Orff and String Teaching?

So here I am in the Eastman library with my favorite Java's drink in hand (iced chai) and supposed to be reading music history, reflecting for J, and creating a lesson for MH--and the library closes in two hours. Yeah, I got a late start, sleeping in to nearly 11:00. I don't think I've done that in ages, but lydee was kind enough not to shower and as a result I got much needed sleep this morning. (The shower is right next to my room and makes this horrible screaming sound.)

Anyways, it occurred to me yesterday that there are many things I learned in Orff that I automatically incorporate into my string teaching. On a very basic level, the level of interaction I have with my kids during our orchestra rehearsal is reminiscent of Orff. My kids are very involved and have a sense of ownership in the rehearsals as they choose our rhythms to use for scales, experiment with different ways we can play in rounds and make suggestions for improving our performances. I take the first 10 minutes of our rehearsal to do scales and sightreading. I've done scales with my kids since I started teaching, but this was the first year I've incorporated sightreading. And it happened at the suggestion of a student. I had ordered some easy duet books; a whole set that I could use during orchestra and was playing some with my fifth grade cellists. I briefly mentioned that I wasn't sure how I was going to use them with the rest of the kids, and one of the girls promptly said that we should use them for sight reading in orchestra. Our chorus teacher did something similar with her kids this year, and this is where she got the idea. It worked like a charm and was wonderful because my kids needed something more than scales to do for warmups. My kids could probably play scales in rounds in their sleep.

When we do scales, I have the kids choose the rhythms--slightly reminiscent of the building blocks we use in Orff--the kids choose different pizzas if we are in duple and pies if we are in triple. In Orff the idea is to stick to nature related things for the building blocks, but I have found that these two work great. What I have thought of doing is using the building blocks as the beginning for improvisation and composition in an ensemble. We've been doing a lot of that in Orff this week and it would be fun to use with my string kids, especially right at the beginning of the year when we don't have to prepare for a concert right away.

More thoughts on this later....

Blogging

I am thinking about setting up a blog to use with my string students. I am considering using Blogger, but am also looking for other suggestions. Got one? I would love to hear about it!