Introduction
This portfolio reflects on a series of piano lessons conducted with a beginner piano student, evaluating the effectiveness of the activities and teaching methods used to support their musical development. I will consider successes and challenges encountered throughout the process of teaching and identify areas for improvement in the future. Focus will be placed on the structure and pacing of lessons, adaption of teaching strategies and effectiveness of planning. The first lesson taught has been excluded, as the later lessons offered greater insight into the student’s progress and allowed for a more meaningful evaluation of my teaching and its effectiveness.
My student is a 20-year-old beginner pianist whose main instrument is the drums. The overall aim of the lessons was to establish a strong musical foundation by developing basic music theory, hand independence and correct technique with the eventual goal of enabling the student to play a simple pop song. This was approached through the ‘Sound before symbol’ methodology. The portfolio will also explore how elements of the Suzuki method and Dalcroze Eurhythmics were integrated, particularly through listening and repetition, and will evaluate their impact on the student’s progress and confidence.
Lesson Evaluations and Reflections
Lesson 2
The lesson began with a check-in on the pupil’s well-being, followed by a discussion of their practice. The student was encouraged to demonstrate where they have improved. The lesson then moved into a starter activity: a rhythmic listening game named ‘Don’t Clap This One Back’, where the teacher performs a series of rhythms and the pupil must imitate, avoiding a specific pattern. Judging by behaviour displayed in the previous lesson, the student seemed to be a kinaesthetic learner therefore, I chose to build on their strengths here. This starter was effective, building focus and aural processing skills, supporting a smooth transition into the main lesson. The student successfully engaged with the game, imitating rhythms, creating their own patterns and maintaining tempo. Establishing this “copy me” method early supported later tasks as the student was used to listening and repeating rhythmic ideas.
Following this, a Dalcroze eurythmics exercise was introduced, where the student stood and copied my movements that were linked to different musical notes. This strategy aimed to support the understanding of music theory by linking abstract concepts to physical experiences, making learning more memorable. By making use of the student’s kinaesthetic learning style, the activity improved focus and coordination which is are key skills needed for future technical development. The student completed the task with accuracy and a clear sense of pulse.
A challenge arose when transitioning to symbolic notation. The student struggled to link note names to the correct symbol. For example, the student associated the crotchet symbol with the word walking but could not recall the appropriate terminology. On reflection, this difficulty may have stemmed from introducing too many new concepts within a short period of time. Despite altering the lesson to introduce three notes (instead of six) and flash cards to enhance multi-sensory learning, a more useful approach would have been to build on the student’s prior knowledge. For instance, linking note values to drummer terminology such as ¼ notes and 1/8th notes may have strengthened understanding. In future lessons, greater consideration will be given to the musical background of the student when planning lessons to identify opportunities for connections and reduce potential confusion. Also, new information will be introduced at a steadier pace to ensure concepts are understood before progressing. Overall, the lesson highlighted the importance of careful pacing and structure to prevent cognitive overload.
Lesson 3
For Lesson three, the primary the aim was to introduce the left hand and begin developing early coordination between both hands. The lesson began with a “Slide and Punch” exercise that acted as an engaging bridge to the main lesson objective. I demonstrated the task by asking the student to punch one knee while rubbing the other. This activity was intended to build bimanual coordination and hand independence as it requires the brain to send independent signals to each hand (Experimental, n.d.), while enhancing focus due to the concentration needed to maintain the differing actions. Drawing on Fleming, (1992), kinaesthetic learners benefit from seeing, hearing and physically experiencing rhythms, which is why I included this task. The student successfully completed the challenge and responded enthusiastically to the task, demonstrating excellent coordination skills. The student had mild difficulty when asked to swap hands, however, adapted quickly, suggesting confidence in this area.
The lesson progressed to the piano, where another coordination exercise was shown. The student was asked to play two notes in one hand against one note in the other. After demonstrating the task, I invited the pupil to copy. Although hesitant at first, the student completed this task accurately with minimal prompting and a noticeable growth in confidence was observed. However, when asked to swap hands, the student experienced greater difficulty. Despite earlier success with the body coordination task, the contrast suggested the issue did not lie in basic motor coordination but the lack of piano-specific skills. Playing piano requires multiple cognitive demands such as finger control, learning patterns and keeping rhythm which must be managed simultaneously (Xinyue, 2023), suggesting that the student may have struggled to transfer coordination skills between general context and the instrument specific one.
In response to this situation, I began to break down the task into smaller components before gradually combining them. I also included elements of Dalcroze Eurythmics from the previous lesson. I encouraged the student to associate the right hand with “walking” and the left with “stride” and asked the student to verbalise “walking” aloud while playing. This scaffolding approach was highly effective as the student displayed improved consistency and was able to play shorter sections of the exercise without pausing. Reflecting on this, I will continue to integrate multi-sensory learning, specifically kinaesthetic methods, as the student responded positively to that sensory pathway. In conclusion, this lesson highlighted the importance of guiding a student who is struggling, while also maintaining their enthusiasm and confidence, and emphasised the need to clearly connect multi-sensory tasks to the main instrument.
Getting to know student
Opening activity
Dalcroze
Lesson 4
Lesson four aimed to further develop coordination while introducing elements of musical expression. For the starter activity, I asked the student to show me the practise they had completed over the week as they had found the previously set task (the “two for one scale”) challenging. This approach allowed me to revisit prior learning, assess progress and identify any developing habits or memorised mistakes. I used the time to correct hand posture as throughout the lessons, flailing fingers has been a recurring concern. This approach was helpful as it ensured that lesson time was used efficiently, avoiding unnecessary repetition of material the student has already grasped.
