Orff Schulwerk and New Beginnings

This lesson will use a process in which important nouns, verbs, and descriptive language are chosen and used as a springboard for individual and group creativity. A canon will serve as a unifying piece of music and a music literacy component will take shape as this piece of music comes to life slowly through solfege.

We will explore components of folk dance through the New England Dancing Masters version of “Sweets of May,” found in Chimes of Dunkirk (an invaluable resource) and use these figures to create our own adaptation of this folk dance. We’ll go one step further and create a new elemental composition of instrumental music to be played on Orff Instruments which includes ideas generated from exploring the the magical poetry of the children’s book. The final product will even include exploratory improvisations!

The power of Orff Schulwerk comes from unlocking the potential for creativity and awakening the endless possibilities of Music by Children!

Please click here to download a pdf of the lesson, which details Drue’s process and includes links to his Google slide presentation and printable cards.

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One of the beautiful parts of Orff Schulwerk teaching is that there are so many different avenues toward creativity.  Every teacher, during their Orff training, finds areas where they feel comfortable expressing themselves, and others that feel less natural and more exposed.  This is part of the beauty.  Everyone finds areas of comfort and challenge, ease and difficulty, success and struggle.  This is one of the reasons that I believe Orff Schulwerk has such a human feel, and why so many of us left our training feeling not only more educated but also empowered and deeply connected.  It allows us to better relate to the feelings our children are experiencing every day, both inside and outside of the classroom.

What happens when we return to our classrooms from our levels training, most of the time, is that we tend to lead students toward the creative avenues in which we ourselves feel most secure.  This is only natural and makes perfect sense.  When beginning a new endeavor, it is entirely reasonable to start with what feels most confident and to branch out from there.  The trouble comes in when we do not, as the teacher, push ourselves beyond our comfort zone and into the areas of our own personal weaknesses or insecurities.  If a child has many areas in their school life (or life in general) where they feel unsuccessful, and we neglect to offer an avenue that could be the one thing that child truly excels at, we are doing them a disservice.

For me, the area that took me the longest to implement in my teaching was vocal improvisation.  I was a piano major in college, and although I’ve been in choirs my whole life and love singing, it is not an area where I feel safe or confident, especially while improvising.  Because the singing voice is personal and exposed, I think it is easiest to start with your younger students who do not have the same level of inhibition your older students have.  If you feed these children a steady diet of vocal improvisation year after year, by the time they are your “big kids” your expectations of safety, community, and adventure are already established and your environment for vocal exploration and improvisation is ready to go!

Early Elementary Vocal Improvisation Activities

It is in the nature of a child to vocally improvise.  I have a 2-year-old test subject who lives at my house and can prove it.  She improvises songs about the sun, her shoes, her friends at school, dinner, etc.  A child WANTS to improvise: all day, all the time.  Their voice is a natural first instrument to try it with.

MINI LESSON IDEA #1: ANSWERING QUESTIONS

One of the easiest ways I’ve found to include vocal improvisation is in singing questions to my students and asking for them to sing me an answer.  This is not the same thing as question and answer improvisation; I’m not hoping they stay within a specific pitch set or end on tonic or employ the rhythms I used.  Sometimes they do, but that’s not the goal.  Truly, I’m just hoping they answer with a singing voice (and sometimes, that doesn’t happen).  The pitches they are singing are not important for this introductory type activity.

• As the B section to a favorite welcome song, try singing questions to your students.
  • What did you have for breakfast? What is your favorite color? What are you doing this weekend? What are you afraid of? What are you excited about?
• You could also use these questions as a simple warm up, without a song to start with.
• You could sing these questions in any way you choose, for example, to:
  • Model high vs. low.
  • Use a specific pitch set that you are preparing.
  • Base your questions on the pitch set of the song you’re using as the A section.
  • Use these questions to prepare a specific meter.

Examples:

MINI LESSON IDEA #2: Using Building Blocks

GAME: Start by playing the elimination game (beat keeper in the center moves bee from hand to hand, if the bee lands on you on the word “out” you’re out!).

