Hi everyone! This is Aileen from Mrs. Miracle's Music Room. Today, I'm blogging about something that has been on my mind quite a bit lately as I've been planning lessons: how to foster a student-centered environment in the music room.
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There are so many things that I love about the Kodály-inspired classroom...but at times, it can feel somewhat teacher-centered if taught in a traditional way. Sometimes, students DO need a whole-class approach. They need to sing together as a community, they need to prepare and practice rhythms and solfa together, they need the teacher to share musical knowledge. However, at some point, in order for students to transfer their knowledge, the teacher does need to step away and become more of a facilitator. So how do we do that in a Kodály-inspired classroom? Here are my favorite strategies!
#1: Rotating Centers
Several years ago, I began experimenting with centers in my classroom. I had seen them done well in my daughter's Kindergarten classroom, and thought I would try it in my room. It has been a wonderful journey, and a great way to not only foster a more student-centered classroom, but to provide time to work with and assess students one-on-one while the other students are engaged in exciting activities! With rotating centers, I typically have four centers around the room that are focused on practicing the same concept in different ways. For example, for ta and ti-ti, I might have one center at the SMART board, where students are throwing a squishy ball at the board and then reading patterns, another center in which students play rhythm patterns on non-pitched percussion, a third center with worksheets for ta and ti-ti, and the last center with me, in which each student individually reads five patterns. Every five or so minutes, I have students rotate to the next center until they've been to all of the centers. It does have a much more student-centered feel to it, because instead of you teaching the students, students are often teaching each other! Whether they are explaining to each other how to play High D on the recorder, or reminding each other that la is a step above sol, it's a really awesome thing to step away and let students process the information and teach each other! If you're looking for more information about centers, here are several blog posts with more details about using centers!
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