VOKE: Self-Regulation in the Kodály Classroom Part II

Happy Friday Ya’ll!!

I am so ready to go home for the weekend. My plans include watching netflix and eating junk food. Anyone else?

Here is the rest of my VOKE Saturday Session as promised. We left off with threats which are never a good idea. Instead of threats we need to use empowering teacher language. There is a fabulous book on this topic called The Power of our Words  by Paula Denton and Lynn Bechtel that I highly recommend.

In The Power of our Words, we are encourage to give two options to students who are having trouble. The important part though is that both options need to be valid choices for the student. Don’t give a choice that you will regret if they choose it. One of my colleagues does a trick where one of the choices is waaaaay worse than the one she wants them to pick; “Well you can finish these math questions now or during independent choice time later you will have to work with me to do them.” They usually choose finishing now than losing they choice time later. In the Music room this will sound like “You can either wait your turn to play or take a break from the instruments.”

So let’s reflect for a moment.

Are your rules clear and enforceable? Do you have logical consequences in place that are fair easy to remember? Do you have any phrases or habits that can come off as mean or sarcastic? (Full disclosure: I definitely do. I say “YOU KNOW WHAT?!!” when I’m at the end of my rope but I never should have let it get that far in the first place….)

It can be so tiring and frustrating but we’ve got to try keep our cool with kids who have self-regulation issues which will mean repeating ourselves 40860934768978526 times.
(Check out know your meme for the background on the above meme).

The next part of RC is the classroom environment. Think about your room for a moment. Are there areas of your room where children are always getting into trouble? Are there instruments out that students are always touching?

RC asks us to look at our room and consider some questions:

Is everything that is not meant for the students put away?

Is the room free of clutter with surfaces neatly organized?

Is there a clear defined space for each student?

Is there a place for students to take a break? (NOT a time out)

Think about these questions when looking at the images above then apply them to your room. Is there something that can easily be changed that will remedy a persistent problem? Here are some images from my room.

Because of recorder-in-the-mouth-kid all of my toys/materials now stay in my mini filling cabinet by my desk. The only time it goes in their mouth now is when I forget and leave it on my desk but that’s on me.

Ukadora (my ukulele) was a constant struggle because she was at kid level. Now she is up on my desk behind my printer. I don’t even have a chair at my desk anymore either. My kids were always fighting to sit at my desk. I have no idea why because that was never a thing that I allowed. But anyway I just got rid of my chair and that solved that issue. Such is the logic of Elementary School.

Here are my Orff Instruments all with dust covers so that little (and big) hands are not tempted to touch them without permission. Above it is my Maker Space. All materials needed to make things are laid out except the scissors. Why you ask? Kids. That’s why.

All things exciting and enticing are now tucked away in filing cabinets THAT LOCK. I got my building supervisor to order them from the warehouse and it has been a game changer. Instruments that I don’t want the kids touching remain under sheets or placed high out of reach.

Instruments that the kids can access easily are placed on racks. Again, anything I don’t want them getting into is placed high up or in boxes with snap lids.

The last thing is the reflection space. It’s a space where kids can take a break to calm down then return when they’re ready.

There is a form that we use building wide which you can find here.

So bow let’s dig into how we can scaffold self-regulation as if it were a concept. We can organize self-regulation on a PPP chart like we would a melodic or rhythmic element.

I do assign seats at the beginning of the year but then relax that requirement depending on the class as the year goes on. Most of my kiddos now choose their seat BUT I move them immediately if they are goofing off with their buddies.

What do we want the kids to do in their spot? For me, I am looking for; feet stay still and hands to yourself. The songs above are great for that.

What do we want the kids to do when they leave and come back to their spot?  I am looking for; movement that is appropriate to the music/activity, hands to yourself, and back in your spot at the appropriate time.

P.S. Notation and directions for the songs above will be included at the end 🙂

What do we want the kids to do when they have freedom to move about the room?  I am looking for; movement that is appropriate to the music/activity, hands to yourself, and body in control at all times.

What do we want the kids to do when we are asking them to find a partner, or move to instruments/centers/anything else that is a transition? I am looking hands to yourself, and body in control at all times, and moving directly to the task that I have asked you to do. I feel like there is a common thread here with those hands…..

For RC there is a script on how to use interactive modeling. It’s so tiring for us as teacher because we have to do it for every.single.activity.that.is.new. but it is worth it. You can read about how to interactively model for your kiddos here.

