Description: Join us as we learn from one another. In this session, members from the Texas Gulf Coast Orff Chapter will share some of their favorite activities. This is the perfect opportunity to present activities in front of peers, or simply to be a participant, learning and collecting new ideas along the way.
Description: Join us as we sing, speak, move, play AND create some musical magic! This session will include improvisation techniques for beginners and beyond! You will leave with ideas to use with your students, as well some tools for you to create YOUR own magic!
Kristine Wolfe has been teaching PreK-6 Music & Band in the Papillion - La Vista (NE) Community Schools for over 20 years. She earned a Bachelor of Music from Iowa State University and a Master of Music from the University of Nebraska-Omaha. In addition to her Kodaly training, Kristine is a Level I & II Orff Schulwerk Instructor and is an active clinician at workshops throughout the United States. She currently serves on the AOSA Fund Development Subcommittee and is the Program Chair for the Great Plains Orff Chapter. In her free time, she enjoys playing Oboe in the Intergeneration Orchestra of Omaha, as well as Recorder with The Jewel Tones
Description: Have you ever wondered how to bring the music your students prefer into the classroom? In this workshop, you will learn many ways to integrate popular music and movement into your classroom through the Schulwerk. You will also learn how to create your own materials that make authentic connections with your students and help them learn.
Martina Vasil is an Associate Professor of Music Education at the University of Kentucky (UK) and the PreK–6 music teacher at Lexington Montessori School. Martina directs Orff levels and the Orff Schulwerk Graduate Certificate at UK and teaches a Popular Music and Orff Schulwerk special topics course. She loves incorporating popular media and current artists into her lesson plans. Martina has level 3 Orff certification and training in both Dalcroze and modern band. Her PhD and BM are from West Virginia University and her MM is from Eastman School of Music.
Description: Teachers often conceive of improvisation, arranging, or composition as culminating steps of a learning experience that was developed solely to showcase the student creativity through performance. While this is an excellent way to demonstrate student-centered skills, another approach involves eliciting smaller creative responses everyday throughout daily learning experiences for which the final product may not feature the improvisation. Sometimes the magic of “everyday improvisation” exists only in the classroom and may, or may not, make its way to the stage, but it is still equally important in student development. Participants in this workshop will experience learning activities that include such choices and opportunities to elicit everyday student choice and creativity through movement, body percussion, untuned percussion, recorder, and mallet instruments.
Michael Chandler is an Assistant Professor of Music and Coordinator of Music Education at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, TN, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in music education and supervises student teachers. Michael taught elementary general music in Texas public schools for 16 years, during which his student groups performed as invited ensembles at the Texas MEA conference in 2005, 2007, and 2013. He was a collaborative pianist for the Children’s Chorus of Greater Dallas (CCGD) for 10 years and is currently the founding conductor of the Clarksville Children’s Chorus. Michael teaches all three levels of Orff Schulwerk basic and recorder during summer AOSA-approved teacher education courses, and his work has appeared in The Southwestern Musician, Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, The Orff Echo, and Orff-Schulwerk International.
From Seed to Flower to Garden: Cultivating Musical Creativity
The Orff Schulwerk approach challenges teachers to recognize and foster each student's musical abilities and imagination. Acknowledging what students bring to the experience and scaffolding musical exploration is the beginning of that process. Providing them the tools to create increasingly sophisticated and rewarding musical experiences as they grow requires dedicated planning and work over time. Today’s session models a sequence of creative activities that invite a full and vital flowering of musical expression.
Our Teacher Identity: Knowledge, Experience, and Social Action
There is a perceived chasm between music research and music teaching practice. Research can seem unrelated to daily classroom experiences, and the experiences of practitioners are believed to be too anecdotal to be founded in research. In addition to this generalization, we as general music teachers, combat notions that what we teach is far removed from what musicians do in concert halls and recording studios. We know this to be much more complex, and we know that our knowledge and experience is meaningless without an intentional commitment to creating a just and equitable classroom.
Join us as we deconstruct notions of separate teaching identities and the need to justify our work through side by side active music making and discussion of the cognitive and psychological concepts found within teaching and learning driven by inclusive practices and universal design. Be ready to imagine a music classroom where your students are celebrated as who they are based on an understanding of social awareness and justice. This will be a day of music making and reflection. Consider bringing a recorder, an ʻukulele (if you have one), and a laptop or journal.
Give a Little Grace: Teaching with Understanding and Empathy
As we continue on our path towards “back to normal”, we need to remember to give ourselves- and our students- a little grace and forgiveness, while remaining musical. Participants will engage with beginning of the year lessons and ideas for how to create a welcoming and friendly music room environment.
Just Go with It! Improvisation in the Elementary Music Classroom
Orff Schulwerk educator Brigitte Warner famously said, “We make music our own by making music ourselves.” Learn some simple ways to infuse creativity into your music class! Participants will engage in vocal and instrumental improvisation, choreography, and composition of melodies and texts through engaging lessons you can use Monday morning!
Educators will explore representation of various styles of Black music through singing, movement, and discussion, toward the goal of supplying broader narratives of blackness in the classroom.
Whether or not you’ve been able to play recorder this school year, it’s never too early to pick up some new tips and tricks for teaching recorders in the future! Explore how the incorporation of rhymes and simple songs your students already may know can make beginning recorder a breeze. And if you’re like me and are teaching students in their homerooms, you may have noticed that they are desperate for a chance to move! Regardless of your teaching situation, explore some quick and easy ideas to get your students up and moving! Bring your recorder (don’t worry, we’ll be muted!) and have space to stand and stretch.
Sound Spectrums
Teaching music has always demanded creativity and nuance to make students successful, bit virtual learning has made the idea of assessment unclear. Join us as we sing, dance, and play in our virtual music room while discussing the need to rethink music class in a time of crisis by making exploration they key to our students’ overall success.
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