05/08/12 Transforming My Private Cello Studio-Blog #3
My internship is wrapping up and it has been a truly amazing experience! I wanted to transform aspects of my private lesson studio so that it utilizes the new resources that I have as a teacher and expand on the ideals that I believe are important for training students to be more aware and complete musicians (regardless of their level of ability, experience, and commitment.)
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The Practice Technique Toolbox assignment has been going well and the exercise of articulating what passages are obstacles, how to approach those obstacles and what the results are of using different practice strategies has been eye-opening. I think it is helpful for my students to have a vehicle to really look at how they practice and to collect data for themselves to see what works and doesn’t. It seems to be leading my students towards developing the ability to better judge what is accurate in their playing and what isn’t. It seems like it is encouraging a level of awareness in my students that will be a great resource to them as they develop as musicians.
I’ve been using the triple entry journal format for my students to document their practice technique assignment and reflect on their data. Below is an example of how I modified the existing MIE TEJ Template to make it represent the questions I was asking my students.
I’ve mostly being making handwritten charts for my students which look a little more like this:
Here is a list of practice techniques that one of my student’s has been using.
This process of documentation and reflection has been the catalyst for many of my students to look at what is/isn’t working when they practice and I’m noticing that they are starting to have questions that are now guiding what and how I am teaching them. I had a student ask me why they noticed improvement in cleaning up their sound during a passage but still couldn’t consistently play it without hitting neighboring strings. Rather than telling a student to move their bow away from the fingerboard to stop hitting neighboring strings because it is the “correct” thing to do, I had an opportunity to reinforce a challenging technique for this student as a solution to a problem that they articulated. I think there is real power in teaching that can provide an answer to a question the student discovers. My next step with this student would be ask them to find the answer to these kinds of questions when their cello knowledge is a little more substantial.
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One of my goals was to incorporate Multiple Resources for my students. Rather than just using the same books/exercise I usually use, I wanted to expand my materials in order to address my students’ needs from many different angles. I focused on using Viva Vibrato! by G. Fischbach and R. Frost as a supplement to the traditional vibrato exercises that I learned from my teachers.
The two exercises that I focused on from Viva Vibrato were the “Wave Duet” and the “Chicken Wing Vibrato” exercise. The ”Wave Duet” allows the student to focus specifically on the motion of the arm and a consistent and even movement without having to also maintain pitch. This allows the student to concentrate on the elbow and arm motion of vibrato. ”The Wave Duet” is also a great assessment exercise. If a student could do the exercise successfully, I knew that they were ready to focus on other approaches to vibrato. This is the first time I’ve ever used an exercise as an assessment tool rather than just a teaching tool!
Here is a video of my student, Anya, and I practicing a variation on the “Wave Duet”.
For students who need more work on developing a good relationship to the general motion of vibrato, I used the “Chicken Wing Vibrato” exercise. This exercise has students place their fingers on the front of their shoulder and make a vibrato-like motion (a combination of flapping and rotating) with their arm. This exercise has been exceptionally effective for students new to vibrato. By combining these exercises with exercises I was previously using I have the ability to better assess my students’ physical intuition
provide them with many different ways to approach learning a sometimes challenging physical concept.
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In order to collect Reflections from my students, I created a survey asking them about what they’ve experienced/noticed with the changes in my approach to teaching. It has been exciting to get so much feedback and to have reflection be a larger part of my experience as a teacher and as a part of my students’ experience. I look forward to sharing insights from those surveys in my internship portfolio.
Stay tuned for a link to my portfolio as the semester finishes.





