My own personal music education was not one of strength or encouragement, in fact, it was quite the opposite. In primary school, music was not a compulsory subject, thus we had little interaction with it. In high school, music was seen as a ‘bludge’ lesson, where we ‘learnt’ the concepts of music, and attempted to play our instruments with no real guidance. The passion for music was there, I just didn’t receive the knowledge I needed to easily continue my musical education. I entered a University degree, not knowing the basics of music theory and this proved to be an extremely difficult task. Beginning my music project, I knew I wanted to somehow ensure children displaying a passion for music at a young age, do not end up in the same position I was in. I wanted to provide them with the tools I never received.
To begin working on the project, I needed to decide on how I was going to achieve this goal. I decided on the creation of my own music theory teaching booklet for primary school aged children. I’ve always believed that if I was taught music theory at a young age, I would have excelled in the subject, being confident in my abilities and possibly learning more than one instrument. This is why I have chosen the age group of primary school students (5-12 years). However, I knew teaching booklets could be perceived as ‘boring’ to a child and wanted to somehow make my teaching booklet different, possibly interactive. I researched various music theory books/booklets and discovered one called Music Room, (see image 1) which contained the essential elements I decided were needed in creating a fun music book/booklet. Fairbairn, Leehy and O’Mara (2006) developed a booklet that contains cartoon images, bright colours, games, an accompanying CD, and simple musical exercises that provide basic music theory knowledge. This was to be one of the main influences on the development of my teaching booklet, as it contains the fundamental elements of capturing a child’s attention, and instilling excitement at the prospect of studying music.
However taking this one step further, my music theory booklet would contain personally recorded songs and pieces on a CD. For the notes of the treble and bass clef, creating a jingle that is both memorable and sings the exact pitches of the staff. Achieving this is a work in progress and I decided that creating the physical theory booklet would be more important for the duration of this project.
After deciding on the creation of a teaching booklet, I started analysing the areas of music theory that many young students struggle with. Being a tutor at Cool Kids Music Company, I teach many primary school students and see the same areas of music theory struggles occurring. As stated in my presentation, seen on my WordPress site, students struggle with recognising and remembering the notes of the treble and bass clef, recognising middle C on a keyboard/piano, remembering note names and values and the string names on a guitar. As proposed previously, creating a jingle that helps the children remember the notes of the staffs would be extremely affective, as well as training the children in aural skills, as each note sung would be the correct pitch of the note on the staff. In order to recognise the middle C on a keyboard, I have included pictures with the middle C clearly labelled (see image 2). The right hand thumb is pictured on the note, to ensure the children recognise which finger they have to use for the middle C note. Furthering this, the finger position for the D, E, F and G notes is also included. To remember the note names and values, I have included simple exercises, which throughout the duration of the booklet; will instil this knowledge on the students (see image 3). These exercises are designed to revise all knowledge previously gained in the previous lessons. The guitar string names will be explained in Unit 1 – Lesson 4, however, the teaching booklet is a work in progress.
Image 2
Image 3
The second part of my project was to research into various teaching methods and experiment with their value in my own teaching experience. Estrella’s Major Methods of Teaching Music to Kids, provided me with information into the Orff, Dalcroze, Kodaly and Suzuki methods. The Orff method allowed me to present lessons that had an element of play. This approach worked well to get the student’s involved and excited about learning music. It allowed them to play with the other students, engaging fully in their music studies. However, the perfect balance between playtime and learning needs to be perfected; otherwise it is nearly impossible to get the students concentrating. I found often children would divert off music, onto stories they wanted to tell the class, or places they are going to visit. Overall, this method was effective in gaining interest and excitement for music study, however, the teacher must be able to balance the playtime and learning accordingly. The Dalcroze approach means that the students use their bodies as the main instrument. I used this approach in classes where singing was the main learning experience. For example, when singing ‘Ring-a-ring o’rose’, students would all stand in a circle holding hands, dancing whilst they sing along to the song. When the lyrics say ‘they all fall down’, all students would fall to the ground. This approach worked well, however naughtier students felt if they were allowed to move, this meant they could move wherever they wanted, running around the room. It was hard to allow the students the use their bodies, whilst still attempting to maintain some kind of structure to the lesson.
