For my teaching portfolio I taught my student with ‘non-formal’ lessons that were outside of an educational environment and instead in a more comfortable/ familiar place which was my own room. These lessons had a teacher-centred approach as I was teaching unfamiliar exercises and new areas which they hadn’t delved into before. My student had many years of experience in the instrument that I taught them as we are both guitar students, but we specialised in different areas and still had gaps of knowledge I could fill and help them progress. My lessons were centred around jazz and working on my student’s improvisation, ear training and picking techniques in jazz but also skills that can be transferred to their styles of music so the lessons can be used long term and deemed helpful. My main mission for these lessons was for my student to become more familiar with the arpeggios that lie inside of a C major key and play more comfortably and fluidly so they can combat the anxiety of expression and freedom of improvisation.
Before the lessons even started and I met my student, I wanted to ensure the environment the student was walking into was familiar, warm and comfortable. Lan et al. made a discovery after lockdown with a randomised control trial including 750 people that warm neutral light and cool bright lights convey an emotional response of joviality and avidity which is beneficial for a growth mindset and keenness to learn. I additionally added a wave lamp in the corner of the room that project water-like lights on the corner of the room. The connection between water and conveying a sense of tranquillity stems mainly from our personal associations with water in general, such as its use for our survival, and its undisputed beauty, creating a neurological pathway that students would find comforting. The room itself includes posters of different bands and games that are age appropriate towards my student’s demographic, creating a space for conversation and curiosity into what genres of music or bands are on the wall with room to broaden their musical listening.
I wanted to keep three goals in mind for each lesson: Ensure mental health is good and lower the chances of learning anxiety, provide intrinsic motivational factors and create student independent learning. Mental health is of utmost importance in my teaching as learning requires a clear mind which allows information to be processed easier. Stress and being emotionally overwhelmed can be found to interrupt a person’s memory, “making it harder to remember what they’ve learned or follow instructions.” [Oxford Learning, What Parents Need to Know About How Mental Health Affects Learning,2025]. Motivational factors are what fuels a student’s mind to carry on pushing through hard topics or difficult to understand areas of their playing. By creating intrinsic motivational factors (personally fulfilling and inherent enjoyment) they will hopefully see the usefulness and gain resilience into carrying on with the lessons or to pursue and research further into the lesson topics. Therefore, fulfilling my next goal student independence. By providing enough information for the student to engage in their own problem-solving skills and carrying out practice at home, later lessons and personal growth in the student will rise. The main benefit of independent learning is they will form their own metacognitive processes and understand how to absorb information, but also improve time management, prioritisation and research skills when completing tasks or finding methods to practice which is achieved through relating the topics with their own interest. “Provide them with the space and opportunity to learn about things they are interested in. This can help them learn the skills they need and make independent learning easier when it comes to academic based tasks.” [Heathfield Knoll School, Why is independent learning important in higher education?, 2023]. These three goals would be achieved through a teacher-centred approach using behaviourism theories by Ivan Pavlov and Edward Thorndike such as classical and operant conditioning to gain an understanding of how a student learns through experience. Due to this my student took a look at Vark’s Modalities and decided on what multisensory approaches would prove beneficial to his learning which was a mix of visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. Due to their prior experience in learning, they gauge a preference to their learning styles, which created flexibility on my teaching methods and practises to ensure repeated process create a larger response.
