the seventh beat too late if it is a pick-up

eighth note into the next bar. So in this lesson I spent a lot of time telling students not to

play the seventh beat too long, or to give it space, etc. My weakness this lesson was that I

had an almost equal amount of general and specific praise. I definitely need to include

more specific praise. Some examples of specific praise were, great posture, Steve and

I like how separated the flutes played it. Unfortunately, at the end of playing a large

section, I would tend to sometimes say good or not say anything at all.

C. I think that I would review to make sure that student felt more comfortable playing in

the 7/8 time, but I believe that it was a pretty good lesson overall. The Symphonic Band

meets every day fifty minutes so it is nice that the youngest and least experienced
students receive more attention. Next lesson I plan to revisit the companion guide and

really focus on articulation. The piece is currently being played too heavy and the notes

are too long. It needs to be much lighter and have more separation. I would also like to

improve on dynamics in the next lesson since there were many hairpins that were not

observed even though I mentioned them during the lesson.