• Create a series of rhythmic building blocks that match the meter of a song or poem you are working on.

• Use bee building blocks to create a B section, performed first as speech to model a specific form (i.e. aaab: Hornet, Hornet, Hornet, Honeybee)
• Try some examples as a group, then have students create their own pattern to match your desired form.
• Sing entire B section (the created rhythmic building block sentence) on sol, then all on mi.

• Improvise vocally moving between sol and mi as individuals choose. (Everyone is improvising at the same time using their own rhythms from earlier).

Example of what a child is singing:

Example of what you hear while the whole class is singing:

Just so you’re not surprised, you may also hear:

(This happens in my room too. Don’t give up!)

If, however, your children don’t have their rhythms secure, it shows you they aren’t ready to add the melody yet. The rhythm must be confident before the melody can successfully be added.

• In subsequent lessons, ask soloists to improvise using sol and mi during the B section instead of performing as a full group.

MINI LESSON IDEA #3: Singing a Poem

Start with a poem that is appropriate for whichever age group you are working with. A shorter poem will work better than a longer one for this activity. If it has multiple stanzas, choose one.

• Speak the (previously learned) poem together.
  
• Ask the children to sing the whole poem on one specific pitch. In my example, I’m leading toward mi-sol-la improvisation, so I’m starting on sol. Model this for them:
  
• Now model a couple of predictable examples using sol and mi. Something like:

• Ask the students to make up a song using sol and mi. Depending on the age of your students, you can label these pitches or not. For example, in Kindergarten, where they haven’t identified sol-mi yet, I might sing something like:

• In a future lesson, model making up a melody using sol, mi, and la. Then, ask them to do the same.

Intermediate Elementary Vocal Improvisation

Before vocal improvisation can be successful with your older students, it is imperative that you have established a culture of safety and support. Children who do not feel safe will not expose their voice to others. As I mentioned earlier, you can grow into your improvisations with older students by building on what you have done with them in previous years.

MINI LESSON IDEA #4: Using Melodic Cells

Volume I p. 103 #32

• Echo the following cells using solfege syllables. When I do this activity with my students, I model rhythms but do not write this out on the staff for them. Personally, I find that tying notation to these cells makes it harder for children to feel comfortable changing the rhythmic or melodic ideas later.

• Practice “changing” the cells together by keeping the main idea but repeating syllables or changing their rhythm.

• I often help them to feel the length of the phrase by using a drum to play a measure duration or modeling phrases in the air with my arm (when my arm lowers the phrase is over).
• Decide which melodic motive is your favorite. Practice singing it over and over until you have decided on a way you like to sing it.
• Select a favorite and second favorite cell and decide how to link them together (which one sounds better going first?
• Share your phrase with a neighbor. Decide how you could add your two melodies together.
• Decide how to put your phrases into an elemental form.
• Perform for the class.

This lesson idea could be adapted in many ways:

1. These compositions could become the B section of a known melodic piece (vocal or instrumental).
2. You could expand the pitch material to whatever the children are working on in that particular grade level.

MINI LESSON IDEA #5: Using Poetry (Again)

• Pick a beautiful (and short) piece of poetry. Don’t be afraid of exposing children to something beautiful. For some children, you may be their one exposure to beautiful things. If they never experience it, they cannot expect or search for beauty in the world. Haikus work very well for this sort of activity, or one short stanza of a favorite poem.
• Tremelo on the pitch you want to use as tonic for your improvisation. Ask children to sing the poem, at their own tempo, on that pitch. They will finish at different times.
• Tremelo between two pitches. Ask them to use these two pitches to sing the poem
• Continue to expand your playing to include a pentatonic or diatonic scale. With each expanision, ask children to sing again.
• They might be using pitches beyond what you’re playing. If so, great!

A possible progression of adding pitches to arrive at the do and la-based pentatonic scales might look like this: (I don’t show the children this, although based on their comfort you could. I just play the tremelo on these pitches).

