Natalie Morris

MU 252B

Peer Teaching Reflection #1

February 18th, 2019

Clarinet Peer Teaching

As I revisited my lesson, I realize I talked for about 77% of the lesson. This means my

students were not able to practice the material as much as I would have liked them to. However,

the students did not have much of an understanding of the concept as a whole, meaning

background information was vital to their understanding. The fact that the lesson was mostly me

talking does not bother me as much because at the end of the lesson, the students were able to

articulate (pun intended) what they learned very clearly and succinctly.

As for each of the teaching cycle steps, I recognize I had strong moments and moments

of weakness. I did not engage my students at all to start the lesson, but merely jumped into

teaching with a short anecdote as my framing step. I did better in my acquire step by drawing a

picture for the students to visually conceptualize what should be happening in their mouths and

pretending my finger was a tongue articulating on my mouthpiece. In my elaboration step, I

provided two exercises for understanding tonguing better. One being the ‘stop and go’

mouthpiece exercise to focus on tonguing and the other being the marker technique to show

students where they are actually articulating. The second technique did not work out as I

imagined, and in response to that I will be talking to my professor about which materials are best

for that exercise. In memory strengthening, I had the students apply the concept to an exercise in

their books and explain to each other what they learned.

 Overall, the lesson went very well, aside from the marker exercise. Corban even asked a

very important question that helped both students to understand the concept better. If I could

change the lesson, I would take out the marker portion (and introduce it later in their

development as clarinetists) and supplement that time with more practice on tonguing.

Bonus

I really enjoyed how Corban used the piano in his lesson to John. I liked the idea of a

young student playing with an equal temperament instrument that does not move pitch-wise.

This helps the student develop their own ear starting at a young age and be more in tune. I think

this technique fits into the late elaborate and memory strengthening portion of the teaching cycle

because it is often not the primary topic of a lesson but is used to better the clarinet player and

help them to sound more in tune. This is something the student can be working on

subconsciously, without too much attention to it.