Kai Smith

MUED 302

April 27, 2018

Middles School Observation

For this observation, I had the privilege of observing a local middle school’s 6th

grade woodwind class. In the first 15 minutes or so of the class, a physics teacher

brought her students into the band room and the band director helped demonstrate

some physics concepts such as frequency, amplitude, harmonics, and resonance. This

was quite interesting because he had the majority of the class demonstrate their

instruments for the physics class. After the physics students left the class, he continued

the class by going over the Bb, Ab, Eb, and F scales with the class. While I really liked

that the band director played several instruments to act as the student’s model, he did

not make any comments relating directly to instrument technique. In this class, there

were only two double reed players who both played bassoon and I had to opportunity

to have a quick 10 minute sectional with the both of them. For this sectional, I was

supposed to work on their chromatic scale from low Eb to G. In this quick 10 minute

sectional, I was able to address some posture issues and fingering problems as well. One

of the students had built the habit of bringing her face to where the bassoon was and

she also played the bassoon bell pointed forward instead of across the body, like a seat

belt. The other student was having trouble getting the lower notes out so I compared
the breathing as if she was trying to fog up a mirror. This comparison really seemed to

help as she took deeper breaths, lowered her jaw, and the low notes would come out.

While we did not get through the first 5 notes of the chromatic scale, I felt that this was

a productive sectional because the students were able to address some fundamental

problems to their playing.