Progress while not ringing

There are times when you wish that your learners would just “get it” or make quicker progress than they do. There are certain activities that they can do to improve their skills when not ringing.

Improving rope sight

Rope sight is a difficult thing to teach, some people just see it, others struggle and never quite get it. There are several exercises that the learner can do to try and help them improve their rope sight while sat watching ringing.

·         Whilst ringing with a covering tenor, get the learner to try and spot who the tenor is following

·         Try and spot what order the bells lead in

·         Try and spot whom the treble is following

These are best attempted while ringing plain methods like Bob Doubles.

Improving listening skills

Being able to hear your bell in the change is an art and with more and more bells is even more difficult, but if you can hear it then you can correct any crashes around yourself, so what the learner can do is while they are sitting and waiting try and get them to hear the treble or the tenor in the change, and where it is and if it moves. Picking the treble or the tenor is easiest as they are the highest or lowest notes in the change, once they can do that move on to the 2^nd (or 2^nd to last) bell and they can repeat until they are able to hear where the middle bells are without difficulty.

Homework

At the handling stage there is very little that can be done away from the tower, however, once the learner is confident at called changes you can start giving them things to think about during the week in between practices. Simple things could include getting them to think about how they would call changes from Rounds to Queens and back, the blue line (or circle of work) for doubles methods. It seems to me that the more experienced ringers become the more “homework” they do learning new compositions/methods indeed my desk is usually strewn with blue lines that I have drawn out.

Progression vs. Perfection

There is a fine balance between progression and perfection. I have seen both extremes a ringer who claims to ring surprise minor who couldn’t strike in rounds and a learner whose rounds were practically perfect but didn’t learn plain hunt because the striking wasn’t quite up to scratch.

Progression is important as it allows a new challenge and gets the learner up to speed with the rest of the band, the temptation can be if you are one short for a particular method to bring the learner up to speed quickly to get them to ring what you want, while this is all well and good it should not be done at the detriment of learning all the steps properly in the meantime.

Perfection is, of course, what we all strive for. People say that method ringing is supreme however I have had just as much enjoyment in ringing some very good rounds and called changes in Devon as I have ring surprise in Liverpool. Certainly, the called changes were the better struck ones in that case.

The balance can be very hard to achieve. In inexperienced bands striking perfection is not always such a requirement as if the learner is striking as good as the rest of the band that is good enough. In an experienced band the learner could be striking just as well but because the rest of them around the learner are that much better they aren’t moved on. Continual progression is important in keeping ringers interested.

Using feedback you can balance the need for progression with perfection so let them know that they are ringing well but need to strike better before moving along. Perhaps consider practising the skill in another way using consolidation or stretch exercises.