During the 2014–15 academic year my horn students and I participated in a CEMPE project looking at principal instrument tuition in groups as a supplement to one-to-one tuition. The aim of my project was to try out a format with small groups that Frøydis Ree Wekre has previously used in her teaching and which has been described in Bjørg Bjøntegaard’s report. Although I have studied under Frøydis, I had no first-hand experience of her model for small groups.

Before the project began I had a few hypotheses about the benefits that small group lessons might bring to my teaching. I hoped that the introduction of small group tuition would:

• reinforce a good class environment and an inclusive culture
• ensure more effective instruction on topics that are usually raised individually
• give the students an arena in which they can get used to providing good and effective feedback in a safe environment
• create motivation in that the less experienced students will hopefully be inspired by those with more experience
• increase awareness of important issues through observation, reflection and discussion
• create an opportunity for learning things that are best learnt in groups, e.g. orchestral excerpts that can be performed by the group
• encourage reflection on how to learn by observing how fellow students learn and by being observed themselves
• provide additional opportunities for performing in front of others

With this project I was interested to find out how the following two aspects could help elucidate my hypotheses: Firstly, I had to address how to organise this type of tuition, i.e. group size and make-up, duration and time allocation during the lessons, content and forms of communication, the teacher’s role etc. Secondly, I wanted to look at how these group lessons could be integrated and consolidated with the rest of the timetable. Although the focus of this article is on small group lessons (3–4 people), I should also like to share some of my thoughts on how instrument classes had to be adjusted as a result of the small group lessons and on how it changed the one-to-one lessons in terms of roles and dynamics.

My teaching schedule has normally comprised weekly one-to-one horn lessons and weekly horn classes allowing the students to perform for each other and get feedback from their peers. The classes were also intended to help create a safe and inclusive class environment. Initially all the horn students were obliged to participate. I took the view that many of the students benefited greatly from the classes, in terms of both performing in front of others and giving feedback to their fellow students. The atmosphere in these classes was good, even when there were students of different principal instrument teachers present.