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I never want to assume that everyone knows about the Orff-Schulwerk. Orff comes from the German Composer Carl Orff and Schulwerk means school work. The Orff-Schulwerk is an approach that combines music, movement, drama, and speech into lessons that are similar to a child’s world of play.
It was Orff’s philosophy to utilize what was naturally in the child’s environment to expose them to the things he wanted them to know musically.
If you’re going to be an Orff specialist you need to legitimize yourself. It’s like practicing medicine without a license. Nobody’s going to take you seriously. The first step you want to take in building an Orff program is to enroll into the Orff-Schulwerk levels workshops. These courses are offered through a two-week seminar during the summer months across the United States. In order to find the workshop nearest you, you’ll need to visit the American Orff-Schulwerk Association at https://aosa.org/chapters/
I’m not saying that taking the Orff-schulwerk will make you an Orff guru. It won’t. But it will give you the foundation you need to understand how the process works and to be successful.
A practitioner is a person actively engaged in an art, discipline, or profession. Although they are highly educated, their practices are limited to generic, primary care.
A specialist is a person whose role tends to be administrative, research, and/or program development-oriented. They also work in a variety of different settings.
Know Your Ensemble:-
If you are going to dare to teach anything like Eine Kleine Nachtmusik to a class full of 3rd, 4th and 5th graders you need know what you’re working with.
One of the best solutions to this dilemma is something that I learned as a Kindergarten Paraprofessional called chunking.
Chunking in psychology is a process by which individual pieces of information are bound together into a meaningful whole (Neath & Surprenant, 2003). Using this strategy, I took the reverse approach to this process and assessed the skill sets of each of my students and then divided the ensemble into the following groups:
(Based on Classical Music)
The Eagles are going to be your most advanced students. These are the students that I typically place on the melodic lines because the melody is usually harder to play. The Ducks are your intermediate students or what I like to refer to as your Eagles in training. These students perform better with a group of others of like skill. I usually place them on the harmonic sections.
Last but certainly not least are the Penguins. Although penguins don’t fly, they are fantastic swimmers and have a notable walk. These musicians are the foundation of your group. They are excellent with maintaining the steady beat and holding the entire ensemble together.
Therefore, they play the bass lines. (Depending on Repertoire)
After setting up your group, I would designate a leader from each section. This will give you the ability to be in several places at once.
When I was just doing my ensemble the “Dynamic Dolphins” at Dunaire Elementary, we met every day before school for 30 minutes and after school twice per week for two hours. Essentially, these kids were getting 6.5 hours of music every week! However, when I began directing the district-wide ensemble “Dynamix”, the practices went from 5 days to 6 days a week. We were practicing from anywhere between about 15-20hrs per week with evening and weekend rehearsals combined. As you can imagine, with this much practice, they quickly master pieces in a relatively short period of time ranging from 2-3 months.
This is the easiest way to transfer the score to your young musicians. Creating a kid-friendly guide for your students is the quickest way to connect what your students are seeing visually to what they are learning musically.
Simple sight reading samples are great ways to build your musicians’ musical vocabulary. Although this was written for soprano recorder, it works well for mallet instruments as well.
Continuing with the Chunking method, I organize my arrangements (program) in order of difficulty and give each piece a time frame for completion. I never teach the easiest piece first!
Orffinary: The term simply means ordinary. This is not to say that you can’t create anything extraordinary from this approach, I certainly did. In an ensemble like this is where the most magic happens.
Requirements:
You probably won’t achieve everything you want in this approach, but one of the things I can appreciate is that I was truly able to develop my skills not only as a teacher, but as an arranger and composer! (Necessity is the mother of invention, my early arrangements, I was just doing what was best for my students- but inadvertently made a market for myself) Your group will also develop organically. When your group is an open canvas, you’re not going to readily know the skill sets of all of your musicians. However, this can work to your advantage. The beauty of being an Orff teacher is that you and the students can create your own arrangements that are unique to your ensemble. This is a technique that you will only learn from the Orff-Schulwerk training.
Your group will need to be categorized into 3 sections:
None of my ensembles have ever been ordinary. Ever. The fun part is that no one ever expects what they get when they attend one of our performances! Not only are onlookers amazed at what they hear, they are also made part of the program. This quintessential Orff experience is what I call “Orffrageous”. This is the act of using Orff to push the limits beyond expectations.
Requirements
Unfortunately, there is no booster organization at the elementary level and Orff instruments are expensive. I would recommend that if you are just getting started, to build your program with resonator bells, chromatic glockenspiels, and at least 2-3 bass, alto, and soprano xylophones and metallophones. You could also ask around to see who may or may not be utilizing the equipment. There are music teachers out there that don’t touch Orff instruments. (AOSA)
Be aware that standard Orff instruments only come with 2 accidentals F sharp and B flat. Therefore, it will be a challenge to perform certain Orffrageous pieces without all of the necessary equipment.
I highly recommend the following resources for your ensemble needs:
