Impact on Student Learning Reflection

For this project, I chose to teach 3 beginning brass students about fundamental brass-playing
techniques and the first five notes of the concert Bb scale. Because I had difficulty with pacing in my last
project, I made sure to spread this instruction out over a longer period of time. This group consists of
one tuba player, one baritone player, and one trumpet player, all of whom have little to no band
experience. We worked in small group sectionals and some in one-on-one lessons, and I approached this
with a more casual teaching style because I noticed that the students seemed nervous to get started on
these instruments. I made sure to get to know them as people and as students for a little while before I
started working with them on the project, and I learned that the students were interested in sports,
video games, and listening to music. I made sure to bring in these interests into the lessons as much as
possible by drawing comparisons between those and fundamental instrumental techniques; for
example, I compared warming up on instruments to warming up before playing sports with breathing,
stretching, and getting muscles warm before jumping into the more challenging activities. The students
responded well to this, and I noticed that they were more eager to respond and engage since they could
tie in those concepts to what we were doing.

I started the project by administering the pre-test. We were in a small group sectional, and I
went through each category of the rubric with each of them before moving on to the next to make sure
the results were fair and accurate. For hand technique and buzzing range/flexibility, I used “yes” and
“no” as parameters for the assessment because I wanted to measure if they were able to hold the
instrument correctly and if the were using their embouchure correctly to create sound. I used a number
system on overall buzzing ability and playing the first five notes of the concert Bb scale. I used numbers
for these areas because I wanted to measure how they would do with and without my assistance, and
with that added variable I though a wider spectrum of results would reflect that best. The students were
all able to create an initial buzz and hold it for a few seconds, but none of them could hold out a buzz for
more than 4 beats at 100 bpm. Some students were able to move the pitch up, but they all struggled
with moving the pitch down. One student also struggled with hearing the difference in high and low
pitches, so we worked on that a bit independently. I started by playing pitches that were very distant
from each other and asking which was higher or lower. Once he started getting the hang of that more, I
gradually moved the distance of the pitches closer and closer together. He is now able to hear half-step
pitch differences and was once even ale to hear that he was out of tune. The baritone student was
struggling to hold his instrument up (he is using a marching horn now, so it is very heavy to hold in front
of him), so I made sure to give him plenty of breaks and reminded him to keep his posture up
throughout all of our lessons.

During the first lesson we spent some time reviewing basic fundamentals like good breathing
techniques, hand positioning, feeling the air move all the way through the horn, creating a consistent
and easy-feeling buzz, playing with good posture, and changing pitches with embouchure muscles rather
than mouthpiece pressure. The trumpet and tuba students struggled with playing low concert Bb while
the baritone student struggled with getting the concert F out. I was not expecting the trumpet player to
have difficulty with the lower note, but we worked on creating more space in the mouth by pretending
to eat “hot lasagna” or focusing on keeping the teeth spread apart. I also worked on relaxing and moving
the face muscles in small amounts for a bit with them, and again I tied their interests into this (e.g., “In a
video game run you wouldn’t completely change your hand positioning on the controller after you’ve
gotten through it before just because you want to take a different approach, right? You’d just tweak it a
tiny bit to get what you need, so do the same with your muscles- slow and tiny adjustments.”) They
responded well to this connection, and when I needed to address it in later lessons, I could use that as a
reference instead of explaining everything again (“remember muscle control like with video games!”)
which kept the pace of our lessons up. I made sure to use a lot of positive reinforcement with these
students as well, and this helped open them up a lot during lessons. Once I started giving them ample
positive reinforcement, the students were more willing to speak up and answer questions, and
eventually they were eager to learn and asked questions of their own.

I waited a while for the second lesson, so the students had the chance to practice the
techniques in other contexts. When we came back together in a sectional, I spent a little bit of time
reviewing previous concepts with them. Rather than simply talking through them, though, I asked some
vague questions about breathing, hand positioning, buzzing, tone, embouchure, and more to give them
the chance to recall it themselves. The tuba student was very eager to answer questions and was
answering them all correctly, so after a little bit I had him sit out of answering. If I could go back and
change that lesson, I would have him come up with questions for the other students so that they were
all participating at their own levels. During this review time, the baritone player- who is typically very
reserved- was speaking out a lot more and asking a lot of very good questions that helped me teach
everyone better. The trumpet player was acting very shy during this, so I made sure to give him
opportunities to speak out where I was positive that he’d know the answers; this way, even if he did feel
like he was on the spot, he was going to be successful. When learning about new information, the
students were discovering these new techniques more independently first, and then they would ask
questions when they were stuck. I initially made sure we were all practicing together, but when we
would do independent work, the students felt more confident problem-solving on their own than in the
previous lesson.

In the last lesson, we again reviewed for a bit at the beginning in the same manner, and this
time all of the students were answering questions equally and accurately. We got through this review
more quickly than I’d anticipated, so we reviewed it again and I had the students demonstrate the topics
we discussed while the others observed and shared what they were observing. When getting into the
new material, the students were eager to continue on but were having some issues performing
fundamental techniques in addition to the new material. I made sure to break the instruction down into
smaller steps with more specific instructions to better understand where they were having issues and to
give them the chance to accumulate knowledge rather than sort through it later in reflection. In this
lesson, we were working on memorizing, so it was really important to go over one note at a time until it
was completely understood before moving on to the next one. I knew we’d be playing a lot and that it
may have been straining since we were working on expanding range, so I also made sure to give them
plenty of breaks to rest and recover. The students were very receptive to this lesson and were able to
meet every objective that I’d laid out for them.

When I administered the post-test for the students, it was very casual and relaxed as to not
make hem anxious about testing. I had them play through each section of the rubric one at a time with
each student before moving on to the next, just as I’d done in the pre-test, to ensure accurate and fair
results. Each student made significant and obvious improvement on their fundamental techniques and
playing the first five notes of the concert Bb scale. The students were mostly able to perform the
techniques and skills we worked on perfectly, however there were a few things the students were still
struggling with. They struggled most with consistent buzzing on mouthpieces, and I now know that I
should have spent more time working on that with them. I also noticed students struggling with
memorizing the scale pattern, so I need to be sure to give memorization the time it needed for them to
fully understand.