Even though our bigger kids are bigger and older, they still need to dance and move and finding a partner in a respectful way is something that has to be retaught every year. As the kiddos move through their ages and stages, everything gets mixed up over the summer so we really have to re-teach them how to interact with other humans. I highly recommend Chip Wood’s book Yardsticks to get a crash corse in ages and stages.

‘

This one is important because they will always pick their friend and that one kid will always be left out. At the end of each dance we do “shout outs” so that kids can get the opportunity to thank each other for being a good partner and others (who were less than stellar partners) can be low-key dragged by their classmates.

For more formal folk dancing we need to teach a few extra procedures:

If you want a great resource for folk dances; check out the New England Dancing Masters books. If you get Listen to the Mockingbird, make sure that you skip “Jump Jim Joe.” That song is on the no-fly list so don’t say I didn’t tell you.

All of my dance procedure PDF’s are in this google drive folder here!

Let’s pause here and finish up with procedures for instruments and solutions in the next post.

See you all soon!

Sing-cerely,

Lucia

 

VOKE: Self-Regulation in the Kodály Classroom

Happy Humpday Everyone!

This is a long overdue post and I apologize for the delay. It’s been a hectic couple of weeks but that is no excuse. In February I had the honor of presenting a Saturday session for the Virginia Organization of Kodály Educators (VOKE). I had done a similar session at the National OAKE conference in 2018 but got to dig in a little more because the VOKE session was 4 hours. We talked through a lot of stuff and I am excited to share it all here. Below you will find all of my slides from that session as well as the citations and notes that go with them.

Anyone who works with children is familiar with their inability to control their impulses. If you have instruments out in your room, I am sure that there are at least a few students who can’t help but touch them. It’s a battle that we all fight so don’t feel alone. This session was to talk through why our kiddos behave the way they do and how to head off some of those battles before they even happen.

In their article “Developing Self-Regulation in Kindergarten” Dr. Elena Bodrova and Dr. Deborah J. Leong define self-regulation as “a deep, internal mechanism that enables children as well as adults to engage in mindful, intentional, and thoughtful behaviors.”

Self-regulation has two sides which we can see in this mini-dog-drama

The first side is the ability to control one’s impulses and to stop doing something. The second is the capacity to do something (even if one doesn’t want to do it) because it is needed.

Self-regulated children can delay gratification and suppress their immediate impulses enough to think ahead to the possible consequences of their actions or consider alternative actions that would be more appropriate.

In his book The Executive Brain. Elkhonon Goldberg  writes “Frontal lobes perform the most advanced and complex functions in all of the brain, the so-called executive functions.  They are linked to intentionality, purposefulness, and complex decision making.  They reach significant development only in humans; arguably, they make us human.” (2001, 2).

This is all well and good but our kiddos aren’t all coming from perfect two-parent upper middle-class homes. Our children bring a lot of stress to school with them and none of it is in their control. This can lead to some executive functioning problems.

Additionally, in his book Teaching with Poverty in Mind, by Eric Jensen

“Exposure to chronic or acute stress is hardwired into children’s developing brains, creating a devastating, cumulative effect (Coplan et al., 1996). Compared with a healthy neuron, a stressed neuron generates a weaker signal, handles less blood flow, processes less oxygen, and extends fewer connective branches to nearby cells. The prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, crucial for learning, cognition, and working memory, are the areas of the brain most affected by cortisol, the so-called “stress hormone.” Experiments have demonstrated that exposure to chronic or acute stress actually shrinks neurons in the brain’s frontal lobes—an area that includes the prefrontal cortex and is responsible for such functions as making judgments, planning, and regulating impulsivity (Cook & Wellman, 2004)—and can modify and impair the hippocampus in ways that reduce learning capacity (Vythilingam et al., 2002).”

A child who is 5 in age may actually be 3 developmentally. Similarly, a child who is 10 is age may actually be 8 developmentally.

These are major developmental differences and can lead to a few issues in the classroom.

 

This is a major teacher “hot-take” but I’m going to stand by it.

If you think “I shouldn’t have to…” then maybe you shouldn’t be a teacher.

Please don’t feel attacked. I am not saying that you are a terrible teacher. I am confident that you are a great teacher that loves their kiddos and works super hard every day.