Do-based Pentatonic Scale Progression Possibility:

La-based Pentatonic Scale Progression Possibility :

Final Thoughts: As you know, children are INCREDIBLY perceptive. They can sense fear in the same way that an animal does. If you don’t believe me, ask anyone who has ever been a substitute teacher. If you approach vocal improvisation warily, wariness will permeate your classroom. If you approach it with insecurity, insecurity will reflect back. However, if you approach vocal improvisation with joy, safety, and fun, that’s exactly the same response you will receive. Be willing to make mistakes (often!) and enjoy trying! So much of what we do as educators involves a certain level of acting. Acting confident. Acting like this is the most fun game ever (even if we have played it 9 million times in our career). The more you act as though something is the most fun and best thing ever, the more it becomes so. Start small. Be brave. HAVE FUN!

Click here for a downloadable pdf of this article.

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Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree is a charming children’s book about a too-tall Christmas tree that keeps getting whittled down, providing Christmas joy for a variety of humans and animals alike, from a wealthy man to a mouse.  I actually don’t remember how I learned about the book, but it has yielded a variety of ideas for Christmas from K-6.

I have used “O Christmas Tree” (the first two lines) as a musical tie-in with this story. Included here are two lesson plans: one for kindergarten and one for sixth grade. The kindergarten lesson plan is easily adapted for first grade and second grade. The sixth-grade lesson plan can be adapted accordingly for the other grades.

Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree: Kindergarten

Kindergarten Targets Met: Vocal exploration, singing voice versus speaking voice, iconic rhythm notation reading, understanding and performance of short and long sounds, performance of ostinato, following the cues of the conductor, movement exploration (optional)

Materials Needed:

• Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree. Written by Robert Barry. ISBN-10:0385327218
• Power Point

Process:

• Display the Power Point, (Slide 14) and ask the students what they notice about the Christmas trees. (They are all different sizes). Tell them they are all from the same tree. How could that be? (Allow them to discuss this).
• Talk about the story briefly and how one tree is shared for many creatures to enjoy.
• Display Power Point (page 15) and point out the trees on this activity. Ask them what they notice. (some big trees and some small trees).
• Clap the rhythm and chant the words to the ostinato “Christmas tree, Christmas tree/Mr. Willowby’s Christmas tree” to determine if the students make the connection between the short/long sounds of the ostinato and the sizes of the trees (iconic rhythmic notation).
• Continue to chant the ostinato until all the students are chanting it. One kinesthetic activity I like to do is ask students to get up and walk with me when they have learned the words to anything I am teaching them to sing or to chant. It is a quick assessment of who is participating and it also encourages participation.
• Tell the students you are going to read the story. Describe the following cues:
  *One hand to chest, one up out to the side. Sing “O Christmas Tree” in the range you establish, followed by “Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree, Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree”.
  *Sad face “O, rats” (done when characters discover the tree doesn’t work for them)
  *Sweeping action in front of body with arm and snap, saying “O, snap”, when the tree is cut. *Sweeping action to the side with arm, saying “Whoosh” when the tree is thrown.
• Read the story, utilizing the cues. Video if necessary for assessment purposes.

Assessment-Standard Based:

• Vocal exploration. 3-student sings song in a variety of ranges. 2-student misses range change 2-4 times. 1-student does not change range
• Iconic reading 3-student is able to clap rhythm by reading iconic rhythm notation. 2-student misses on iconic reading at least 2-4 times. 1-student does not clap iconic rhythm correctly.

Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree Lesson: 6^th Grade

6^th Grade Targets Met:

• Improvising variations on a familiar tune
• Reading and performing complex rhythms
• Creating accompaniments

Materials Needed:

• Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree. Written by Robert Barry. ISBN-10:0385327218
• Power Point
• Various pitched instruments and unpitched percussion

Process:

• Teach “O Christmas Tree” by rote. For my students, I found it easier to teach recorder in the key of G. Alto recorders will do best in the key of C. Teach the first two lines. This can be done either with recorders or barred instruments.
  Process (key of C. Transpose as necessary)
  *If you like, sing various solfege patterns incorporated in the first phrase of “O Christmas Tree”. Focus on the low sol-do pattern of the beginning.
  *Tell the students to listen to you play the first pattern (G-C-C-C). Inform them to start on G and decode the rest.
  *Follow the same pattern on D-E-E-E.
  *Teach the rest of the phrase in 3 note segments.
• Display Power Point, Page 2. This shows the actual notated pitch in two keys for “O Christmas Tree”, along with potential problem fingerings for both alto and soprano recorder.
• Read the story to the students. Ask them to note, during the reading, where sound effects would be appropriate and how they could connect melody (pitched) instruments to the tree as it gets whittled down.
• Show the Power Point, Page 3. This is an image map for the guidelines to be displayed later for the students.
• Show the Power Point, Page 4. Leave this slide out of presentation mode so students can slide the text boxes of instrument ideas in between the character graphic and the corresponding tree (i.e., Mr. Willowby’s moustache is over the largest tree). As an option, upload the Power Point into Google slides and ask students to do this on their devices. You can then have students compare their choices. This Power Point is set so you can add your own pitched instruments as needed.
• Show the Power Point, Page 5. For the first part, run out of presentation mode. Students can type in appropriate instruments for the following: When the characters find the tree won’t work, when the tree is chopped, and when the tree is tossed. Suggestions for the first sound: change a barred instrument in the key of G from a B to B-flat to turn G Aeolian or G harmonic minor (depending on whether you want F or F#), slide whistle descending, or digital piano set to choral, playing a chord cluster.
• Run presentation for the second half of the Power Point. Clap and say the ostinato. “Christmas Tree, Christmas Tree, Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree”. Ask various students to click on the rhythm pattern that corresponds with the rhythm of the ostinato. Again, this is an activity that can be done in Google slides. Also, note the bordun that is to be played during the reading.
• Determine instrument parts accordingly. I usually use the Tool kit in Class Dojo or random selector in iDoceo and let the students pick instruments in the order they are selected.
• Display Page 6 of the Power Point, and the subsequent pages briefly. These are the instrument “cue” pages. The students will follow the cues in the story to know when to play. The graphic in the upper left hand corner is the symbol for each character.
• During the performance, students chant the ostinato while the story is read and the bordun is played, unless instruments are playing “O Christmas Tree” or the sound effects are played.

Assessment ideas: Students can journal their thoughts about their creations, describe their musicality, or do critical writings on the quality of their work or what they would have done differently.

Have fun!

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Materials:   

Tale of Two Villages, Music for Creative Dance: Contrast and Continuum, Volume 1, Eric Chapelle

Objectives: 

• Locomotor vs. Non-Locomotor Movement
• Expression of Beat
• Binary Form (AB)
• Improvisation 

Process: 

• Students scatter in space, encourage various ways of moving a singular body part; move arm only, or leg, or head, etc., teacher plays drum for 8 beats as students move.
• Say, “Let’s try it a different way; if you moved standing up, try it sitting or bending knees, or laying down”.  Change levels, add shapes (triangle, circle), and expressive movements (slither, sway, melt, bend, etc.), non-locomotor only.
• Introduce temple blocks (or a different instrument), students respond with locomotor movement as teacher plays for 8 beats.
• Discuss words to describe movement, discuss the activity; lead to discovery/labeling of same/different as “A” and “B” sections of music.
• In small groups or as a whole class, brainstorm a list of creative movement, both locomotor and non-locomotor.
• A Section:  Non-locomotor movement
• B Section:  Locomotor movement  

Extension Activity with Ribbon Wands and Unpitched Percussion.   

• Divide class; half with ribbon wands, half with hand drums.
• Ribbon wands will watch as teacher changes shape cards below on A section (mbira/kalimba playing on recording).
• UPP players will improvise on B section (drums on recording).
• Perform, then switch jobs. 

Click here to download and print this set of movement cards.

