Tracking a Year 3 Drummer
Posted: 13/01/15
We are tracking one of our very gifted Year 3 drummers this term.
This student has been learning Drums for 15 months now and is making remarkable progress.
At Learn to Rock we run a Peer Mentoring scheme where invite older students work with younger students. This type of work has many benefits to the learning of the younger student and the older Peer Mentor reflection of their own performance and difficulties faced then overcome.
This term we have Jack in Year 9 working with Reece.
In this particular lesson I was guiding Jack in teaching Reece how to play one of the Drum solo’s that Jack is working in for one of his Rockschool grade 6 Drum exam which Jack will take later this year.
The solo is very difficult as it moves bar to bar from a 4 crotchet beat feel to an 8th quaver beat feel in 7/8.
Whilst watching the extracts below keep in mind that Reece is 7 years old, Jack is 13 years old.
Jack demonstrated, modelled and scaffolded the extracts for Reece and both boys after 15 mins into the lesson were playing to the high standard as seen on the video.
Jack encouraged Reece to vary his 7/8 bar fills.
This was a also great experience for me as the teacher in helping me to develop techniques to help both students learn and make faster progress.
By watching the interaction between these two students I was able to observe their chosen styles of learning and teaching sections at the student level.
This in turn helped me to see how such interactions work and are successful at student level. Ultimately my ways if delivering subsequent lessons will be adapted in terms if how 7 and 13 year olds approach learning and strategically analyse their own progress.