The “I shouldn’t have to…” train of thought locks us into a cycle of frustration, disappointment, anger, and loss of empathy.

The point is you should have to because you are their teacher and it is your job to remind them 103923953486834696369835689468 times how to line up even though you’ve done it the same way since August and it is now March…….

At this point in the session I put up some posters on different topics that can cause snags in the lesson and we did a graffiti activity. We wrote in all black and it was a total downer but I promised everyone we would come back later to find solutions. I am not going to post pictures of the final posters yet because #spoilers but I will at the end. The topics we wrote on were:

Lesson Flow/Agenda

Conflict Resolution

Classroom Layout

Teaching New Material

Entrance/Exit Procedures

Passing Out/Collecting Materials (i.e. instruments, papers, pencils etc.)

Other?

Take a moment to think right now about your own room and see if you can think of any snag points that have remained an issue this year.

We are about to dig into solutions right now!

A quick note: this is hard and messy work. We are taking the time to be vulnerable and self-critical. It is easy to be very hard on ourselves and feel guilty but that is not what we or our kiddos need. This is the time for radical self-love! We are the educators that our kiddos need and deserve and we are going to continue to better ourselves through reflection and behavior changes. TLDR: Self Love + reflection = we got this!!

I happen to be at a Responsive Classroom (RC) School which I really love. There are a lot of behavior management systems out there in addition to  Responsive Classroom such as PBIS, a school friendly version of Restorative Justice, Leader in Me and many others. Responsive Classroom really resonates with me and I believe it aligns well with what we already are doing on a Social Emotional Level in our classrooms.

The first thing RC asks use to examine is our routines.

I will be the first to admit that some of my routines are half-baked and I need to do some hard thinking before next year. I am going to keep fighting the good fight though for this year in the hopes that repetition will iron out at least some of the issues. Here is my Agenda and I am pretty happy with it. It’s general enough that I have a lot of freedom but the kiddos still know what we are doing every lesson.

I also have a more specific agenda embedded in the powerpoint that we read between each activity to track where we are in the lesson.

I have also adapted the RC idea of Morning Meeting to create a Music Message. Whomever is first in music class is the designated teacher’s helper. They are the one that hands out and collect materials and choose people to move to centers/instruments/etc. They also lead much of the lesson with some coaching from me. It has been really great and has cut way down on the “Ms. Schaefer can I help….xyz???”

In my room, the message comes right after the composer of the month and before the welcome activity. Another music teacher acquaintance of mine told me once that our class should feel like church. Not because there is any religious content in our lessons but because our kiddos should feel comfort and solace in the repetition of the process.

This brings us to aspect two of RC; Teacher Language.

Did you know…

This means that we need to adjust our language. That might mean rethinking our classroom rules. I used to have once of those cute sets of rules for “MUSIC” that I got off of TPT but I honestly could never remember it in the moment. Now I keep it simple. It definitely helps that the whole building is basically on a theme and variation of these rules.

This is all well and good but things don’t always go as planned in our rooms. All of our teacher language is of no help when that kid puts my RECORDER IN HIS MOUTH GAHAHDDGAAHHAAAAAHHHH.

While we hope that these threats will scare our kiddos into fixing their behavior, all it does is project the subtext that we do not trust our kiddos to do the right thing. One of the most important parts of RC is the foundation of trust. an RC educator trusts that their students want to do the right thing, it’s just that sometimes they lack the skills to do so. (Real talk: I am soooo guilty of throwing out threats. I literally did it this morning with Recorders…..I know it’s coming from a place of wanting the kiddos to fix it so that we can have fun but I just end up with a stress headache and pissed off kids because they had to pack it all up.)

Speaking of headaches, ain’t no tired like teacher-tired so I am gonna go ahead and pause  for now.  I will be back tomorrow with the rest of the session!

Lucia

Self-Differentiated Instruction: Empowering Students to Challenge Themselves

Greetings all!

I had the great pleasure of presenting at the National OAKE Conference in Columbus Ohio. It was such an honor to share what I am doing in my room and I hope everyone who attended was inspired to try something new in their room. I did a version of this workshop at the Maryland Music Educators Association Conference in February so I am combining the notes for both here. So let’s dive in!

