Teaching point:
The concept of change-rows, striking position within a row, changes of position within a row, is fundamental to everything that follows.

Hence it is essential that this is taught and tested before moving on. Demonstrate / teach by the use of moving people and moving bells if necessary.

Ensure you form your own opinion of the abiities of a learner, do not take another person's word without testing it.

Teaching points
The visual aspect of ringing needs to be mentioned, so if a bell is rung and by accident doesn't strike, the learner needs to be taught not to "waggle the bell", just leave it as if it had properly been rung because other people will have counted the movement as a bell having been rung.

Teaching points
There is more value in Rounds and Call Changes than would first appear; for learners struggling with theory, being able to produce a pleasant sound is re-assuring; on higher numbers, the patterns can be a lead-in step towards Plain Hunting.

Teaching points
The spacing of bells inside tittums and whittingtons should be used to emphasize the team nature of handbell ringing and as a preparation for plain hunting; one apart in tittums is like 1 apart in coursing.

Teaching point
Use an experienced ringer to ring 1-2 when possible, in order to demonstrate and emphasise the open handstroke lead.

Teaching point
Assess the knowledge of your learner.
Ensure the concepts of change rows and position within change rows is thoroughly understood because woolly thinking here will waste hours of time.
If a learner has never rung changes, get them to hunt with one bell on a variety of numbers of bells and from a variety of starting points, before going on to introduce the three patterns.

Teaching point
Don't assume the learner has read, marked and learned the structure of plain hunting, take time to go through it thoroughly. Test the learner's understanding by getting them to write this out, and then to join together the positions of the pair of bells they are learning to ring.

Teaching points
Part of learning is the repetition to enable assimilation. However, the early assimilation of the "tune" of Plain Hunting starting at diatonic rounds can cause mistakes when the hunting starts from other sequences as in Plain Bob. Two techniques are noted that force a learner to rely on the visual pattern rather than the auditory tune:

a) Swap the bells so that the ringer of 1-2 position has bells 1 and 3; 3-4 position has 5 and 2; 5-6 position has 4 and 6; thus the tune is now "Plain Hunting from Queens".

b) Ring 8 or 10 bells with the front 6 ringing Plain Hunting and bells numbered 7 and above stay in place (covering).

Teaching point
Accidentally using the word "position" when we should say "starting position", or better "pattern" will confuse learners.

Teaching point
The easiest pair to teach first is 5-6, followed by 1-2, and then 3-4.

Teaching point
The novice ringer of 1-2 will probably be surprised by reaching "opposites" so quickly.
On the simulator try starting from 156342, i.e. the backstroke of the 5-6 down dodge for the 2nd.
On real bells, ring handstroke 153624, backstroke 156342, and on into the last three leads.

Teaching points
To the experienced ringer, place notation is straightforward. To the novice place notation seems to be irrelevant in the struggle to remember where to ring one's bells in the changes, and the symmetry of the leads and patterns is not obvious.

Showing how plain hunting is created by place notation is not enough. It was when we started to write out a course of Little Bob (from -16-14/12) that the penny started to drop.

In change ringing on handbells, the ringer is much more involved with the structure of the methods, and detailed understanding of those structures is an invaluable aid to accurate ringing. Hence the early emphasis on place notation.

Awareness of the place notation is also an aid to developing an awareness of the position of the treble, the key to all basic ringing methods.

Teaching point
Don't be ashamed to ring Treble Bob Hunting where every alternate change is a repetition. The rhythm of Treble Bobbing is so different from Plain Hunting that plenty of practice is called for.

Teaching point
Kent Places are "slithery", hard to ring crisply. Get the learner to talk through the points at which the various pairs "touch", i.e. strike blows together but do not then cross over.

Teaching point
As a stepping stone into Kent TB, Forward Minor and Kent Little Bob Minor are worth ringing.

Teaching point
There are many excellent T.B. methods overlooked in the pursuit of ringing Surprise, and to learn them thoroughly for the purpose of ringing extents is rewarding. It is the start of the journey away from rule based methods to the highly structured methods.

Teaching point
However, there is teaching value in using some methods "freely" and without prior learning.
E.g.
Ring Oxford Treble Bob with 5ths at the half lead (a.k.a. Sandal TB) by watching for the treble in 5-6 up.
Ring Oxford Treble Bob with X12x replced by X34X and 12 Lead End (aka Morning Star TB) are immensely valuable.

Learning points
Whilst Cambridge Surprise is an elegant method, it is also quite "busy" compared to Kent and Oxford T.B. Cambridge intermingles fluid hunting with long places.

An experienced tower bell ringer might get a long way in Cambridge by looking at the double blue line, however, a safer approach is to learn several different aspects of the method. These include, Place Notation alone, Place Notation and where's the treble, Visualisation of the Grid, 14 and 36 cages, double blue lines, lead end transpositions.

Teaching point
Wow! This is hard stuff, don't even think of it after a night out.

Teaching point
There seems always to be a struggle in the second half of the course, and if the course has fired up when the tenors were parted, the second half gets less practice.

So start from Handstroke 18765432 / Backstroke 18674523, and take it from there.

Teaching point
The impact of the dodges on 1-2 changes after the symmetrical lead. In the first three leads, the second dodges further away from the treble but they hunt towards each other.
After opposites, the second dodges closer to the treble (5 apart, 3 apart, 1 apart) but they hunt in parallel. This is counter-intuitive, it should be getting easier but it doesn't feel like it.