Reverberations: Teachers Teaching Teachers is a weekly, online publication available to members that publishes models of best practice from Orff Schulwerk classrooms in the form of lesson ideas, student-tested teaching strategies, articles related to classroom applications, and more.
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List of Reverberations Articles
Transitions are Teachable Moments
PDF only – Young children and special needs students often find transitions to be challenging. Planning ways to help them navigate change allows for success and saves the teacher from dealing with problems that could have been averted.
Common Core and Integration With Integrity
PDF only – Bringing together our training and experience in Orff Schulwerk with the new Common Core State Standards for Language Arts provides an exciting and timely opportunity for co-teaching, for professional development, and for classroom experiences that offer divergent problem solving as well as differentiated tasks and content.
Technological Tools for Understanding and Creating Music
PDF only – If we don’t think critically about what the technology is doing, the technologies become “filler” and lose their integral purpose. This article shares ideas intended to demonstrate how teachers can use technological tools to promote meaningful musical experiences.
Reminders for the Music/Movement Teacher
PDF only – Excerpts from Nancy Miller’s speech upon receiving the AOSA Distinguished Service Award. She also shares advice for Orff Schulwerk teachers gleaned from her many years in the classroom. The article is short, sweet, and salient for us all!
Fly, Fly, Fly
PDF only – This lovely canon about moving from autumn to winter has been shared with permission from Libana.
First Steps in Rhythm: Exploring Duration
PDF only – Movement activities are an excellent entry point in building the foundation for rhythmic learning.
The iPad as an Instrument
PDF only – An introduction to the Tech Spot column and an article on using technology in an Orff classroom.
Stories and Music Unite in New Collaboration
PDF only – The Northern California chapter of AOSA, together with Stagebridge Senior Theatre Company of Oakland, received a National Endowment for the Arts grant to fund a new interdisciplinary arts project, Stories and Music United (SAMU). The article discusses the implementation of the grant as the author worked with senior learners.
Entering the Spielbuch Through Movement
PDF only – Goals in this lesson include melodic improvisation with a set of given rhythmic building blocks and developing mallet technique for a quickly moving melody.
Perspectives on Listening
PDF only – The author discusses ways to create opportunities for students to form deep connections with specific musical examples.
Wave Movement
PDF only – Students experience expressive movement by exploring and creating shapes and pathways using a picture book and music.
Talking Blues in the Classroom
PDF only – “Talking Blues” is part of our American folk tradition and can be traced back at least to the 1920s. Students discover how the functional harmony of elemental I-IV-V progression, with speech accompaniment, can be musically complex.