(This is from December where we made shakers in Early Childhood out of donated containers filled with beans/rice. It was a huge messy party and I highly recommend it)

Ashley teaches in Fairfax County and is an instructor at the American Kodály Institute at Loyola University in Baltimore.  She did a fabulous session about differentiation so I wanted to cite her here for more information. In my session I covered just a tiny slice of the differentiation pie so definitely check out Ashley’s work to get a bigger picture.

Our job as music teachers is really hard. We teach anywhere from 350 to over 1000 children and keeping track of each child’s needs can be daunting. Obviously we are looking at IEP and 504 Plans and aligning our instruction to their needs but for the rest of our population, how can we possibly be expected to tailor instruction to every child? The answer is that we can’t. But what we can do is create an environment in our room where our students get to take control of their own learning.

My session was primarily focused on the student’s motivation as the differentiating tool.

According to a study by Hanover Research, “Student choice makes students active participants in their educations, thereby increasing levels of engagement. Notably, researchers highlight the fact that such autonomy is generally associated with greater personal well‐being and satisfaction in educational environments as well as in terms of academic performance.”

So how can we give the students opportunities to control their own learning process in the music room? There are so many possible answers to this question and I am sure you have your own ideas that you implement in your room. My answer was to adapt the Reading and Writing Workshop model to the music room.

You may be nervous thinning about adapting a model that is designed for the general education classroom for music but I promise it’s not as scary as you might think. Let’s look at what happens in the workshop model.

When I was reading this, it all sounded very familiar once you translate it through a music room lens. We are already doing a lot of these things so I hope you are feeling a little less anxious about trying out something new. Let’s look now at what is happening specifically during the workshop time.

Looking at this table, there is definitely a lot of things we are already doing in our classroom.  The only tweaks I would make are the amount of time for independent reading and writing and possibly the length of the mini-lesson. The choices that you make are going to depend on the length of your instructional period. If you are working within a 30 minute period you are going to have to cut and crunch more than someone with a 45 minute period. Alternatively, if you are at the middle or high school level, you might be saying this is not enough time for your 90 minute block. Anyone who has ever been to one of my sessions will know that I am all about adapting. You know your kids and you’re constraints so take what can you can use and toss the rest. TLDR: you do you boo!

To make this work, you might have to make a few changes to your classroom routines.

Having kids everywhere working on different things means that your procedures have to super solid. I am at a Responsive Classroom school so we have a specific way in which we teach our procedures.

Talking about Responsive Classroom is a whole ‘nother can of worms so I will let you do your own research on that or check out some of my earlier blog posts. Long story short, I believe it is a great system for teaching children how to develop their self and social awareness in a way that is respectful of their autonomy and voice. I highly recommend it if you or your school are looking for a new behavior support system.

Here is a picture of my kiddos successfully using our flexible seating with no pillow fights!

Ok so let’s really get this show on the road. How do you actually do this in your room? Here is roughly my process of getting this project off the ground.

I made this cute little music coloring page online and added the part on the bottom for their name. Students learned how to use the flexible seating via interactive modeling then were allowed to decorate their journal covers while utilizing the flexible seating. When they were done coloring, they glued the paper to a larger piece of construction paper. Then we hole punched the whole thing and made it into a journal. You will see what the pages look like in a moment. I do not recommend the 3-hole-punch tie the ribbon thing. It took FOREVER so learn from me and just staple those bad boys together.

After we made the covers, students were asked to tell me about their hopes and dreams for their instrument. Thinking about hopes and dreams is also a big part of Responsive Classroom.  I found this valuable for me because I could see what was motivating them. That little window allows me to better support and empower them towards that goal as well.

The next lesson, we completed a K-W-(L) chart. I chopped off the L part because I don’t want to hang on to these for the rest of my life. I will do exit interviews at some point to see what they learned but until then, this tells me enough. This is where they choose the instrument they would like to use for their independent study. I required at least three bullet points so that’s why you see three here. This was another valuable glimpse for me to gather information about what they already know and their motivations (which is why we ask kids to do this in the first place).

Now that we have completed all of our preparatory activities, we can finally have our first mini-lesson. YAY!!! It’s only been two months since we began this process……

I made the page above to guide my kiddos in their journaling.  After I complete a mini-lesson, my slide looks like this:

I only require my students to fill out the top two bubbles and the date. I encourage them to write in the bottom two bubbles, but they are not required. If they do write something to me, I respond in the box to the right. I will show some student samples a little later.

So let’s see a mini-lesson! Below are the actual slides I show my kiddos.

