Season Three
Episode 85
Orff Approach with Chris Judah-Lauder
Episode 85
Orff Approach with Chris Judah-Lauder
Chris Judah-Lauder Bio:
Chris Judah-Lauder taught elementary and middle school music for 40 years in public and private schools. She is a regular presenter at state, regional, national conferences, Canada, South Korea and China. She is a Past President of AOSA and was the National Conference Chair for the 2009 and 2017 AOSA Conferences. Chris is currently consulting for title one schools in Fort Worth, Texas working directly in the classroom with the music teacher and K-5 students.
Chris teaches AOSA-approved Teacher Education Courses at various universities across the United States. She is a senior author for Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, has seventeen publications including Drum with a Passion and Games, Groups, and Gems, In the Modes, Hand Drums on the Move.
TRANSCRIPT OF THE SHOW
Jessica: Chris, it has been such a pleasure to have you in my life and I'm so excited for you to share with the people who listen on this podcast.
Chris: It is my pleasure.
Jessica: Can you share with us about when you learned about Carl Orff and just kind of a general idea of the Orff approach?
Chris: When I was in my seventh year of teaching I was asked to cowrite the curriculum, the music curriculum, for the Catholic diocese in Indianapolis. And there was a team of three and in order for us to do that we thought it would be to our benefit to observe each other teaching so that we understood our styles. So I went and observed the two and then when the one gentleman came to observe me, at the end of the observation he looked at me and almost screamed. He said, "You are an Orff teacher." And I looked at him and I said, "A what?" So I really didn't have an idea of what the Schulwerk was at that time and he told me, he says, "You've got to get your levels training Chris." And I said, "Yeah. Right. Okay." Well obviously I didn't make any moves initially and so he kept persisting and he would call me every single week on the weekends and ask me if I had looked into the level program in Champagne or Bana. And so finally after about six weeks I did that and then I registered. Blah blah blah blah and then I took my first Level 1 with Judy Bond and it was so exciting because it made so much sense of what I was already doing and it was very easy for me to incorporate the Schulwerk because prior to this I had been teaching drama and movement and choir and recorder for six years to 5th-9th graders. So I now I had an avenue of how to put that together so I was ecstatic.
Jessica: And you've been doing it every since!
Chris: Yes I have!
Jessica: It's awesome! Can you tell us a little about - I mean you kind of have already shared an overview of what you were doing with students and how you incorporated it into your classroom but what even more so - what would be an overview of exactly what the Orff Approach involves?
Chris: The thing the Orff approach is learning to make music through active participation. And in order to do that you have to understand sequence in curriculum so it's a pedagogical framework and structure. It's not a method. So many people call it a method. It's not a method - it's an approach. Collaboration is extremely important and one of the things I like to emphasize especially when I work with teachers is try to make it student directed versus teacher directed. And that's a very tough area for a lot of folks when they come into the Orff philosophy is everything prior to that was teacher directed so it's kind of a - it's scary to let that power go. So obviously there's exploration, creating, guiding, improvisation, how to use the rhythmic building blocks to make it more elemental in getting those rhythmic concepts across, taking risks. You do have to take risk. It's also an incredible way to teach and use elemental forms and create. Not teacher created necessarily but again student directed. You're going to use singing, speaking, dancing, moving, playing instruments. Notice I added instruments last because so many people will say Orff is the barred instruments and that is just not the case. As you know you can easily do a workshop without having any instruments. In fact many many times when I go to the West Coast a lot of the teachers do not have instruments so if I present a workshop the first thing I ask is what percentage of the teachers have barred instruments. If they don't it's no big deal. So then obviously the overview is to use combinations of everything I just said to put it within a collaborative project, which means either as a class or in small groups.
Jessica: So when you're doing it with students how do you incorporate all of those elements into your teaching?
Chris: I think one of the most important things is to have a curriculum and to have a sequence whether that's driven by the state, the district, local school, or if you have to make it yourself. I think teaching off the cuff is where so many folks get into trouble. They go to a workshop and then they take all these wonderful ideas and they bring them in on Monday to the classes and they all bomb and they don't understand why. And as I'm working with teachers now I'm seeing that happen all the time so if you've got a sequence your students will improve on a yearly basis and you can actually build on concepts and actually grow instead of just doing cool stuff.
