Key Idea's in Music Education

 Today's class would have to be one of my favourite Orff based classes so far. The Orff activity we were taken through was based around the poem 'Fungi Alafia'. Belinda our teacher started this off with singing small chunks of the poem and progressively building on it until we had interchanging parts with full body percussion. This followed with a call and response activity on the woodblocks/xylophones which we then worked our 'Funghi Alafia' routine in to. During this we experimented with the different types of Burdun bass line patterns. The final class activity we engaged in was some very energetic dancing and moving to 'Break Mixer'. We explored eccentric ways to change direction, promenade and move within two moving circles. Activities as such as certainly inspired me and sparked creativity for how I can teach my own musical poems/body percussions in the classroom. As a guitar tutor I am starting to work Orff methods in to my tutoring examples being exer...

 In this class Jennifer Rowley came in to greet the education students and run the class. The majority of the class consisted of an introductory activity where every single student got the opportunity to introduce them selves, talk about their musical journey that led them to where they are today and most importantly their motives of why they want to be a teacher/study music education. This was such an amazing activity as I got the opportunity to hear so many diverse stories REAL stories about a musical journey that has led to studying music education. It was amazing to hear that so many people had staple role models that inspired them to go down a path of music education. It seems that majority of these role models were in fact high school music teachers and instrument tutors. The key thing I took out of today's class was when Jennifer said "be a disrupter". This was in response to me saying I aspire to change how music is taught by having a more improvisational approach...

 This week we had a special guest come in and teach us about Orff and engage us in amazing activities that one day we can all pass down to future students. The lesson was introduced with a call and respond musical role which was an amazing ice breaker for the lesson. We did an activity that required us to sync body percussion, actions etc to the words 'Trash, Garbage and dirt'. The activity started in a very Orff manor with the teacher initiating the activity in a very call and response type manor with lots of repetition of the words/actions we needed to eventually learn and remember. We did this activity in a circle. The teacher explained how engaging in student/teacher activities in a circle puts everyone on the same level and fades out that distinct student/teacher relationship as everyone is coming together for an activity. In groups we were then instructed to create our own actions with a mixture of percussion, words and body actions too sync in with the 'Trash, garbag...

 In this class James Humberstone opened up the class in a very interesting captivating way. Without speaking he engaged in body persuasion and cued us in to repeat what he did. This continued on and progressively got more challenging and involved. This then led to sung melodies in unison to the rhythm of the body percussion. Many challenging variations of this went on whilst the room was then divided in to different harmony parts making it a whole class collaboration. This for me has been the coolest start to any class ever! After this activity had finished James explained to us that he was using the Orff pedagogy to engage the class in this activity. We haven't dived heavily in to this yet but from what I gather this pedagogy utilises body movement and physical cues to coordinate student activity and learning almost turning it in to a constructive game of call and response. I can see the value of this in the classroom as it demonstrates that actions are really more powerful than w...