Music For Children's Literature; Orff and Folk Tales Pt.1

For most of my students, my weekly general music classes are their initial experiences with musical instruments. I teach music to approximately 500 students each week at a Pre-K to 5 elementary school that otherwise have few if any musical opportunities.

I am an Orff Certified teacher with no Orff instruments to use with my students. I would like to incorporate children’s multicultural folk tales into the music program using the Orff-Schulwerk process. These instruments would allow me to collaboratively work with the classroom teachers reading/literature curriculum to help improve the students literacy level and self-esteem, while following the state standards.

I would like to begin purchasing Orff Instruments of various sizes and timbres. These would include both xylophones and metallophones. These instruments, with their removal bars, would allow my students to set up the instruments in various pentatonic and diatonic keys to suit a variety of songs, melodies and improvisational activities to enhance the action and characters of the folk tales. By isolating only the bars necessary for each activity, my students will successfully use the skills learned to produce more meaningful musical experiences.

Beginning with our annual Black History month program, I would like to establish the tradition of using multicultural folk tales and Orff instruments, for this and other school programs, to bridge the core and specialist curriculums to form a more cohesive school community to enhance the learning of my students. Through dramatic interpretation, music and dance, in addition to the reading of the actual folk tale, my students will become so engaged in the story that they will learn about and gain a better understanding of the literature from multiple perspectives and project based learning activities. Using multicultural literature, my students will further develop their musical skills through a variety of hands on activities using singing and the Orff instruments.