In this slide, I click on the link and we experience the metronome together. They really get a kick out of this. Then I give them some listening examples.

Listening example above

It is important for me to point out that I always show videos of actual people performing the music. I think the visual of humans playing the music is so valuable for our students to realize that classical music is a living breathing organism. I also make a point of showing a variety of people playing the music. I don’t always use classical music examples either. In fact, I try very hard to show living people of color performing their own contemporary music or the music of their peers to make sure that my students see themselves reflected in the music world.

Listening example above

If you notice, there is a typo in that slide. whoops…..6 classes of 4th and 5th graders did not catch that. Oh well, you can’t win them all I guess.

I also include emotions because I want the kiddos knowing that they can use topic of the mini-lesson to convey a feeling or message in their own music. Are these descriptions and definitions overly simplified and reductive? Yes. Are the humans I teach nine and ten years old? Also yes. If you teach older kids, scale it up to meet their vocabulary needs. TLDR: you do you boo!

Because the mini-lesson is meant to be mini, I do not show the entire video. I will do a maximum of 30-45 seconds. Kids can only do something for as many minutes as they are old. So if you are teaching three year-olds, they can only do an activity for three minutes. If you are teaching ten year-olds, they can only do an activity for three minutes. (See what I did there? #thestruggleisreal)

Below is a sample of how the students journal after the mini-lesson

I have a little stamp that I use to “check off” each journal. This is their ticket to the instruments. No stamp, no iPad. Sorry-not-sorry Johnny but you have to do at least a little bit of work to get your tech fix.

You can find all these journal pages in a google drive folder here! BONUS: It’s in English and Spanish 🙂

The last thing that needs to be done is goal setting. This happens once the kiddos have had some time to explore the instruments and get a feel for what they really want to accomplish. To do goal-setting, I use SMART Goals which I found on TpT. When I was young and poor I would make things like this from scratch but now I am willing to for over $5 to save myself 4 hours of work so thank you TpT!!

For this, I actually make the SMART Goals the mini-lesson for that day. I go over what a SMART Goal is then tell the students that I will be interviewing them to hear about their goals. The SMART Goals template is pretty long and involved so I don’t want to turn off their brains by asking them to write it themselves. I make a big production out of the interviews. I made a little press badge, put my form on a clipboard and got a fake microphone. They get a kick out of me making a big deal of interviewing them like they are a famous person. Also, it allows me to ask more clarifying questions to get to what I am really looking for. Here is an example of an interview I did last week.

When it was time for the “timely” box, I actually took out a calendar and showed this student what today was, and how many more lessons we would have before June. He decide the beginning of May was a doable so I wrote it down. For “attainable” he just gave me a smile and shrugged so that’s basically what I wrote. Short and sweet right?

The other thing I am doing during the independent work time is pulling small-groups.

Small-group time is for teaching a skill or concept that does not apply to the whole group. The Elements of Music apply to the whole group, but tuning the guitar does not so I would teach that skill in a small-group setting. I am also looking at what they write in their journals to me in the “I need help with…” bubble. If a few kids write to me about wanting to learn how to write lyrics, that would be a great small-group lesson.

So what are some other mini-lesson topics we could do?

Here is the list I came up with before the session:

The incredible attendees did some brainstorming and came up with a few more topics: Meter, practice habits, arranging and staff reading (clef, lines and spaces, etc.).

So I am going to drop a little disclaimer right here and I realize it might be a little late. I recognize that I am extremely lucky to have as many resources at my school as I do. Even though we are a Title 1 school, I have an absurd amount of money thrown at me to spend both from my central office as well as from our very active and generous PTU. That is not the case everywhere so I put it to our attendees to brainstorm a little about how they could use this model in their room if they are short on instruments.

Here is my initial list, then what the attendees came up with.

Attendees suggested that we could use un-pitched percussion. Another suggested that the model could be used in beginning band or orchestra and a third attendee thought that this would be possible to use with voices only.  Additionally, the fabulous Lauren McDougle, who is the director of that very same America Kodály Institute that Ashely Cuthbertson teaches at, suggested that we could lay out all of the instruments we have and ask the kiddos what we could do with them. I love that idea and am always pro giving room for as much student voice a possible so snaps to Lauren!

