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…

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…

Orff Level I – Day 6           This weekend I realized that I have not spent much time, if any, talking about my recorder class and I really want to share some of the things I’ve been learning from Brian Burnett.  Almost immediately I learned that he likes to use big words and has very…

Orff Level I – Day 5 In college when asked the difference between the Dalcroze, Kodaly, and Orff methods of elementary music teaching, I always went to a very concise definition: Dalcroze is movement based, Kodaly is singing based, and Orff is instrument based. Now that I am learning more about Orff-Schulwerk, I know what…

Orff Level I – Day 4 Time and time again this week, I keep being reminded of just how engaging and active an elementary music lesson should be.  I know that my students have been sitting and listening to me talk too much this year because they were off-task very frequently which was overwhelming and…

Orff Level I – Day 3 When I found out I was going to be blogging about my experience in the Orff Level I class, I asked some of my friends that teach elementary school what questions they had about Orff-Schulwerk.  The question I heard time and time again was: How much does it cost…

Orff Level I – Day 2 As Day 2 comes to a close, I find that I am slowly gaining a better understanding of what Orff Schulwerk is and, even more importantly, how to implement it on my own after the class is over.  I especially enjoy the repetition of the Orff process while also…

I am thrilled to share a new program at Baldwin Wallace University that infuses Orff concepts in its effort to combine music and literacy concepts. The primary goal of this program is to increase students’ reading fluency. Our 2013 program just finished last week. Stay tuned for more details about our program! A summary of the…

Orff Level I – Day 1 What I Expected To Happen Today I was thinking today would start like most classes of my higher education career: the professor hands you a syllabus, reads the syllabus to you as if you are illiterate and somehow managed to get into the class anyway, and then talks about…

Swing-En* II (The official title of our class, as listed in the OASIS catalog, is “Swing Ensemble for Pitched Percussion.”  My abbreviation for us is Swing-En – a good name for these episodes.)  D-Day arrived!  A demonstration class for the residents of the retirement community where our sessions are held.  What we hoped to show…

Improvising and Composing with Familiar Rhythms, Drums, and Barred Instruments Lesson 4 There are four lessons in this series. Students will identify, compose, read, and perform 16-beat rhythms containing quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, syncopation, and quarter rests. They will compose and perform melodies using Dorian mode, accompany themselves using a tonic drone bass,…

Improvising and Composing with Familiar Rhythms, Drums, and Barred Instruments Lesson 3 There are four lessons in this series. Students will identify, compose, read, and perform 16-beat rhythms containing quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, syncopation, and quarter rests. They will compose and perform melodies using Dorian mode, accompany themselves using a tonic drone bass,…