Another idea to think about is because so many teachers have so many students to teach and planning is exhausting. I don't mind if you take an opportunity to teach the same piece year after year from primary to advanced levels; however, the advantage of doing this and the reason you want to do this is you don't have to take time to reteach the song. The magic is that you can take this particular song and teach a new concept or skill set it's introduced. You will know immediately if that song material is appropriate. I tend to K-1-2 the same, 3-4, and then if you've got the older kids maybe 5-6. Taking baby steps. A lot of teachers don't know where to begin and there's two choices. You can start with your strengths or you can figure out what your weaknesses are. We all know what our weaknesses are. I think the most important thing is everybody along the way is going to make mistakes and that's where you grow. At the end of the day when I teach if something totally bombs, you know, I sit down and I analyze what I did. And I think if teachers are willing to do that than to just get so upset about that, they're going to improve much better. And you need to not be afraid to ask your colleagues for help because so many other folks have the same problems that you do and of course there's many platforms on Facebook. AOSA has a phenomenal mentor program and the objective of this digital mentor program is to pair experienced Orff Schulwerk teachers (a mentor) with newly trained Orff Schulwerk teachers or teacher educators (mentees). And in order to be part of this program the mentees have to have a current AOSA membership, completed an AOSA approved Level Course I,II, or III within two years of the application date. I have participated in this both ways of running the organization, the committee, and also being part of it where you can actually work with somebody for a whole year online and it's a phenomenal experience.
Jessica: So going back a little bit to what you're saying about having that sequencing and the structure to your lessons, when you do get a good idea from going to a workshop would you then find where that fits in your sequence and then bring it about when that comes rather than just implementing it right away.
Chris: I work two ways with my curriculum. One, if I go to a workshop I'm going to take post-its and I'm going to put a little post-it on the top with the grade level and the objectives that it will work for. The reverse of that then is that if I'm looking in my curriculum and let's say I'm working on duple meter or triple meter and I don't feel that I don't have enough material then I go out and search. So you would either look for the material to implement within your sequence with what you don't have or when you take those pieces from workshops the most important thing you have to understand is what skill sets do your children need to already have secure before you take this piece in? And if they can't do steady beat or they're not able to hold onto two complementary ostinato patterns at the same time they probably can't do a piece that has 3 or 4 different ostinatos and I think that's where a lot of people don't think about it. Or their range or there's so many different elements that you've got to be able to analyze those pieces and figure out what skill sets do your children need in order to do that. And as we all know in the Schulwerk you can take any piece. I can take a piece - I love to do this when I teach my masters classes - is I can take a piece and I can make it work for 3rd grade or I can take it and make it work for Kindergarten or I can take that same piece and make it work for 7th grade if you know how to adapt within what the requirements are for you know whatever the curriculum you're working. Does that make sense?
Jessica: It does. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Looking at either way - either looking for the piece and making it fit in your curriculum where you need it or if you're finding a piece using those sticky notes to guide you so you know where to place it and not just doing it right away so that it's just a fun activity, but it has to serve a purpose.
Chris: Right and the bottom line is if you look, any piece you do you should easily be able to pull at least two concepts out of that piece. I always say don't go for more than three because then it's too overwhelming. A ny single piece you do you can pull from that and one of the things when I work with my teachers is when they're doing these sorts of things I'll say what are your two concepts? What do you want your children to be able to do? So that at the end of the lesson we can say okay we did blah blah blah piece - what did we learn? Oh today we learned that binary form is ... or we did... whatever. And so you're constantly reinforcing those terms instead of always doing stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff.
Jessica: And then at the end you're sharing about the mentor program and the mentees. When you're in that program, what do you think the benefits are for both the mentor and the mentee?
Chris: Well the bottom line is that if you are willing to work with an individual to help you that's good. And one of the key things that we ask our mentees to be willing to do is that is to show video of your students. And there's ways of doing that to protect their privacy etc.. but just to talk about it is one thing, but we actually share videos, you know, and you meet 4 or 5 times a year basically however often you want to with your mentor. It's amazing what you can pick up from watching somebody teach for just 2 or 3 minutes with the kids present and then you can go - I could say, "What do you think was successful in that lesson? Where were you struggling? Do you know why that didn't work at that particular point?" And then we would make suggestions and they would do that lesson again. And another video would come in etc. It's a phenomenal program. We started with two people I think initially and now this last time we've got 20. In other words we're running out of mentors because more and more folks are finding out about it, but it's a great program.