The last thing to cover is the sharing portion of the workshop. Students can share at the end of the lesson what they’ve been working on or you can designate specific share days at the end of each month. I prefer the latter because I am never on top of my game enough to wrap everyone up with enough time for a share, clean-up, and line-up. I will be the first to admit that the last 5% of my class period is always a hot-mess-express of instruments being put away and kids jostling into line. It’s a weakness of mine and something I need to work. It’s coming from a place of wanting to give the kiddos as much time as possible to play but no excuses! I gotta get.it.together.

At the very end of the “unit” there is always a celebration event where parents and friends attend a publishing party. This is such a joyful experience for the kids and their families and it validates them as published authors. We have a few opportunities for this within our already set up calendar expectations.

I am considering doing both a “poster session” and a more formal concert. The “poster session” will be where I invite younger grades to sign up to come to the music period of a 4th or 5th grade class so that there can be a one to one interaction between the lower elementary students and their upper elementary composer counterparts. I will prep the younger ones with potential questions to ask the composer and I know there is going to be some really special connections made.

I am also interested in doing a volunteer-only concert. I have some very driven kiddos who are just DYING to be on-stage. I am anti-talent show so we aren’t going to go that route, but I definitely need to have my kiddos who want to be on stage for their friends and families get that opportunity to shine.

Here are the main two iPad apps that my kiddos are using to compose and mix beats.

They’ve made some fabulous stuff and I have used it as the transition music during concerts when classes/grade levels are coming on and off the stage.

And that about sums up what I covered in my session. I showed a few more videos of my students performing their draft compositions which you can find on our instagram page. 

I hope my session and this post have helped to spark an idea. If you have any questions or want help brainstorming, feel free to email me anytime.

Like I’ve said before, you know your kiddos and your classroom so keep what you like, adapt as needed, and toss the rest. TLDR: you do you boo!

Sing-cerely,

Lucia S.

 

National NAfME 2018: Inspiration Session 5

Explore Improvise and Compose Across the Elementary Curriculum
Led by Beatrice Olesko and Matthew Clauhs

General Music Teachers and ensemble directors can work together to provide students with tools to create and perform original musical ideas. Together, we can provide a cohesive music curriculum that inspires creativity and collaboration. Experience interactive lessons focused on exploration, improvisation, and composition in elementary mud contexts and share examples of student work in addition to connecting these activities to Core Arts Standards and assessment tools that lead to understandings.

Exploratory Experience

• Spontaneous – no refinement or repetitions
• Free or structured
• Group or individual
• Readiness is crucial

Exploration becomes improvisation when the experience moves beyond exploration when there is a beginning and an end and involves musical ideas.

Activity One: Walking in the Jungle

Teacher composes a song as the A section
Students improvise on the theme of the animal as the B section
– Can be done on voices, on a single instrument (i.e. the Recorder) or in a circle of various instruments such as non-pitched percussion and Orff Instruments.

Activity 2: Jazz improv using Aebersold Backgrounds

Teacher scaffolds improvisation using question and answer first on one note (la) and then adding the rest of the pentatonic scale.

Activity 3: Horizontal Improvisation using “Stand by Me” background

• Show the chordal structure using solfege
• Play/sing just the chordal line
• Improvise rhythmically across one horizontal line first
• Improvise vertically and horizontally using the pitches in the chords

Composition

• Involves planning, practice, and refinement – reflection is a key component
• Group or individual
• Again, readiness is crucial
• Usually occurs over multiple classes
• Needs to include:
  – access to a sound source
  – limiting parameters
  – time to edit/refine
  – an opportunity to perform

Activity 4: Composition Sequence using Artwork 

• Examine the artwork as a class
• Assign groups
• Groups select a piece of art
• Students divide which elements to represent
• Distribute instruments
• Students select instruments to match these elements
• Rehearse
• Perform

Take-aways from this session

There were some really great activities in this session. I loved the Aebersold background Jazz improvisation on Recorder. I can pair a jazz unit covering the blues chord progression with my Recorder unit. I love it! The opportunities for improvisation within the context of children’s literature is also something that I can implement immediately. I can’t wait to try these in my classroom!

 

National NAfME 2018: Feierabend Folk Dancing

This was such a great session! Thank you so much to Dr. Feierabend for leading this special session. Most of the dances he taught were from the repertoire of the New England Dancing Masters which is a wonderful resource for Euro/American folk dancing. The dance below was composed by Feierabend himself so I wanted to share here before I forget it!

