What Separates My Students From Yours

In my 6th grade band class, Creed and I have recently started our personal 1-on-1 with our students. Due to this, we are not so sure of all of our student's learning styles, but conversations we have shared has given us an outlook on what they may be.

Comparing the learning styles of all my students at once, there is two that they all share (as with most percussionists) is auditory-musical, and kinesthetic. Percussionists heavily depend on listening to other members of the band to signal when to start playing, so repetition of performing with a full ensemble really heightens this learning style. As for kinesthetic, percussionists develop something we call "muscle memory", where after playing a section of a song for a period of time we memorize the hand movements for that section. If my students do not know how to play an excerpt from a composition, I demonstrate  their parts, which trigger those two learning styles. They notice what they should be playing, while observing how their hands should be moving.

Splitting the classes in two, I work with three students a period. Each group brings about their own different learning styles. For my first period, I am not all sure about one of my students learning styles. Hopefully after spending more time with that students, I will be able to conclude which styles they mostly resemble. For the other two (not including the two in my previous paragraph) one is interpersonal and one is intrapersonal. As with the interpersonal student, he likes to tell me specifically what parts he is struggling with in his music, while the intrapersonal student prefers to practice her music on her own. While she participates with no trouble in sectionals, I mostly have to ask what she is having trouble with in her music before she will tell me. In my other period, this group of three has strong ties with each other and I consider them all interpersonal. They can be quite chatty at times, but work exceptionally well together; often offering suggestions to one another and even demonstrating their parts to one another. I love their cooperation with one another, but I have to find some way to ease their talking just a little.

Overall, no matter how similar students may be, they each have their own style of learning that makes them unique. I am still attempting to learn how my students learn best, but as the year goes on I will eventually make this discovery.