Dr J's Emporium of Musical Education

Over the past two weeks I have gone from thinking I knew a bit about the Orff Schulwerk pedagogy, to realising I did not really have much understanding about it at all, to having an epiphany about how I might alter the way I teach to improve the quality of learning in my classroom. The San Francisco International Orff courses follow the American Orff Schulwerk Association (AOSA) three level certification programme.  The Level One looks at the basics of teaching the Orff pedagogy, including using the pentatonic scales, basic movement, games, singing and recorder.  Level Two takes this further with the inclusion of hexatonic scales and the church modes while Level Three goes full diatonic with a jazz and blues twist thrown in for good measure. This year I undertook the Level I course with Sofia Lopez-Ibor and Sarah Noll, and while I understand scales and modes pretty well (I do like writing music after all), it was the manner in which they were used which was a revelation.  I a

Long term planning, medium term planning, short term planning, revision of planning, review of planning, replan the planning.  Lesson planning is never ending... Day Seven on the SF Orff Level One Course and we spent a morning session going over approaches to long, medium and short term planning.  When doing this we considered all the information that we have been looking at over the past week and a half and were shocked when we were told that the part of the pedagogy that everyone assumes is the "Orff way" actually only makes up about 10% of the curriculum at the San Francisco School!  We were then shown ways that we can plan a course and the different methods that can be effectively used in deciding what to cover within this.   So far, so normal, but it was the planning of the individual lessons where things started to get interesting. While developing long term and medium term planning for the topics, concepts and songs to be covered, the beauty of using the Orff

I do not know how, but the first five days in San Francisco have passed in a blink of the eye;  Monday morning we are meeting each other for the first time and then BOOM, it is the weekend and we are organising to get together for a night of Salsa lessons and Saturday picnics in the park. Apart from meeting and making new friends what else have we done... We have looked at how we can use rhythm games to learn each others names; We have explored using rhythmic patterns and chants to lead into learning songs and then how we can extend this to providing simple but effective 'elemental' ostinati and basslines that sound so effective and intricate when performed together; Less talk, more action - using signs and non-verbal direction to ensure the exercises move between tasks more efficiently; Some of us (i.e me) have developed from having two left feet to having a left and a right, even if one of them is a peg leg; Movement and music are interlinked and should feed off one

It is funny how our preconceptions of activities we have planned can turn out to be totally misguided. We have now completed three days of the San Francisco Orff Level I course and I have already had so many epiphanies that I have given up counting them.  Simple things, such as:  Why starting the recorder with BAG is not necessarily the right way to approach teaching the instrument; how we are possibly trying to fit too much to one lesson when learning one song and accompaniments can be one whole session; how teaching the music and the words straightaway can ruin the fun of experimenting with the rhythms and sounds in the song; how movement and music are elementally linked and can help students learn one or the other; why just using the Orff text books as pieces and material for lessons in the manner they are presented is not the done thing and; that I am not a lost cause in the movement stakes. I have also found that things I thought I would struggle with are

Day One on the San Francisco Level I Orff Schulwerk Course completed and I feel tired (I blame the remnants of jet lag) and stiff from having used muscles that I have forgotten about for a while.  I have clapped, stamped, jumped up and down, realised Scottish ceilidh is very similar to folk dances from other parts of the world, and dad danced like there was no tomorrow. via GIPHY While we did cover an awful lot of new material, it was actually the fresh perspectives on the basics of teaching that possibly had the greatest effect on me.  These included: I must admit that only seeing a class once a week sometimes means I get to the end of the year still not too sure on one or two kids names.  I take the register every lesson and even try to make it interesting through clapping it, rapping it, singing it etc.  Today we were shown games in which we repeat the names of the students several times, or get the students to talk to one another before presenting information about th

So the Orff Course in San Francisco starts tomorrow, which has meant that this afternoon has been spent revising the course texts and reviewing my notes (why are teachers the worst at following their own advice on revision timetabling!).  As this Level I Course focuses on the the Orff-Schulwerk Volume I material, this has also meant that people have been looking at me strangely in the street as I walked pasted absentmindedly humming the C pentatonic scale! Going through the volume one book , and looking at the exercises and examples, is is easy to see how you can adapt the ideas using other material and create lessons which are varied and enjoyable while promoting C21st Competencies in the pupils.  It also caused me to again think about how little we (for we read I!) sometimes give over to the pupils own creativity in producing their own musical ideas.  Hmm, much work to be done on this methinks, and this is only the starting point!  Hopefully the next couple of weeks will he

The time has arrived to travel to the US for the Orff training course @sforff.org,  and waiting to board the first of two flights seems like a good time to start blogging about this experience.  After spending a year researching the theories and experimenting with ideas based on these, I now get to experience it in a practical setting.  While hoping to learn lots from the course leaders and the other participants, I also have loads of questions and have recently been thinking about how all this might be implemented into a C21st STEM curriculum.  A couple of these include: As a lot of the pieces are based around pedals and ostinato can this be used with apps such as GarageBand or websites such as Youtube?   This can facilitate kids practicing and composing in environments beyond the classroom group before coming together to perform. Can the ideas be extended to work with Arabic songs? Movement - how can this be taught in classes with pupils for whom dance is prohibited? Art a