Title Photo Credit: Houston Chronicle

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by BethAnn Hepburn and Roger Sams

We trust you and your young students will enjoy this lesson taken from Purposeful Pathways: Possibilities for the Elementary Music Classroom, Book Three – by BethAnn Hepburn and Roger Sams. Designed to encourage active music making, this lesson includes pathways to rhythm, literacy, partwork, ensemble, and improvisation. A printable version can be found here.

PATHWAY TO Rhythm: Eurhythmics treble-bass follow exercise

• Students begin in scattered space and walk to the steady beat, which you play on a low pitch on temple blocks or piano.
• Students continue walking the steady beat while you play 4-beat echo patterns on a higher pitch. Students echo these rhythm patterns (clapping) while walking the steady beat.
• Begin with even rhythms then introduce syncopated rhythms. Example:

Teacher Talk: Moving from simplicity to complexity
When teaching students to follow the beat and rhythm at the same time it is important to start simply and move incrementally toward more complex rhythms. Begin with the students echoing quarter notes and progress sequentially through the more difficult rhythm patterns found in the song.

• Continue to practice rhythms until the class is successful walking the beat while simultaneously clapping the rhythmic echo. Emphasize rhythms that contain syncopation.
• For an advanced challenge have the students step the rhythm in their feet and clap the steady beat in their hands.

PATHWAY TO Literacy:  so, la, do re mi

• Students read the rhythm of the song.

• Use the solfa tone ladder to prepare the tone set of the song. Ask the students to sing what you point to. After you have presented patterns from the song, point out the entire song on the solfa tone ladder.
• Students sing the melody from rhythmic notation with solfa

• Students sing the melody, with solfa and hand signs, reading from the staff.

• Students sing the melody with text.

PATHWAY TO Partwork: Rhythmic Ostinato

• Perform the BP ostinato. Ask the students to join you when they are ready. (simultaneous imitation)
• Students sing the song, while patting and clapping the rhythmic ostinato. Establish the ostinato before adding the singing.

• Transfer to BP ostinati to tubanos, or other large drums, producing low sounds (bass) with the palm of the hand near the center of the drum (pats) and high sounds (tone) with the fingertips near the rim of the drum (claps). Pat becomes bass and clap become tone. Encourage the students to alternate hands.

PATHWAY TO Partwork: Song with descant

• Students read the rhythm of the descant.
• Students play the rhythm of the descant on soprano recorder on the note B.

• Students sing the letter names for the BAG version and practice recorder fingerings with recorders resting in finger position on their chins.

• Students play the BAG version on recorder.
• Divide the class in half. Half sings the song. Half plays the BAG version of the recorder descant. Trade parts.
• Students sing the letter names for the advanced version and practice recorder fingerings with recorders on their chins.

• Students play the advanced version on recorder.
• Divide the class in half. Half sings the song. Half plays the advanced version of the recorder descant. Trade parts.
• Consider singing in two parts.

PATHWAY TO Ensemble: Split moving bordun, descant, countermelody, and BP ostinato

• Model patting and singing solfa for the BX/BM ostinato. Ask the students to join you when they have figured out the pattern. (simultaneous imitation)

• Divide the class in half. Half sings and pats the BX/BM ostinato. Half sings the song. Trade parts.
• Transfer BX/BM ostinato to barred instruments and put together with singers.
• Model patting and singing solfa for the AX ostinato. Ask the students to join you when they have figured out the pattern. (simultaneous imitation) If using a text is a support for your students, use the following text while teaching the ostinato.

• Divide the class in half. Half sings and pats the BX/BM ostinato. Half sings and pats the AX ostinato. Trade parts.
• Transfer this split moving bordun to barred instruments and put together with singers.
• Perform the BP part for the students, patting when the text says “alternating hands, both” and clapping and stamping as the text indicates. Ask them to count how many times you perform the opening motive. (seven)

• Ask the students to perform this BP motive with you seven times and then add three stamps as a final cadence.
• Divide the class in half. Half performs the BP. Half sings the song. Trade parts.
• Add the BP part to the arrangement.
• Students read the SX melodic ostinato, singing solfa with hand signs.
• Students prepare the SX ostinato by singing solfa and patting their legs, moving up and down as if they are a barred instrument.

