The natural sticking / fill lesson

These are some steps I was running through with an adult beginner, to get oriented with some normal things you do on the drums, and to practice counting 16th notes. There are a number of directions you could go with it, depending on the student and goal.  

The examples will use these rhythms from Syncopation by Ted Reed, pp. 22-27. We counted each rhythm before playing them.  

First, we played the rhythms with the right hand on the hihat, left hand on the snare. We're using natural sticking, so the right is playing 1&2&3&4&, and the left hand plays any es and as: 

Then we played all the 16th notes on the snare drum— the right hand has to move to the snare a little bit. There was some confusion, that the right was already “playing 8th notes” on the hihat, we fixed that by looking at the rhythm in the book— the notes with two beams go on the snare, the notes with one beam go on the hihat: 

Then we added bass drum after the snare drum— the first cymbal note after any 16th notes: 

One possible next step is to add bass drum on 1, if it doesn't conflict with anything else we're doing: 

Then add the snare drum with the left hand on beat 2 and/or 4, if it doesn't conflict with what we're already doing:

 

At some point in the process we could play that cymbal note after the 16ths on a crash cymbal: 

Now we're at a pretty complete ordinary drumming texture. From here, someone could add some more bass drum— with some or all of the remaining cymbal-only notes; we could add a crash on 1, if it doesn't conflict; we could alternate a measure of groove with these patterns. You decide case by case how far to go pursuing this formula— what you're trying to accomplish for your playing, or your student's, and the limits of tolerance for thoroughness and boredom for all involved.