Hi folks! Christopher
here.
One of the things that I love about a good Kodály-inspired
lesson is the way that each 30-minute class period addresses many different objectives, from rhythmic and melodic development to composition and improvisation
to beautiful singing and fun.
In my classroom, that means that most lessons from Grades 1-5 have
between six and eight activities in a lesson, each with a different objective. (For me, Kindergarten is a whole ‘nother ball of wax – those kids can’t
focus for beans, so we will often do as many as ten activities in a
class.) Reasons for so many activities
in a given lesson?
-
Musicians have so many skills that we have to
develop, and creating lessons in which they are able to work on a variety of
skills within a lesson is essential for ensuring that those skills don’t
atrophy from under-use.
-
Plus, a lesson with six different activities
will often allow for differentiation: Students who are successful at decoding
melodic patterns may have a difficult time learning a folk dance; and students
who have a hard time matching pitch might be a wiz at reading rhythm
cards. If we were to spend a whole class
period writing a composition in Western staff notation (or any of my common
objectives), some students might feel like failures in music. Providing different experiences in each class
alleviates that.
However, in order to make all this fit, each individual
lesson segment has to be fairly short, generally lasting between four and six
minutes. This post will focus
specifically on writing those short segments with music literacy segments in
mind.
Rita Klinger created an approach to writing music literacy
segments that uses a three-pronged process, which she labeled Review, Point, and Reinforcement. She writes about it in this book Lesson Planning in a Kodály Setting, one that was just re-published by OAKE:
In many ways, the Review/Point/Reinforcement approach is like the classic Prepare/Present/Practice concept that is
practiced throughout the Kodály world in the United States – just applied to a
five-minute lesson segment. The steps
work in this way:
Review: A brief summation of what has
already been learned
Point: The learning objective for the
segment;
Reinforcement: The immediate practice of
the point
That’s general, so let’s look at how this plays out.
EXAMPLE 1
I’m going to use the concept of ticka-ticka,
which I’ll be teaching to my second graders this year in the spring. After they learn repertoire containing
ticka-ticka along with the other rhythmic concepts they learned in first grade
and the beginning of second (ta, ti-ti, rest, and half note), I want to make
sure that they can clap the rhythm accurately.
Sometimes, getting all the claps in there for a ticka-ticka can be a
challenge for those little hands. For
this step in the sequence, I will use the song “Old Aunt Dinah,” a great little
song I found a couple of years ago.
Source: Erdei, I., Knowles, F., & Bacon, D. (Eds.) (2002). My
singing bird: 150 folk songs from the Anglo-American, African-American,
English, Scottish, and Irish traditions.
Columbus, OH: Kodály Center of America.
Their source was:
Brown, F. (1962). Collection of North American folklore, vol. 1. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
When creating the lesson segment, I start with the
point, which is essentially just my objective:
Review
Point
Ss (students) sing
song and clap the rhythm, without teacher help
Reinforcement
At this point, I ask myself, what do they need to do to get
to the point? What do they need to know and demonstrate? Well, for this part of
the process, they really don’t need to know much – just know the song! If they can’t sing the song, then they can’t
hear the rhythm well enough to be able to clap it. So, adding in my only review step makes the
segment look like this:
Review
Ss sing known song
“Old Aunt Dinah”
Point
Ss (students) sing
song and clap the rhythm, without teacher help
Reinforcement
The reinforcement is the way that the students are able to
immediately practice the new learning.
This usually consists of repeating the point, with a slight twist. There are two major ways to reinforce:
-
Have the students repeat the point, but in
smaller groups
-
Have the students repeat the point as a whole
group, with different student leaders
In this case, I’ll have the students perform in smaller
groups, using the text of the song to provide a way group my students into
smaller chunks. After the reinforcement,
the activity looks like this:
Review
Ss sing known song
“Old Aunt Dinah”
Point
Ss (students) sing
song and clap the rhythm, without teacher help
Reinforcement
Half the class sings the
song and claps the rhythm
The
other half of the class sings the song and claps the rhythm
Ss
with more than two aunts sing the song and claps the rhythm
Ss
with more than three aunts sing the song and claps the rhythm
Ss
with more than four aunts sing the song and claps the rhythm
Whole
class sings and claps the rhythm
The reinforcement is the part of this process that is most
easily forgotten. Why do it?
-
Allows the students a chance to practice
-
Allows the teacher a chance to assess
-
Allows the teacher to decide when to move on
This last one is key: As we all know, some of these skills
take time for students to develop! Many
of the objectives in your preparation steps need to be repeated on more than
one day, with different songs, in order to ensure that the majority of the
children can perform the given task or understand the idea. When I’m doing my reinforcement in small
groups, I am usually paying particularly close attention to some of the kids
who are “medium-low” performers. Once my medium-low kids have it, I’m ready to move on to the next step in my sequence.