My first lesson included a lot of questions concerning their experience in jazz and also their feelings towards their own guitar playing and life in general to ensure they are feeling happy and ready to learn. Due to the lesson being a 1:1 scenario, this routine would have to be more flexible when entering a bigger audience setting with this process being less frequent and potentially done online after or before classes. By starting a conversation with the student, I’m allowing the student to feel more comfortable with being taught by me and familiar with my character. I then started with the warmups to start the auditory and visual learning techniques. Firstly, I played through the two warmups slowly so the student could see visually what was being played and gain some pattern recognition skills which will improve their own independent learning. Auditory, playing through the warmups allowed the student to engage in what the next notes will be played which boosts their time management and efficiency in the small time slot we have. My student would ask a lot of questions about the exercises in the first lesson, and I would also provide a brief summary of the exercises’ usefulness and what it improves specifically. Questions like “how does this help” were always encouraged as a theorist learning style from Honey and Mumford was a sign of engagement and shows a value for the warmups. Due to experiencing certain points from a theorist learning style from my student, I adapted my teaching to suit this trait with an explanation of why these work and demonstrations/ visual examples with personal anecdotes so they can feel secure in learning the exercises. I used a metronome when the student felt comfortable playing through the warmups fully at a slow tempo and this would gradually increase and become harder, but show instant gratification and improvement. The main reasons I chose these examples to be included in my lessons was that warmups as a whole benefit the rest of the lesson and improve one’s technical abilities and ear training. The importance of warmups as a whole is that it mentally and physically prepares a person to play their instrument before learning anything difficult. The first exercise also improves ear training as you get used to the chromatic scale and how it sounds, allowing more engagement with the main task of learning arpeggios. “It’s a chance to focus on the very basics” [Joseph Dubose, The Importance of a warmup routine, 2010] sums up the best part of starting instrumental practice. By focusing on very basic skills that just require resilience like the warmups I provided such as dexterity and speed but also endurance and flexibility. I made sure to reinforce this idea to my student so they gain another intrinsic motivational factor that has relevancy and adds value to their playing.
Our main subject for the lessons was to focus on arpeggios due to their massive importance to jazz soloing and for its benefit of gaining familiarity with the fretboard and intervals. I presented the arpeggios in a manner that would be easier to remember and close together so unlock the main section of the fretboard when playing in C major. The arpeggios followed the chords that are played in a C major key and can be transposed to any key for versatility and efficiency due to the nature of playing guitar. The arpeggios were explained in this way: Major, minor, minor, major, dominant, minor, diminished; this followed the notes the 7 different notes that are involved in the major scale. I would recite them to the student, so they understood and as the student was a theorist with an auditory and visual learning style, I explained throughout why these are the chord types and how they fit into the caged system. “The CAGED system is method of mapping out your guitar’s fretboard by visualizing the common open C, A, G, E, and D chord shapes up and down the guitar neck in any key.” [PickupMusic.com, What is the CAGED system for guitar, 2022]. By introducing a familiar interest/topic I was hoping the student unlocked some autodidacticism for their independent learning and to learn further arpeggios in the other three shapes that wouldn’t be taught in the lessons. Even though the main focus was learning to solo, I wanted to provide some fundamentals and answer questions surrounding the practice of learning arpeggios in the form of caged chords and normal triads using 7ths as an anchor to scaffold up to the arpeggios and promote divergent thinking. By gaining an understanding of the main fundamentals that make the arpeggios it opens multiple possibilities for when learning at home with new topics, they already have a basis of guitar music theory to follow.
My second lesson started with formative and summative assessment methods of the previous lesson so that the student is supported if they were stuck on anything last lesson and prevent gaps in their knowledge so we can smoothly progress to the advanced stages of memory retention and comfortability of arpeggios. I introduced more metacognitive ways of practice and how to improve memory retention with a method that my own guitar teacher taught me which included playing the arpeggios: backwards, from different notes, 5th intervals and playing each octave together. This is a form of ‘deliberate practice’. “Deliberate practice refers to a special type of practice that is purposeful and systematic. While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance.” [James Clear, Deliberate Practice:
What It Is and How to Use It]. Deliberate practice cuts out the monotonous and repetitive simple thinking and its relevancy lies in the breaking down a certain area into different chunks of learning (such as playing the arpeggios in different ways). I added formative assessments in the form of small quizzes and recaps with questions like “what picking technique are we using” and then used summative assessments when recapping over arpeggios and increasing the difficulty of the warmups to show clear signs of independent learning. I also included a worksheet as a musical example with all the arpeggios to use at home for revision. “They can boost engagement, support memory, and build confidence for learners throughout their learning journey.” [Twinkle, Benefits of worksheets in the classroom, 2026]. By using a worksheet, I’m able to adapt to the student’s learning style of visual learning and capitalise on that with a visual worksheet.
For my last lesson I wanted to focus more on the actual tone and playing, as we have been partaking in music theory intensive heavy learning. I wanted to introduce the guitar’s main parts and how they work to create certain tones for the genre like the pickups and where to pick plus the reasoning for this. As my student is a theorist, I believed that explaining the guitar parts and how they work, but also why and when they work would cover most questions surrounding it. Finally, I wanted to put all these techniques, exercises and warmups to good use to show the student their own progression with a classic 2-5-1. This would promote Aaron Copland’s quote of “Music is free due to the imagination humans have that create music” as allowing the student to have freedom and fun incorporated into the lesson is seen as an extrinsic motivational factor in the form of a reward.