The student attempted to apply the improvements I suggested, and I was able to see a large amount of progress in the coordination of both hands. However, the continued presence of raised fingers indicated that although coordination was developing, earlier teaching regarding hand posture had not yet been fully internalised. Going forward, I will pay more attention to monitoring fundamental hand posture during all exercises and challenges completed by the pupil to make sure the student understands the importance of learning these techniques. Additionally, I will also be wary of assuming past learning has been retained. This session highlighted the importance of carefully observing all the developing technical skills of a student. In upcoming lessons, I will design warmups that not only relate to the main learning objectives but also targets recurring technical issues. I will also provide explicit feedback during the starter activities rather than focusing solely on the main tasks.
After the starter, the lesson progressed to basic articulation terms, specifically staccato, legato, forte and piano. I explained the meaning of the terms staccato and legato and modelled them through both singing and playing example melodies, before asking the student to echo the examples vocally. Despite the student engaging enthusiastically with the staccato example, they displayed noticeable hesitation when asked to attempt legato singing. This suggested that either the example was overly complicated or the student only had a partial understanding of the word. Swanwick, (2002) has stated that, “The ability to interpret sensitively and encourage the musical engagement of individuals is crucial to effective teaching”. In line with this, I changed my strategy by reassuring the student to reduce frustration. I also exaggerated the contrast between the two sounds to deepen understanding by clarifying the boundaries between the two terms. The student then attempted the task again as I sang alongside them. They responded well to this clarification and some improvement was observed; however, a lack of confidence remained. This prompted me to shift from an aural to a more visual approach.
I proceeded to show the student images of various objects and asked them to state whether each image more closely related to staccato or legato, before selecting descriptive words to characterise each articulation. This was followed by a kinaesthetic task where the pupil displayed the articulations through physical movement. The purpose of these activities was to engage the other senses in the learning of these terms, as it had become clear that further reinforcement through multisensory strategies would be beneficial to provide a more well-rounded understanding and aid memory retention (N.SuziantiA, 2019). The student was highly receptive to these tasks, resulting in a noticeable improvement in confidence throughout the lesson. This improvement appeared to stem from a clear mental image and concrete words being provided, which provided reference points when distinguishing between the two articulations.
In the future, I would aim to include more opportunities for singing as aural skills are essential for success in graded exams and play a key role in improving phrasing, expression and musicality (Matters, 2018). I would also extend the use of visual and tactile activities, such as encouraging the student to draw continuous, smooth lines to represent legato and short dots for staccato. Ultimately, the lesson emphasised the need to be flexible and carefully adapt the lesson to the student’s needs. This will ensure technical skills are worked on consistently, allowing the student to truly understand and internalise the new information.
Multi-sensory learning
Pedagogy and Methodologies
My teaching approach was primarily student-centered, focused on the students personal learning style, skill development and engagement to increase motivation and foster independence. I incorporated a range of strategies including enactive learning and the “teacher- as- student” approach, to aid the student in mastering new concepts and developing a deeper theoretical understanding of topics such as scales and rhythm. For example, imaginative imagery was used to reinforce technical concepts such as encouraging the student to imagine the piano as a “hot plate” when learning staccato or visualising a rolling wave to support the use of legato. Also, the use of imagination effectively aided in engaging the student in the lesson. To improve, I could have applied imaginative strategies across a wider range of activities completed during the lesson.
Inspired by the principles of the Suzuki method, the demonstration and imitation approach formed a central part of my teaching process. The learning environment was also carefully considered, with an emphasis on creating a non-threatening and supportive atmosphere through consistent use of encouraging language, genuine praise and detailed feedback. Comments such as, “you’ve clearly improved the scale from last lesson, well done on playing the notes smoothly and keeping in time with the metronome”, clearly bolstered confidence. Such positive reinforcement (stimulation) has been shown to elevate active participation (Lee, 2010). Reflecting on this approach, I may have placed too much emphasis on positive feedback, which may have reduced opportunities to provide constructive criticism when necessary.
Technical and aural skills such as scales and singing were firmly linked to real musical contexts. For instance, the student was shown the ‘Turkish March’ by W.A Mozart to demonstrate how articulations would be applied in a piece of music. This ensured that the student not only understood how to execute the techniques in isolation but also how to apply them musically.
Additionally, continuous formative assessment was utilised during tasks and allowed for immediate identification of difficult areas. To improve however, more structured self-assessments would be included to further build the students independence, preventing future overreliance on my guidance. Intrinsic motivation was heavily encouraged by identifying the student’s personal goals and referring to them regularly to support perseverance during difficult tasks. However, I could have developed this further by setting more short-term, measurable targets. The “transferring and effecting” section of accelerated learning was also utilised by teaching effective practice strategies and using clear, concrete language. I made use of sentences such as, “imagine your wrists are heavy and relaxed” to address tension, while “imagine the keys are sticky” helped improve finger control.
Teaching Practise
Lesson Plans
Final Reflection
Through this series of lessons, I have developed a deeper understanding of the importance of efficient teaching and how to adapt methods and lesson plans to suit a student. One key area of progress has been in my communication and pedagogical knowledge, specifically in learning how to give clear instructions and explain musical concepts in a simpler way. I have also developed greater confidence in leadership and creative problem solving, making effective use of formative and summative assessment types to guide the lessons.
It became clear that efficient teaching requires flexibility, patience and resilience especially when activities do not go as planned. To further improve my teaching, I would aim to include more repertoire-based learning, ensuring the student spends more time applying skills through pieces rather than relying on short exercises and multi-sensory activities. This experience has been key to shaping my approach to teaching and has strengthened my ability to deliver productive and impactful piano lessons.
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