ESTA
Postgraduate certificate – Percussion

Course Content by Unit

Unit 1:  Teaching percussion technique to children and young people learning percussion instruments 

1. Posture/Playing positions
2. Grip
3. Independence
4. Balance between hands
5. Encouraging the tone from percussion instruments
6. Mallet technique
7. Rudiments
8. Warm up exercises
9. Orchestral Percussion
10. Tuned Percussion
11. Timpani
12. Drum Kit
13. World Percussion
14. Studio technique
15. Working as a section member/Playing as part of an ensemble
16. Care and maintenance of instruments

Unit 2: How children and young people learn to play percussion instruments

1. How learners learn
2. Simultaneous Learning
3. Learning spiral
4. My learners now
5. Understanding, assimilating and consolidating.
6. Skills, knowledge and understanding
7. Learning music musically
8. Developing aural awareness/perception and acuity
9. Pupil/teacher relationships
10. Learning scales and studies
11. Starting a lesson

Unit 3: Teaching strategies for percussion teachers working with children and young people

1. Understanding my teaching now
2. Preparation for teaching
3. Expectation of teaching outcomes
4. Diagnosis of learners’ needs
5. Audio-Visual-Kinaesthetic learning
6. Aptitude for learning
7. Motivation for learning
8. Simultaneous learning
9. Assessment
10. Exams/Festivals/Competitions
11. Tutors/methods
12. Teaching whole classes/small groups/individuals
13. Proactive and reactive teaching

Unit 4: Developing a percussion teaching curriculum for children and young people          

1. Understanding what is meant by a curriculum and a syllabus
2. Preparing and implementing schemes of work
3. Short/medium and long term planning
4. Personalising learning
5. Becoming a reflective practitioner
6. Communicating as a musician
7. Playing and performing
8. Chamber music
9. Special Needs
10. Schools of Percussion playing
11. Alexander Technique