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. . . at a meeting of elementary school music teachers, organized and hosted by Craig McGorry at P.S. 35 in the Bronx, on November 3, 2009.
. . . at a meeting of elementary school music teachers, organized and hosted by 16 people attended, some of them from schools as far away as Brooklyn. Participants discussed and shared activities (body percussion, movement to music, xylophone work, singing rounds, rhythm notation games, etc.), including:
- Body Percussion Rondo: “Everyone learned it, then broke into four groups. Each group spent about 10 minutes coming up with their own 4-measure ideas. We then regrouped and combined the parts with the A-section from the original rondo. The result is an activity that moves from learning a piece to composing other sections and finally performing them.”
Other material demonstrated on the videos includes:
- Body Movement: to identify different sections from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro (presented by Evan Alboum of P.S. 246, Bronx).
- Macro-Beat Awareness: activity presented by Fay Watson of P.S. 75, Manhattan)
- Two African-American handgames Hambone and Juba (presented by David Haiman of P.S. 180, Manhattan).
- Balafón: Orff arrangement for 2nd graders, from Walt Hampton’s Hot Marimba (presented by David Haiman) .
- Kokoleoko: a Liberian folk song acappella arrangement
- I Won’t Go to Macy’s Anymore: a schoolyard rhyme (presented by Walter Paul of P.S. 42, Manhattan)
- John Kanaka: a Pacific Islands sea shanty with circle play
Mr. McGorry writes: “What made it work so well was that different voices contributed. Also, we kept bringing it back to the practical: how do you use this in a classroom? What are the potential problems that you could encounter in doing this? How do you avoid those problems?”
