Orffsite.com


About Me


I am a certified Orff-Schulwerk elementary music teacher, teaching in an urban school. I switched from secondary to elementary music teaching in 2006 and it's been the best move (not financially! ) of my career. If you want to have major impact on students concerning music education, elementary is where it is happening. Disclaimer: The topics in my blog do not necessarily reflect what is happening in my current teaching position or with my current students, administration etc. I have a long teaching history and may chose to deal with an element or problem that I have witnessed or experienced in a previous school or have seen being dealt with by other teachers I have encountered...so there!

Orff Adventures for Children is Now Available

March 22, 2013
My new book is now available. Thanks to all the teachers who have already purchased it, even before this announcement.
I hope you find it useful. I think you'd find it's worth the price just for the Gator in the Kitchen song. My third graders love the tune and ask to review it throughout the year. To you who get the book, I will be making available some sound files to accompany the information in the book. I will be posting the files on this website. The book is available through the link at the top of this blog or at Amazon.com. You can see some of the actual songs using the preview at Amazon. The book, like this website, is just another way for me to help teachers learn and use the Orff Approach to music teaching. Good teachers are always buying new books, finding new websites, and going to workshops. I'm headed to one myself tomorrow, led by 

Danai Gagne: “The Sound of Dance, the Color of Song, the Taste of Drama: Looking at the Schulwerk from a multi-colored prism”. Keep growing musically!

Posted by The Orffsite Webmaster.

 

Orff Adventures for Children

March 16, 2013
I'll have a new book out in a few days, Orff Adventures for Children. It will have ten arrangements for body percussion, movement, speech, non-pitched percussion and Orff Instruments. It will have both original and folk song arrangements. It will be available as a physical book and as a Kindle book. These are arrangements I use with my classes and they are well received. Be watching here, and following me on Twitter to see when it's ready. I'll have a special price for Twitter followers and r...
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Posted by The Orffsite Webmaster.

 

Micro-Management & Other Mental Illnesses

September 22, 2012
Micro-management is a wonderful way to control a staff of teachers or a class of students for that matter. Seriously--when an administrator spells out exactly and in minute detail, what content is taught, what methodology is to be used, how to manage every behavior, every lesson plan, every piece of paper, every procedure and monitors each item to make certain it is completed exactly on schedule with no variation regardless of what subject is being taught or what the temperament or personalit...
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Posted by The Orffsite Webmaster.

 

Ready..Set...Go!

August 26, 2012
Monday, August 27th, is my first day with students for the 2012-13 school year. This year I will be floating between two schools. Being a traveling teacher is not the vision I had in my head when I entered the teaching profession. Vision aside, it's a reality. Teaching load, number of classes per day, has also increased this year. Currently I am scheduled to have four days with six classes per day and one day with seven classes. It could be even worse. I won't know that until after the first ...
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Posted by The Orffsite Webmaster.

 

No Rant. Just a Movement Game With Irish Music

March 6, 2012
Setup: See photo. It's set up for two classes. For one class you will only need three chairs, yarn for the alley markings and whisk broom or other items for the center chair.

Game play: Children form two lines with an alley between. Three children sit in the chairs to start the game. The person with the "broom" hands it to the person of his choice. The two broomless students move in agreement down the alley and to the end of the lines. The new person with the broom moves to the center chair. T...
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Posted by The Orffsite Webmaster.

 

It's Not on the Test!

February 24, 2012
I'm not really a boat rocker. I can be a bit annoying, however. I don't know the history, but some while back, my district thought that giving our 3rd and 4th graders a music assessment test was and idea who's time had come. I'm not arguing that point in this post. I am saying that the current test is not a measure of whether or not my students are learning music, nor a gauge of what kind of job I'm doing in elementary music. I frankly, don't have a clue as to what it is designed to do except...
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Posted by The Orffsite Webmaster.

 

What's in a Name? Apparently, Quite a Lot!

February 14, 2012
I'm taking a short hiatus from square dancing in my second grade classes.They have already mastered squaring the set, circle right/left, dosido, partner swing, promenade, right and left grande, and more. Some parents from non-American cultures get distressed at the word dance, so what we're really doing here is-moving rhythmically in organized patterns, keeping a steady beat while listening to the directions from a caller chanting or singing over a traditional rural folk tune, that may have h...
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Posted by The Orffsite Webmaster.

 

My New First Page and Blog Explanation

February 6, 2012
I've noticed that most of the other music education sites I visit are basically blogs. I intended my site to be more website like by having some static content that is useful at anytime. I still plan to keep it that way, but I'm joining the crowd a bit by moving my blog to the first page. In doing so, I had to copy my old posts, hence most of the posts that seemingly were done in February of 2012 were actually made before then. I've posted the originally blog post dates in the posts, for thos...
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Posted by The Orffsite Webmaster.

 

Rubrics and Evaluation Ideas for Orff Teachers

February 6, 2012

Originally Posted by The Orffsite Webmaster on Sunday, January 8, 2012

This blog is short and sweet, really sweet!  As I told my Twitter followers, you will want to kiss my feet in gratitude after checking this out! ha. The folks who put these evaluation rubric ideas together are the ones who really get what Orff Approach teachers actually do in the classroom. You won't find much evaluation of music literacy, symbols, lines/spaces, etc. You will find things like creativity, movement, playing...


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Posted by The Orffsite Webmaster.

 

A Thoughtless Question

February 6, 2012

Originally Posted on Tuesday, September 13, 2011

This was the tweet that initiated this post: 

musically8 Allison Friedman:  Prof. just asked me: How can music be related to the Science, Tech., Engineering, Math (STEM) focus our country has? any ideas

 Before answering such a question I have to ask, what is the Prof really asking? Is he so uneducated not to know the relationship of Music, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics? How can even the dimmest bulb wearing the moniker, Professor, ...


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Posted by The Orffsite Webmaster.

 
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