For a reflection and conclusion on my teaching, I’m using Gibbs’ reflective cycle as they cover numerous points of teaching that can be improved and evaluated. The lessons themselves were mentally challenging at points as I was trying to choose my words carefully and also ensure I’m listening to the student carefully so I can adapt to their learning styles properly but also provide the correct information on anything they were struggling with. An overall evaluation of the lessons was that they provided great results and were compact enough to allow the student time to reflect on their own learning and understand the lessons, but also what went well was the fact the student practiced some of the lesson materials at home which was one of my important objectives of the lesson. I believe that the student could have learned more or become even better in the final lesson if they practiced the arpeggios more as they told me they hadn’t really practiced all that much with them compared to the exercise. I could have improved on my inclusion of more worksheets and musical examples to help connect the lessons to a more relatable topic of interest for the student with worksheets on the exercise and detailed examples to follow it, but also teaching the arpeggios over a song of their choice or style that would have been a reward which might have made them want to practice and use their own independent learning. Next time I would change the monotonous way of learning the arpeggios with more visual and stimulating examples for their own independent learning away from the lesson as I believe I didn’t provide enough intrinsic motivation for them to play at home. Furthermore, I would additionally talk more about the instrument and gear as a whole to stop any confusion or gaps in knowledge about guitar amps and guitars with explanations on how they work, rather than thinking they already had prior knowledge on that. I would also take further actions to provide a better guitar for the student and more time practicing with the amp as this will be necessary for their further events and gigs that they perform with.
Bibliography
Clear, James. “Deliberate Practice: What It Is, What It’s Not, and How to Use It.” James Clear, jamesclear.com/deliberate-practice-theory.
DuBose, Joseph. “Getting Started: The Importance of a Warm-up Routine – Musical U.” Musical U, 11 Mar. 2010, www.musical-u.com/learn/getting-started-the-importance-of-a-warm-up-routine/.
Gale, Jen. “Why Is Water so Calming? – the Institute for Environmental Research and Education.” The Institute for Environmental Research and Education, 20 Oct. 2025, iere.org/why-is-water-so-calming/.
hkschool. “Why Is Independent Learning Important in Higher Education? | an Independent Schools Point of View.” Https://Www.hkschool.org.uk/, www.hkschool.org.uk/why-is-independent-learning-important-in-higher-education-an-independent-schools-point-of-view/.
Marquez, Lizelle. “7 Elements Every Teacher Should Know about Effective Music Classroom Posters.” Itsdecorably, 21 July 2025, itsdecorably.com/blogs/blogs/7-elements-every-teacher-should-know-about-effective-music-classroom-posters.
Morales-Bravo, Javiera, and Pablo Navarrete-Hernandez. “Enlightening Wellbeing in the Home: The Impact of Natural Light Design on Perceived Happiness and Sadness in Residential Spaces.” Building and Environment, vol. 223, no. 223, 8 Aug. 2022, p. 109317, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360132322005509, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2022.109317.
Orr, Derek. “What You Need to Know about How Mental Health Affects Learning.” Oxford Learning, 8 May 2025, oxfordlearning.com/what-parents-need-to-know-about-how-mental-health-affects-learning/.
pickupmusic. “What Is the CAGED System for Guitar? Learn the CAGED Method Today – Pickup Music.” Www.pickupmusic.com, 18 Dec. 2022, www.pickupmusic.com/blog/what-is-the-caged-system.
Sparks, Joseph. “Tutor2u.” Tutor2u, 2018, www.tutor2u.net/psychology/reference/learning-approaches-the-behaviourist-approach.
TES Editorial. “The Different Teaching Approaches Explained | Tes.” Www.tes.com, 15 Aug. 2023, www.tes.com/magazine/teaching-learning/general/what-are-different-teaching-approaches-pedagogy.
twinkle. “Benefits of Worksheets in the Classroom | Twinkl USA.” Twinkl, 2026, www.twinkl.co.uk/blog/benefits-of-worksheets-in-the-classroom-how-do-worksheets-help-students-learn.