Sicillian Circle

Formation: 2 couple Squares in a circle

Music: Any Waltz

Face your Neighbor and take right hands: In 3 out 3 Crossover 6
Face your Partner and take right hands: In 3 out 3 Crossover 6
Face your Neighbor and take right hands: In 3 out 3 Crossover 6
Face your Partner and take right hands: In 3 out 3 Crossover 6

Star Right: 12
Star Left: 12

Take partner’s inside hand: In 3 out 3 in 3 out 3
Drop Hands and pass through right shoulders: 12

Begin the form again.

Thank you again Dr. Feierabend!

 

National NAfME 2018: Inspiration Session 4

Creativity & Improvisation in Early Childhood through Play
Led by Lynn Grossman

How can we provide rich opportunities for children to develop audition? Learn how building a repertoire of tonal and rhythm patterns through songs and chants enables children to have something musical to “say” in creative activities. We’ll use manipulatives and puppets for musical movement, inviting children to engage in “conversation.” Participants will practice techniques for building improvisation readiness, giving children opportunities to make connections, imitate, and improvise.

Goal for this session:

• Share strategies for building students’ vocabulary for improvisation
• Show how using manipulatives and props in interactive musical activities can facilitate creativity and expression

Why is improvisation important?

“Improvisation means that an individual has internalized a music vocabulary and is able to understand and to express musical ideas spontaneously, in the moment of performance”

– Azzara, 2002

“To create and improvise, students need to have something to say”

– Edwin Gordon

Strategies for improvisation in this lesson:

• Students move with macro/micorbeats
  – use a stretchy band
• Imitate rhythmic vocabulary on a neutral syllable
• Teacher models improvisation:
  “This is how Ms. Grossman rides…”
• Group, then solo improvisation
  “This is how the children ride…”
  “This is how _________ rides”

What do Listeners do?

• They interact with what they are hearing
• Give meaning to what was just shared by remembering and making connections
• Anticipate and predict what will come next

How can we introduce this?

Imitation is like tracing paper. It is vital because it helps us build our vocabulary and skills but we must move beyond that to creativity.

Steps toward improvisation in this lesson

• Present the song while students listen
  – Students sing the home tone
• Practice the response as a group, then soloists
• Teacher models improvised responses
  “On a cold dark night, how the owl hoots” and improvises an owl hooting that is different than the wind blowing pattern.
  “how the wolf howls…how the bat squeaks…etc.”
• Students imitate tonal and melodic patterns
• Students improvise new responses as a group or with soloists

Opportunities for questioning

• Can look at the notation and ask:
  “do you see our wind pattern?”
  “do you see it anywhere else?”
  “What does the pattern end on?”
  “Do you see the home tone anywhere else in our song?”
  “Can you draw your improvisation?” (contour map)
  “What would it look like on the staff do you think?”

Melodic Improvisation

Setting limits to improvisation:

“Can you end on the home tone?”
“Was that the home tone?”
“Can you draw your improvisation?”
“What would it look like on the staff?”

Closing Thoughts

• Before children improvise, that have to have something to say
• Repertoire of patterns (vocabulary)
• A musical vocabulary is built through imitation, however to develop musical understanding, we need to experience improvisation too.

Strategies for improvisation

• Choose a musical context (toanl/rhythm)
• Neutral syllables first
• Model improvisation, showing many possible “answers” to musical questions
• Re-establish context throughout

Take-aways from this session:

Children as young as 4 can improvise if you give them enough of a aural foundation.

 

 

National NAfME 2018: Inspiration Session 3

Intuition and Reason in Music Teaching and Learning
Led by Christopher Azzara

Drawing on intuition and reason, Christopher Azzara will introduce participants to key elements and skills to: (1) develop improvisation and composition in a variety of musical styles; (2) include improvisation and composition as an integral part of teaching and learning, and (3) assess student learning

7 Skills of Improvisation

1. The performer improvises rhythm patterns to the bass line
2. The performer establishes the tonality by singing through the chords in parts separate from the harmonic rhythm
3. The performer learns the harmonic rhythm (chord changes) by singing the chords over the melody
4. The performer uses a neutral syllable to improvise rhythm pattern in the harmonic progression using the pitches learned in skill 2
5. The performer improvises tonal patterns to the harmonic progression using macrobeats
6. The performer improvises tonal patterns and rhythm patterns to the harmonic progression
7. The performer improvises by decorating and embellishing the melodic material

Take-aways from this session:

Improvisation can be taught sequentially in a way that is scaffolded up to the final product of total fluency and notation is not needed.

