Alex taught in a detached music room, a little smaller than the conventional classroom. She had maximised space for movement and activity by storing the large range of untuned and tuned percussion and other instruments that she had acquired for the programme on easily accessible shelving around the room.
4.3.3.1 The planned focus for the lesson
Alex said that the Orff approach had challenged her to take an integrated rather than a skills-based (recorder, ukulele, singing etc.) approach to her planning. She was struggling to plan in a way that fulfilled her requirements for the school administration and at the same time satisfied her professional goals.
My visit coincided with the third of a series of lessons focusing on ‘Māori music using an Orff process’. She felt that Māori music exemplified processes advocated by the Orff approach with its emphasis on movement and its unity of ‘mind, body and soul’. Her unit planning listed learning intentions and learning experiences grouped into categories of listening, singing, playing and creating.
4.3.3.2 The lesson
A Year 5 and 6 class of 7 boys and 12 girls were greeted at the door of the music room and led to the carpeted area to sit down in front of Alex. She had displayed on a screen the words of the waiata Nga Iwi E, and explained to the students that this song would feature in the repertoire of an upcoming ukulele festival. She then used delayed imitation (my turn, your turn) to model the pronunciation of the lyrics. The students repeated the words with clear articulation and then listened to the recording, which featured a straightforward ukulele accompaniment that she said they might learn at a later date. The track was then replayed, and the students willingly sang along.
Then, on Alex’s request, the class broke into partnerships to rehearse previously learnt Titi torea7 Kei Te ako au, and E papa waiari. Alex had considered using short, spoken phrases to assist their internalisation of the movement sequences,
but the students had surprised her by the speed of their learning through a simple process of delayed imitation.
The students formed two long lines, one of boys and one of girls, and took great care to lay their sticks in the correct ‘still’ formation. The teacher led them
through a rehearsal of listening and responding to the command Ki raro in unison, as different students were invited to be leaders. The students then identified the moves they had difficulty with and practised these, paying particular attention to keeping a steady tempo. Alex asked the students to listen for the strong beat and, if they fell out of time, to wait and then to begin again when they could feel that accented beat. (The group was effectively providing the musical scaffold.) Then, with one student leading, the two pieces were performed in a focused and skilful way. Strong singing accompanied the stick game and the students displayed great pride in their disciplined and focused performance.
The students then gathered on the carpeted area where Alex introduced Ihenga, a
bilingual picture book about a Te Arawa explorer, written by Beatrice Yates (Aunty Bea) with CD narration incorporating a musical soundtrack.Alex particularly liked the sound track because it fused traditional and contemporary instruments; she asked the students to listen in particular for how the music created mood during the narration. The students listened attentively. Afterwards, they willingly offered comments on instrumentation, such as identifying kōauau8 sounds, whistling and other instruments. Alex then asked them to identify key features, events or characters from the story. (She mentioned after the lesson that she was not sure what the students would identify and that she was going to go
with whatever ideas they came up with.) The students identified: • Fishing for eels in the river
• Ihenga
• Remembering our ancestors • Beautiful lady
• Drowning of dog • Lake Rotorua.
Alex then invited students to form groups to work on creating improvised
soundscapes for their chosen aspect of the story. She directed them to spend time
talking together before settling on their choice of instruments. Students chose which aspect of the story they wished to work with and then formed groups of three or four. They spent some time discussing ideas before choosing from easily accessible shelves instruments on which to explore ideas for sound. All students were engaged, albeit noisily, in the task. At one point Alex asked them to be mindful of their volume, but later commented to me on the importance, in
collaborative improvisational work, of allowing students to spend time playing instruments in an experimental way.
After around five minutes, students began structuring a group piece, and
collaborative music-making started to occur. Alex circulated, working closely
with groups, drawing forth their ideas and reminding them that they needed to work together to structure a piece for performance. She invited them to think about the layering of sounds and about the beginning and ending for their piece. Strong leadership emerged in the group working with the theme ‘remembering our ancestors’, with one student coming up with the idea of playing a repeating
melody on the metallophone. The other two group members were happy to
complement this with an improvised accompaniment on untuned percussion. After about 10 minutes, Alex invited the students to perform their pieces. Each lasted around a minute, with orchestration as follows:
• Fishing for eels in the river: Sound colour on metallophone, shakers and drum • Ihenga: Guiro tapping on floor and cymbal
• Remembering our ancestors: Guiros with chime bar ostinato
• Beautiful lady: Agogo bell, Sound colour on chime bars, finger cymbals and bells • Drowning of dog: Xylophone improvised melody with shakers a s sound colour • Lake Rotorua: Rhythmic pattern l l ll l played on a drum with an improvised
non-rhythmic accompaniment on woodblock and triangle
Alex had recorded the groups’ performances in an unobtrusive way using her iPhone, with the intention of downloading and emailing to their respective class teachers as soon as possible after class. She had done this before and received positive feedback from her colleagues. Not only did students have the enjoyment of sharing their work; the practice also enabled connection between music and classroom programmes.
4.3.3.3 Alex’s reflection
Alex commented that the session was a culmination of several weeks work. She had seen their feeling for the metrical accent really develop as they learnt and practised the stick games. She noted that having been ‘working for some time with Orff processes’, she was interested to observe that in developing a
soundscape on the theme ‘remembering our ancestors’, students had used spoken phrases to invent ostinati, a typical Orff process that she had introduced earlier in
the year. She also commented on the way most groups had used layering and
dynamics as a means of achieving contrast. Overall she felt that her students had
enjoyed in the lesson (and the unit generally) a chance to ‘discover music for
themselves’, and to experience the ‘joy of making music with others and by themselves’.