• Transfer this ostinato to SX and add to the arrangement.
• Put all of the percussion parts together with singers.
• Add the SR (or singing) descant and put the entire arrangement together.

PATHWAY TO Improvisation: Question and Answer with focus on how tonic functions

• Set up the barred instruments in G=do pentatonic. Acclimate the students to the pitch set with singing and playing 4-beat solfa echo patterns.
• Model singing the improvisation structure for the students.

• Model question and answer improvisation for the students. Explain that the phrases are eight beats long, beginning with singing and ending with barred instrument improvisation. Ask them to determine what the difference between your questions and your answers. Model questions that do not end on do and answers that do end on do.
• Divide the class in half. Half the class sings the beginning of the question and then completes it with four beats of barred instrument improvisation not ending on do. The other half of the class answers by singing and then improvising for four beats, ending on do. Trade parts.
• Ask the students to figure out how to play, “Wake up, you sleepy head!” on the barred instruments.
• Repeat the process with the students playing everything, rather than singing and playing.
• Give the students an opportunity to improvise a question and answer chorus in the context of the entire 32 beats of the full orchestration.
• Put together with the song in a satisfying final form.

Excerpts from Purposeful Pathways, Possibilities for the Elementary Music Classroom, Book 3 by BethAnn Hepburn and Roger Sams. Copyright © 2015 by MIE Publications. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

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Playing With Improvisation

2, 4, 6, 8 – Recorder Version

B Section

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A Rhythm and Movement Lesson for Grades 4-6

Download a printable version of Michael Chandler’s lesson here.

Objectives:

• Working with beat and divided beat through movement, body percussion, and instruments.
• Choreographing simple movement to elemental forms.
• Rhythmic and melodic improvisation and composition with elemental forms.
• Arranging and orchestrating a performance piece.

Materials:

• Unpitched percussion instruments including drums and temple blocks.
• Mallet instruments 

Day One

• Students are scattered throughout the class space as the teacher plays steady quarter notes or eighth notes on the temple blocks or a drum. Students listen, react, and move through shared space to the rhythms played by the teacher, speaking the words walk or tip-toe and coordinating their steps to match the rhythms they hear played.
• Students find a partner and create a 4-beat clapping pattern consisting of quarter and eighth notes. Partners can use knee patting, clapping, or snapping, but at some point they must connect through a partner clap with one or both hands. Once the pattern is secure, it should be performed twice in a row for a total of 8 beats.
• Partners then create a separate movement sequence of 8 beats. They may move apart and come back together, trade places in some way, or go around one another returning to their original spot. The sequence will likely follow a 4+4 structure to make 8 beats, and it may include any other unique additions that make it look more interesting.
• Students perform the previous clapping pattern twice (8 beats) and then follow it with the 8-beat traveling sequence for a total of 16 beats. Practice until secure, and ask each half of the class to perform for the other half. Students select ideas from among everyone’s to create a single partner dance for the entire class to perform together in pairs.
• Through echo imitation, teach the poem Good, Better, Best. The text may be spoken in unison or in a 2-beat canon after two beats.

• Combine the class-created dance with the text. The phrases of the text mirror the phrases of the class dance (4+4+8).

Day Two

• Present the students with five rhythmic building blocks using model words that demonstrate positive characteristics.

• After imitating each word through rhythmic speech, students combine them in pairs at first and then improvising word chains of four to create an 8-beat phrase. One word should be repeated in each word chain, but two may be repeated for forms like aabb or abab. Avoid through-composed chains (no abcd).
• Students organize into three groups, and each group composes an 8-beat word chain that illustrates an elemental form. Once the form and the rhythm are decided, it should be performed twice for a total of 16 beats. Each group transfers its rhythm to unpitched percussion or hand drums and choreographs it with simple movement.
• Review and perform the poem Good, Better, Best through rhythmic speech. Teach the two accompanying speech ostinati separately (see below) and combine all three parts, allowing each group to experience each part of the texture. Assign a part to each group and perform the piece as a rondo with the poem and speech ostinati as the A section and each group’s unpitched percussion composition as an episode.