 

 

National NAfME 2018: Inspiration Session 2

Applications of the Six Principles of Elementary Music
Led by Lynn Grossman

In this session, Lynn Grossman will provide suggestions for applying the six principles of music teaching and learning to elementary music instruction.

What is my educational goal for students?

• To grow as independent musicians
• To think musically and demonstrate powerful musical actions

Sound before Sight

• Many musicians and researchers believe that humans learn music by a similar process to how they learn language
• Listening – Speaking.Improvisation/Reading – Writing

Students need opportunities for:

• Listening (Repertoire)
• Imitation (Vocabulary)
• Thinking and Improvisation

Example 1: Rhythmic

from bethsnotesplus.com

Strategies for improvisation in this lesson:

• Present the song while moving to the beat
  – A section: “chugging” like a steam engine to the beat
  – B section: “hammering” the railroad ties
• Practice rhythmic vocabulary (imitation) on a neutral syllable
  – Teacher isolates patterns for students to echo
• Identify repeating rhythm pattern
  – Model same and different

Improvise a personal rhythm pattern
– Create a C section: first improvise in a group then individually

Teacher uses a visual to show students how long they have to improvise OR Teacher can improvise for the first three measures and let students finish the phrase.

Questioning Techniques

Other Considerations

• This amount of work would occur over several lessons
• Building rhythmic vocabulary is separate from building tonal vocabulary
• Provide opportunities for thinking, then improvising as a group, before asking individuals to improvise alone

Assessment

Students improvises….

4 – Using a variety of macro/microbeats, or elongation/division rhythms in context

3 – Using macro/microbeats in context

2 – Using macrobats in context only

1 – Using the same pattern given by the teacher

Example 2: Melodic

Strategies for Improvisation in this lesson

• Identify the repeating pattern (do-mi-do) and where it occurs in the song
• Label with solfege
  – Label “major tonic”
  – Sing/read this and other examples of major tonic
• Improvise a pattern to replace do-mi-so in the song.
  – Teacher models first

Take-aways from this session:

I really enjoyed this session. It was an important reminder that improvisation is an important step on the path to literacy. There is no point in know the symbolic notation if the student doesn’t have an internal understanding of the musical skill or concept. I will definitely be incorporating more improvisation in my lessons!

National NAfME 2018: Inspiration Track

Greetings all!

I am at the National NAfME Conference in Grapevine, Texas this week to attend sessions and also present on Wednesday. This year, the conference is organized by learning tracks; Inspiration, Innovation, Involvement, Learning, and Technology. I have chosen to attend the Inspiration track because I want to increase opportunities for creativity in my classroom. I of course want the students reading and writing music notation, but I also want them to be able to use those tools to express themselves through composition and improvisation.

In the next few posts, I am going to take notes during sessions and organize my own thoughts around what I’ve learned.

Session 1: Six Principles for Music Teaching and Learning
Led by Christopher Azzara

Getting to Improvisation:

-Learn Repertoire
Sets the foundation for our musical vocabulary that we can use to improvise later
-Learn patterns and progressions; tonal, rhythm, and expressive
Provides the specific tools that we can use to improvise later
-Learn solos; analyze the content
Provides examples of excellent improvisers that we can emulate
-Improvise melodic phrases through spontaneous interaction
Provides opportunities to use our tools in real time using intuition
-Learn to improvise: use the seven skills
Provides opportunities to improve the use of our tools and examine our choices
through reflection
-Read and compose in the context of improvisation
Provides opportunities to polish our improvisations through revision turning them
into compositions

Quotations to take away:

“Creating is all about choice.”
When we frame creativity as just making a choice between this and that, it makes the idea of being spontaneous and improvising less intimidating.

“Why ‘walk’ your ‘talk’ when you can ‘do’ your ‘be’?”
Stop talking so much and do the things that you believe you are.

“Music isn’t a kind of language, language is a kind of music!”
Language has meter, language has contour and melody and cadence.

“Symbols remind us of how musical we are”
You can teach children to read the notes but they may not be learning anything. They have to know they are musical and experience their own musicality. That way the symbols of music notation are simply a reminder of their musicality.