EXAMPLE 2
I’m going to fast-forward three or four weeks to use a
different objective for one more example of this review/point/reinforcement
process. At this point, the students
have done the following:
-
learned repertoire that contains ticka-ticka and
previously learned notes
-
clapped the rhythm while performing this
repertoire
-
identified that there are some songs that have a
new rhythm, and that it this new rhythm consists of a lot of sounds on a beat
-
identified exactly where this new rhythm occurs
in specific songs (i.e. which beats it falls on)
All of this learning has taken about a month, probably, with
some of the steps above repeated on different days.
Now I am at the point where I want the students to figure
out that there are four sounds on a beat.
I could simply tell them that this is the case, but in this discovery
learning approach, the children figure it out for themselves.
For this step, I’ll use the song "Paw Paw Patch.” This song works particularly well because the new rhythm occurs four
times, and at different places in the song:
Source: Erdei, P., & Komlos, K. (Eds.) (1974). 150 American folk songs to sing, read, and play. New York City:
Boosey & Hawkes.
I start with the point:
Review
Point
Ss identify that the new rhythm contains four sounds over one beat
Reinforcement
What do they need to do to get there? Well, they definitely need to sing the song,
and make sure that they can clap the rhythm, so I start there:
Review
Ss sing song and
clap rhythm
Point
Ss identify that the
new rhythm contains four sounds over one beat
Reinforcement
In previous classes, they have discovered that this new song
has a new rhythm that has a whole lot of sounds on a beat, and determined
exactly where in the song those new rhythms have happened. So I’ll add that to my review:
Review
Ss sing song and
clap rhythm, while the T writes beat icons on the board
Ss
sing song, and id that they new rhythm occurs in this song
Ss id that the new
rhythm occurs on the third beat of lines 1, 2, and 3
And
the first beat of line 4
Point
Ss identify that the new rhythm contains four sounds over one beat
Reinforcement
Now that the students have reviewed what’s pertinent, I’ll
add some detail to my point, to show how I expect them to identify that the
first beat has four sounds on it.
Review
Ss sing song and
clap rhythm, while the T writes beat icons on the board
Ss
sing song, and id that they new rhythm occurs in this song
Ss id that the new
rhythm occurs on the third beat of lines 1, 2, and 3
And
the first beat of line 4
Point
Ss
id that the words that are sung on the first line 1, beat 3 (i.e. “pretty
little”)
Ss id that the words “pretty little” contain four syllables
T
places four marks on the board over the beat icon
Reinforcement
Reinforcing this step can be a challenge – because once they
know that there are four sounds on this new rhythm, they can’t really forget
it. However, what they can do is to check whether the other places in the
song with a new rhythm also contain four sounds on each beat. So that’s the first part of my reinforcement:
Review
Ss sing song and clap rhythm, while the T writes beat icons on the board
Ss sing song, and id that they new rhythm occurs in this song
Ss id that the new rhythm occurs on the third beat of lines 1, 2, and 3
And the first beat of line 4
Point
Ss id that the words that are sung on the first line 1, beat 3 (i.e. “pretty little”)
Ss id that the words “pretty little” contain four syllables
T places four marks on the board over the beat icon
Reinforcement
Ss
check if line 2, beat 3 contains four sounds
Ss
check if line 3, beat 4 contains four sounds
Ss
check if line 4, beat 1 contains four sounds
Another way to reinforce this step is to have the children
sing the words “1,2,3,4” in place of the text of the song on each of those
beats. If time remains, then, I’ll add
that piece:
Review
Ss sing song and
clap rhythm, while the T writes beat icons on the board
Ss
sing song, and id that they new rhythm occurs in this song
Ss id that the new
rhythm occurs on the third beat of lines 1, 2, and 3
And
the first beat of line 4
Point
Ss id that the words that are sung on the first line 1, beat 3 (i.e. “pretty little”)
Ss id that the words “pretty little” contain four syllables
T places four marks on the board over the beat icon
Reinforcement
Ss
check if line 2, beat 3 contains four sounds
Ss
check if line 3, beat 4 contains four sounds
Ss
check if line 4, beat 1 contains four sounds
Ss
sing song, replacing “pretty little” and “way down yonder” with “1,2,3,4”
Ss
sing song with correct words of the song
At this point in my lesson, then, they're moving onto the next activity, which will usually will include some sort of movement -- a singing game or play party, folk dance, or instrumental practice activity.
Happy lesson planning!
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