Owing to a building programme at the school, the room Belle had been using for music was unavailable and she was teaching in a long and narrow, multi-purpose space with a nearby store cupboard for instruments and equipment. Before the start of the class with a Year 3 and 4 class made up of 12 boys and 14 girls, that I was to observe, she had set up a range of metal and wooden barred instruments at one end of the room, leaving the rest of the room with plenty of space for
movement which Belle indicated was a priority in her classroom work.
4.5.3.1 Belle’s planned focus for the lesson
Belle’s focus for the term was referenced to the New Zealand Curriculum, The
Arts (Ministry of Education, 2007) music learning objectives and her learning
intentions were concerned with skills, many using typical Orff terms and/or processes related to singing and playing collaboratively in a group.
4.5.3.2 The lesson
As soon as some members of the class had arrived, Belle said: ‘It’s a cold day let’s warm up,’ and began to click her fingers in a rhythmical but relaxed way. The students joined in enthusiastically as they arrived. When everyone was assembled, Belle smoothly transitioned into a body percussion piece, which she had recently composed and which was familiar to the students. Belle led the piece,
giving a clear model to follow, while at the same time observing the response of
her students, revising phrases as necessary. Her students gave signs of recognition and participated willingly, many moving freely as they practised the body
percussion routines. Belle created a happy atmosphere by laughing and smiling
frequently and giving lots of praise such as: ‘Brilliant! You are remembering this well! Well done. It’s easy isn’t it!’ When the class were able to perform the piece in unison, she divided it into two groups in order to perform the piece in canon. She led this through gesture, using a ‘Do as I do’ approach with minimal use of
verbal instructions. The students watched attentively and acted joyfully, freely
approximating responses to musical scaffolding provided by Belle and fellow students.
Seamlessly transitioning again, Belle introduced a song, which integrated
sang right from the start, and encouraged simultaneous imitation. The students continued to learn as described above, in a collaborative way within a relaxed atmosphere with some children moving freely around the room as they sang and
performed the actions. Once the children were confident with the main melody,
Belle accompanied on the ukulele, explaining later that she alternated between unaccompanied and accompanied singing, depending on the needs of the students at any one time. When she accompanied, she liked to use ukulele or guitar rather than piano as it enabled her to maintain eye contact with her students. As she
played ukulele, she sang and repeated the ostinato accompaniment ‘D F E A’
many times. Then she chose students, one after another, non-verbally (by taking by the hand or pointing to them) to move to the instruments to play ‘D F E A’ as a
melodic ostinato. Students who did this checked their accuracy by looking at the
patterns played by students on neighbouring instruments.
After giving several students a turn to play the ostinato accompaniment while others sang the song, Belle made another smooth transition to a new movement
song, which drew on students’ ideas for movement, and had an interlude, which
allowed for improvising in C pentatonic. When everyone knew the words, Belle asked two students to move to an instrument. She multi-tasked as she supported the instrumentalists by joining in the playing while at the same time encouraging the movers and the singers to hold their part.
Belle gave clear verbal instructions inviting students on the instruments to make
up their own melodies over two 8-beat phrases. The students simultaneously
tentatively explored the pitches of C pentatonic over the 8 beats, which were anchored by the ongoing bordun. Struggling at first to engage in the task, the students gradually began to shape their own melodies. Students who were singing and moving rather than playing instruments shared the leadership amongst themselves in order to come up with numerous ideas for movement to keep the song going, which enabled the students on the instruments to have many
interludes during which they could improvise.
Belle then introduced another action song using mime and gesture (i.e., no sound), and followed with very soft singing using delayed imitation to teach the song. The
her lead. Belle then made use of inner audiation, where students performed the
actions to the song while hearing the melody ‘inside their head’. This had the
effect of intensifying concentration and produced a sense of calm focus, effectively a wind-down to a session full of highly energetic music and
movement. The students then left the music class smiling, skipping and singing to themselves.
4.5.3.3 Belle’s reflection
Belle said she had chosen material (song and movement pieces) that was
relatively easy for the students and that lent itself to opportunity for improvising. She reflected that she had deliberately chosen students to lead who, she thought, were able to improvise confidently and would provide a model for others. She commented that she had observed this happening and said she intended to provide further preparatory experiences in improvising. In particular she mentioned the idea of herself modelling a confident improvised solo, in order to invite students to explore what made a melody ‘work’ (or not).
She agreed with my comment that the class flowed smoothly and explained that, as much as possible, she liked the students to learn by doing and that she used a lot of non-verbal, gestural cues as this maximised the time for active music- making. Belle also made the point that she saw the students for a very limited period of time and it was important to her to make her classes ‘relevant’ and ‘fun’. She wanted their experience of music class to make them think, ‘Oh, music is great and I want to keep on playing some sort of music [in my life].’