Researching into Steiner/Waldorf education was extremely interesting, especially when considering the unique approaches to teaching and more specifically, the ones I will use in my future music teaching. Rudolf Steiner specifically designed this to be a health giving education, where human will, feeling and thinking are nurtured and balanced. The main purpose was to allow the children’s individual and unique qualities to develop and grow, with the child then coming to a feeling of greater fulfilment. Their own authentic ‘voice’ is developed due to this. The teacher’s role in the Steiner Education program is to ensure that each child’s individuality and potential is recognised and nurtured. Furthermore, how do you allow children to use the knowledge they have learnt? The arts are the main focus, with painting, sculpture, poetry, music, drama and movement influencing all of the other subjects. Typically academic subjects are presented differently than a traditional education, as they are presented in a pictorial and dynamic way by the teachers, with competitive testing, academic placement and rewards for good behaviour are eliminated. The Steiner Education contains a ‘Main Lesson’ in which one unit of work on a particular subject or theme is studied for approximately four weeks. It is the teacher’s job to create various activities around this central theme, which are both artistic and academic in nature.
For specifically music, the Steiner Education program rejects engaging young children with abstract concepts of music, instead focusing mainly on imitation. At this early stage, teachers do not concentrate on the accuracy of the student’s intonation or rhythm, although in later stages, pitch becomes absolute, and rhythm is related to beat and can be distinguished from the melody of a piece of music. At a much older age, the students engage with both pentatonic and hexatonic music, traditional church modes such as Aeolian, Dorian, Mixolydian modes, before moving to full diatonic major and minor music. I definitely agree with young children engaging in music through only imitation and I will use this in future music teaching. I believe this would be a great way to train children’s musical ears, however, unlike the Steiner program, I believe basic theory should be taught at a young age. The more you instil this basic knowledge onto them, the easier furthering their musical education in the future will be. The instruments they explore in the Steiner program are extremely bizarre and not traditional in any way. They play the pipe/recorder, chime bar, large seedpod shaker, lyre and many more instruments. I believe it doesn’t matter what type of instruments you use, as long as they provide a basic element of music, such as rhythm, or pitch. I do believe presenting music in a narrative or poetical way is a great idea, and something I may include in my major Music Project. However, I will be using a song/jingle to allow children to easily remember an aspect of music theory, such as the notes of a treble clef staff.
Creating my own music theory teaching booklet proved to be a more difficult task than expected. Making something completely unique and memorable seemed to be impossible as the theory booklets researched all contained elements I thought would be unique to mine. The Music Room (see image 1) books ended up being my main source of inspiration, simply because they contained most of the elements I wanted to include in the creation of my own teaching booklet. Creating ways for children to learn simple music theory was extremely fun, as deciding on songs and accompanying pictures was an amusing task. However, it must be stated, in the final product of the teaching booklet, all photos would be taken by me, and all images used would be referenced and checked for copyright. Researching various teaching methods was extremely interesting, especially when considering which ones to use in the future. Experimenting with the methods was enlightening as different methods had different outcomes from the children, and I was able to evaluate them accordingly. I will definitely use the Orff method in future teaching, and the valuable information I discovered from researching into the Steiner/Waldorf education program.
References:
Fairbairn, R., Leehy, M., & O’Mara, K. (2006). Music Room Book 2 Lower Primary. Bushfire Press.
Gaffney, C. (2015). CaitlinGaffney. WordPress. Retrieved from https://caitlingaffney.wordpress.com/
Estrella, E. (2015). Major Methods of Teaching Music to Kids. About Education. Retrieved from http://musiced.about.com/od/musicteachers/tp/musiceducationmethods.htm
About Steiner Education. (n.d.) Retrieved October 24, 2015, from http://www.steinereducation.edu.au/steiner-education/
Why Waldorf Works. (n.d.) Retrieved October 24, 2015, from http://www.whywaldorfworks.org/02_w_education/
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