4 ways to teach music with the Orff method

There are so many different music teaching methods out there.  How do you choose which one to use?  This decision is a personal choice, or sometimes certain districts lean more towards one method over another.  There is no wrong way to teach music.  In fact, I enjoy using a combination of Orff and Kodaly in my music teaching.  When I started out, I had no resources or materials so I developed what worked best for me and my students.  Maybe you’re wanting to learn how to go about teaching the Orff method, but just don’t know where to start.  If so, here are my favorite 4 ways to teach music with the Orff method.

 

1.  Say

Orff combines speaking, singing, movement, and instruments in it’s teaching approach. One of my favorite things about Orff, is teaching through poems and stories.  I love integrating music, and think it’s important that kids learn music in multiple different ways.  When teaching through speech, you have the kids speak the poem first, then add creative movement or instruments to make it musical.  When using stories, read books to the kids where they can move to the words of the book.  Use stories that use action words like “jump”, “dance”, “skip”, “twirl”, etc.

Let’s use a poem the poem “Peter, Peter” as an example.  The first two lines go like this…

Peter, Peter if you’re able

Get your elbows off the table…

So, if I were teaching this poem, I would teach the speech piece first.   If you want to have a visual for students to learn from, bulletin board paper works awesome and you can hang it on your dry erase board.  Or, if you have a smart board, use that!  After you teach the speech piece, students can add creative movement either as a class or in round form, and then instrument parts either all together or in a rotation format.

 

2. Sing

In this method, students are taught songs by rote, which you may already do.  I noticed when I took the Orff level 1 training, I was already teaching the Orff approach and doing a lot of what was taught without even realizing I was using Orff.  Some teachers still enjoy teaching songs using textbooks, and this is perfectly fine.  Like I said, it’s a personal choice and do what works best for you.

When teaching kids to sing using the Orff approach, I have the students listen to the song first, whether on a recording or by me singing it.  Then, they echo sing a line at a time after me.  Instead of using solfege, we follow the melodic direction with our hands.  After they are comfortable with the song, we will then proceed to adding movement or instruments. A lot of the songs are short enough for the students to learn quickly and don’t incorporate a lot of verses.

3. Dance

If you’ve been around kids any length of time, you know they love to move.  Movement should be a huge part of the elementary music classroom.  The way to teach dance and movement is through folk songs and creative movement.   Some of my favorite resources to teach dance can be found here.  Fun ways to incorporate dance is to use scarves to have the kids paint high and low to the music, teach folk dances where they can pair up with a partner or learn dances as a class, have them create movement in their “bubble” of space.  The possibilities of incorporating movement are endless and totally up to you.  Creativity is what matters here and allowing the students time and space to explore different ways to move their bodies.

 

4. Play

When teachers think of the Orff method, probably the first thing that comes to mind are drums and xylophones.  Instruments are a large part of the Orff approach, but I hope I’ve shown you that they aren’t the only part.  When starting out, you may not have very many instruments to use and that is totally fine!  If you don’t have many instruments, kids can use body percussion.  A lot of kids never realized they can make music by using their bodies.  Not only can they use their bodies to dance, but they can use them to play too.  The four main types of body percussion are snap, clap, pat, and stomp.  A lot of time in the music classroom uses these four elements.  In fact, I would say I use body percussion more with students than I do the instruments.

After using body percussion, transfer to the instruments.  A goal to work towards is to have a good variety of xylophones, glockenspiels, drums, rhythm instruments, and recorders.  There are so many ways to use the instruments in your classroom.  You can teach a song and have different students in groups at each part, utilize the instruments in centers, have one group playing an instrument part, one groups singing/speaking, and one group creating movement, or you use an instrument while the students move to the beat.  The possibilities are endless.

 

What are 2 ways you implement Orff into your music classroom?  I’d love to hear all about it in the comments below or share your thoughts on social media as you share this post.   

Also, I’d love for you to share this post or any of the resources on my website with a friend or colleague who you know NEEDS to see it.

P.S.  Are you feeling frustrated or stuck as an elementary music teacher?  Check out these free resources to help you teach elementary music with confidence!