Incorporating Recorders into Elementary Music Curricula
How do you incorporate recorders into your curriculum? I need to incorporate recorders with my 3rd graders and I love using your resources as it has made music so fun for my students, so I am just trying to figure out the best way to add them. Thanks for any suggestions!
Naturally Embedded vs Isolated Units
Necessary “focus” time
Goal is transfer of musical understanding across multiple melodic media (voice, movement, barred instruments, recorder)
“how to play recorder” vs “how to use recorder as a tool for collaborative musicianship and critical thinking”
I would have a different take if I considered myself a recorder teacher
Where Have We Been?
If we’re taking an integrated vs isolated approach, what are we involving recorders in?
What melodic experiences do we expect students to already have?
What conscious knowledge of steps and skips do we expect students to already have?
Possible 3rd grade examples:
Experiences: Singing, playing, and moving to many songs in many tonal contexts
In the background to provide a tonal framework for conscious knowledge
Conscious knowledge: Aurally identify, read and write in different representations, consciously use in improvisation, arranging, and compositions, multiple partwork experiences
Sol mi la
Mi re do
Low la
Another Melodic Instrument
Students can choose if they’ll play their answer on recorder or barred instruments.
You might also have two or three students behind an instrument, all three have recorders, and they just take turns rotating around the instrument.
(Episode 34)
Early Experiences
Holding the instrument
Appropriate airflow
List of things to try if we squeak
Less air
All holes are covered
Rhythmic Integration
Consider incorporating with rhythmic experiences first instead of melodic experiences
Students play a steady beat in a game
Consider songs and rhymes like Bubblegum Bubblegum
Students play an ostinato on the fifth in a song
Students have a rhythmic conversation, similar to the warm up routine
Students echo or improvise a B section using rhythmic building blocks
Choose to respond with the following fingerings: (___ ___ ___)
Repertoire:
Use classroom repertoire, including pop music
What are we already teaching? How could another instrument be used to teach the concept?
Expanding to Melodic Experiences
Adding melodic elements:
Students improvise a melody using a specific set of pitches in a rhyme (like 2 4 6 8)
Students add a melody to rhythmic building blocks
Students echo with pop music in the background
Alabama Gal and Old Mister Rabbit examples
Rhythmic building blocks
Notably Absent….
Notation with absolute pitch names isn’t used here
We don’t need to introduce notation until it makes sense in a student’s musical world to introduce notation
Western notation is not the point, musical understanding and transfer of musical concepts to many different settings is the point
Eventually, we would expect students to notice melodic concepts by aurally identifying them. From there, notation on the staff might be used and students can make connections about steps and skips on a barred instrument versus steps and skips on the recorder