Day Three

• Students begin at mallet instruments and choose a pentatonic scale (do-based or any other pentatonic mode such as re– or la-based). Decide on whether to use the authentic range (tonic to tonic with 5th in the middle) or the plagal range (5th to 5th with tonic in the middle). This will depend on the scale chosen and which note is the tonic. Try to use a range comfortable for singing.
• Students play the scale up and down and end on the tonic to hear its characteristic sound. Teacher claps a series of simple 4-beat rhythmic patterns for students to explore playing on the bars. Ask them to use specific areas of the scale such as the tonic to the 5th or the 5th to the tonic. If using the do– or la-based scale, use re only as a passing tone or as an upper or lower neighbor.
• Students review the text to Good, Better, Best and play it lightly with alternating hands on the tonic pitch of the scale selected by the class.
• Working one phrase at a time, allow students to improvise and share individual ideas that lead to a class-composed melody for the entire text. Make note of the class’ final version so it can be notated later with notation software.
• Using primarily the tonic and 5th, ask students to work with a partner to improvise a 4-beat ostinato accompaniment pattern that can accompany the class melody. See examples in Music for Children Volume I, pages 82–83 and pages 86–87.
• Review both speech ostinati and transfer them to contrasting unpitched percussion parts (such as triangle and woodblock). Add these two parts to the texture of the final arrangement.
• Invite half of the class to perform the arrangement as created by the class while students in the other half find partners to perform the dance created earlier. To extend the form, the class can sing the melody once and then repeat it with the melody played on instruments only. Depending on the melody’s range, it could be played on recorder (do Pentatonic on G in the plagal range, is great for recorder).
• Notate the final class arrangement with notation software, and give each child a copy. A copy of each class’ arrangement can also be displayed for parents for open house.

Extension

• Using the previous arrangement as an A section in a rondo, students can use a rhythmic text, such as the one below, for improvised melodic solos. This text works well for melodic question and answer improvisation (8-beat question and 8-beat answer).

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Click on the link to download the lesson: Purposeful Pathways: Fais Dodo.

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Download Marjie Van Gunten’s Leaf Children Lesson

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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 ways to improvise in your classroom rather than just rhythm patterns, playing on recorder/barred instruments, and singing solfa.  For example, I’ve had Kindergarteners lead each other in keeping the steady beat in different ways and having the class copy.  It’s a great way to help them focus through a whole song and they start to think for themselves and lead each other.  I’ve particularly enjoyed using the song “Everybody” by Ingrid Michaelson, especially around Valentine’s Day.

Roger had us improvise today by singing our own text that went with the song we were singing, which was a great way to get us laughing and stop stressing out about improvisation – creating music should be fun!  We also did scat singing, which was a fun way to know if we understood the pentatonic scale without worrying about solfa syllables or creating coherent text.  If these are too hard for your students, give them options of words they can sing and let them choose their melody.  There are so many options to get kids improvising so we have to try and break out of our routines and habits and keep kids on their toes!

Roger’s Nuggets of Wisdom

(those small phrases that seem to pretty much sum up Orff Schulwerk)

 “Be a really strong ______ grader” – When modeling a skill for a student, don’t play or sing like someone with a college degree in music – sound like a strong musician a grade ahead of them.  For example, if I want to show third graders how to improvise, I should perform like a strong fourth grader would perform.

“Gut singing with skills” – This was said in relation to the scat improvisation we did today, but I think it goes for all sorts of improvisation.  We are trying to teach our students to know the rules of music so well that it lives inside them and guides their creations inherently.  We want them to know how to spot good music and how to make it on their own.  As with any skill, this will take a lot of time to become engrained inside our students, but once it’s in there all the work will definitely be worth it.

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