Monday, August 8, 2011

Orff Teaching thoughts, recorder questions, and tambourine loudness

Just a couple of things I learned today. First off, when I'm teaching students to use the rhythm building blocks from Orff Schulwerk, or just teaching a simple bordun, I really need to isolate at least one or two students and have them play for the group while the group sings the song. This seemed to work really well today with a fourth grade class I was teaching. I chose one student who was just making up his own thing on a bordun with C and G and I had him play the bordun Jag-uar, El-e-phant (Quarter, Quarter, 8th 8th Quarter) while the rest of the class sang "Green Sally Up" It was like magic. Stuff like this rarely works for me. It's always too loud or half the kids are playing the wrong notes or wrong rhythm, but having them demonstrate really seemed to make a difference.

Speaking of too loud, tambourines were not a good Idea. I need to stick to softer accompaniment instruments like woodblocks, triangles, and quiros or clicker sticks. Those tambourines drown out everything.

Also, earlier, when I was teaching recorder, I asked some students to tell me the fingerings for each line of music and they had no problem telling me the fingerings for the whole song. This is good questioning. I need to make more of a habit of this. OK,

That's all.

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