For the past two weeks, we have had the amazing Belinda Smith running us through Orff- Schulwerk in preparation for our next assessment. The workshops were absolutely amazing and took us into the primary and stage 4 (7-8) classroom. We did activities like chair drumming, dancing/movement, canons, games and more but I want to talk about the use of Borduns and how I used them in my years 3-6 percussion group at Bundeena Public School.
For this term, I decided that my students would be focusing on composition and letting their creative juices flow instead of going down the technical route that I did the last term. As I had most of the student's last term or teach them privately and are aware of their theory knowledge I set out on letting them direct their learning. To do this I used the Borduns and followed Belinda and Orff's 9 steps for teaching/scaffolding complex tasks...
Demonstrate while watching/the whole song three times before breaking it down i.e 1 bar then 2 etc, sing actions then straight in or listen and work together
Add the bass line
Tenor Line
Soprano Line
Alto Line
Split off into the number of parts and sing/show each part specifically
Each group changes part
Experiment with layering, arranging and allow each group to have a go at each part by chunking it
Back to bass and then cut off together
While steps 2-5 are happening make sure the beat and flow are present within your body or movements and allow the use of chunking while doing this so that the melody becomes familiar and second nature.
As I had 8 weeks to do this and a short amount of time I did each of these steps per week. I began by starting with rhythms and clapping. Then I used a mix of Xylohones, Metallaphones, Glockenspiels, Boomwhackers and Hand Bells to teach students the basic note in a C Major Pentatonic Scale and said to now play whatever you want using these 5 notes. They quickly realised that whatever they played worked and sounded really good!
Next, I started the actual Borduns. Calling them patterns 1, 2, 3 and 4 students got to know the following
1 = Semibreves on C
2 = Minims on C and G
3 = Crotchet Arpeggios
4 = Quaver Arpeggios
After they were familiar with these, we played a few games where they called out random numbers and we all played them together and then moved to add a melody over the top.
When starting out I got them to play either pattern 1 or 2 and then I would play a melody to show them how to stay in time etc and then we went around the room.
For the final few classes, we split into stages 2 and 3 groups for ability purposes and worked towards a performance. By the end of the 8 weeks, stage 2 was able to play each Bordun and made an arrangement of them (adding in un tuned percussion too) along with creating a short composition on each of their instruments and stage 3 (only two boys and myself) made a 3-minute song using call and response, Borduns and improvising on the Xylophone, Metaphone and Glockenspiel.
Overall I was very proud and they did amazing! I was also able to use all that I learnt in those two weeks to allow for my students to do this!!