Posts by
Erin Clevenger
Fact #1: Teachers don’t make a lot of money. Fact #2: Most, if not all, teachers spend their own money on resources and supplies for their classroom. Wouldn’t it be great if a store existed where you could buy a lot of things for your classroom and spend very little money? With just a little…
Read More >>Classroom management – it’s a phrase we are all very familiar with and yet I feel like I still don’t quite have a grasp on it. I am finally starting to think my lessons are solid, but I have trouble delivering them due to behavior issues. If you’re like me, you look to the…
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Who says you can’t perform what you’re doing in your classroom every day in a concert?! This is a real series of lessons I did with my first graders starting at the beginning of April and they performed the end product on their concert, May 15. Believe me, if I can do it, so can…
Read More >>Today during my morning Facebook ritual, I noticed a few of my friends had posted something about a fourteen year old genius who had been placed in special education. As someone who spent two summers working with teenagers with mental disabilities, I was intrigued. This young man has Aspbergers and the school he was in…
Read More >>Although I could write a ton about everything I’ve learned so far this year about being an Orff teacher, I think most of it can be summed up with these three things: 1) Being an Orff teacher takes time. Teaching in the Orff-Schulwerk style requires educator mastery of the material, which can…
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Life After Certification – Long-Range Planning Hello, my name is Erin Clevenger, and I am a planner. I know many very successful music educators who can’t tell you what they’re teaching next month, or even next week, but for me that uncertainty would drive me bonkers. I think my biggest challenge is the…
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Orff Level I – Day 10 Friday marked the last day of my Orff Level I certification and the day was bittersweet; it was wonderful to look back at all we learned in our two weeks together but sad knowing we wouldn’t see each other and keep learning on Monday. The course culminated in a…
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Orff Level I – Day 9 A continuation of the improvisation discussion from Day 7: First, try and use predictable forms during improvisation pieces. You want the students to be concentrating on their improvisation skills, not their memorizing difficult form structures skills (remember that whole “working memory” thing from Day 4?). Second, there are many…
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Orff Level I – Day 8 I think it’s time to address the “c word”: concerts (get your head out of the gutter!). For the past two years, preparing for concerts has gone in a very predictable way for me: pick a theme, find songs with CD accompaniments that fit with the theme, and then…
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Orff Level I – Day 7 Today’s topic: improvisation! This is a core skill in an Orff classroom (remember, it’s all about creativity) so I wanted to review some of the things we talked about in class today. One big things Roger discussed was making sure we start improvisation really easy with the students and…
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