Getting Ready for the Holidays

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Ah the school summer holidays, a time for rest and relaxation, seeing family and friends and enjoying the finer things in life.  ✈

Unless of course you are daft enough to decide to pack your recorder and travel half way around the world to spend two weeks on an intensive Orff Schulwerk course! 🎒

More about Orff here

I have noticed recently that my teaching, while I hope it is still interesting, it has been hiding behind the Schemes of Work: Lessons have not been feeling as free and based on ideas being knocked back and forth as I would like them and the inherent spontaneity I used to enjoy seems to be missing.  Maybe I am becoming more concerned with following the school's policy on book work and forgetting about teaching through practical music making.  Luckily Orff has come into my life again and has started to make a difference!  I am now thinking more about how I can balance the paperwork demanded by the school (You must evidence learning in the students books, there must be.......) and teaching the subject in a more practical and relevant manner (i.e. giving the pupils the practical musical skills they might use).

To demonstrate how I would like to get back to teaching the subject:

Orff Schulwerk in Action

I have started looking at small parts of the Orff technique in lessons, bringing parts in by stealth, and they seem to be working, but now is the time to embed it full time!

Hopefully, if I am not too tired, there will be posts most nights during the course 😄.



GTCS Standards for Teaching:  2.1.1, 2.1.6, 2.2.1, 2.2.2, 2.2.4 and 2.2.5


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