Jessica: Having spent quite a bit of time with you since starting my job at Good Shepherd and having you come in and physically be in the room watching me teach was not only intimidating, but also just fantastic for me to focus on weaknesses and strengths and to get feedback in person, but that's not always possible and I just think what a wonderful way for everyone who would like to have a mentor to be able to do that because I really do believe you grow so much better when you can have somebody outside of yourself looking at how things are going in your classroom because I think sometimes we become numb to how students are reacting or even things that we're doing like there was one time you showed me I was drumming and my hand continued to rest on the drum and I remember you were like 'you've got to pick it up' and I was like 'oh I'm doing that?' and I didn't even notice I was doing that. So now especially with my new group of 5th graders this past week we're going over tone and bass and playing it properly, my mind is totally on what I'm doing as well because that wasn't something I noticed. So I think it's really important to have someone who can see things you don't.
Chris: Yeah I think that's really too. It's just like as I'm working with the teachers right now when I go in and initially before I do any teaching or work with the kids I sit back and I analyze and watch. And it's just like you said because you're so nervous. You've got so much to do. It's so overwhelming. You do not realize what you're doing or you don't realize those 6 kids in the back of the room are messing around because you're so worried about this right here. Or so and so is playing with the mallets. Or whatever's going on you know. And that's pretty normal. I think the better you get, the more comfortable you are, the better you are with classroom management then you're able to see what's really going on musically. Teachers who are weak in classroom management usually have a lot of trouble getting the kids to be musical.
Jessica: That's been an area for me that I've had to work on because I'll hear kids go 'Oh you're so nice.' and 'you're so kind' and I'm like darn it that means I'm too nice and too kind you know. Cause it means I'm not holding them accountable. Like I mean maybe I am just nice and kind.
Chris: You are.
Jessica: Getting those classroom management strategies down and figuring out what works with students and doing it consistently has really helped me over the years because that consistency is hard when you're tired and still being consistent. Or when you've had a hard class before and then you just as the day goes on you get tired and so that consistency can make a difference.
Chris: It's funny I was working with a fifth grade class this past fall and one of the little boys came up to me and he stands right next to me and goes "You're really tough. We're having so much fun in here!" I thought that was so cute.
Jessica: That is so cute.
Chris: That was a backhanded compliment you know.
Jessica: Exactly, but you get so much more done with students when you do hold them accountable. I mean you do. I think that accountability is part of the strength of the Orff approach because students are actively engaged. Are there other ways that you believe students become stronger musicians because of having a teacher who understands how to guide them using the Orff approach?
Chris: Well I think the bottom line is if there's no classroom management there is no teaching. And if there's no classroom management the students do not feel safe. And when they don't feel safe they're not going to take risks to try to create or collaborate or work with people because when there's no classroom management that's when the bullying issues come in and as we all know it's getting tougher and tougher and tougher. And of course if you have administration problems on top of that that's a whole other issue, but I think that I always tell folks that I work with say what you do - or do what you say. And if you don't that one child's going to say 'well you know you told so and so, but you didn't take their mallet away. Why did you take my mallet away?' That sort of thing. I think that's something I'm very cognizant about. When I work with teachers I always find that they always say 'Oh but I don't want to be mean.' I always say you're going to be firm, but you're going to teach. You're not going to be mean. Does that answer that question?
Jessica: Yeah. Well I mean it kind of continues along the line of the classroom management because the firmness will allow the teaching to get done. How do you think their musicianship is built?
Chris: I think when the child has a very strong sense of self esteem then that's when they stop and they take more risks and then they start to explore beyond their __ because they don't have to worry about the outside perimeter of the kid making fun of him or two other students making fun of that particular person. So I think it's just amazing. You can see all the stress go away from the students when they feel safe and you know when they don't because you can see that eye contact. One of the other things that I do a lot of and new teachers tend not to do this because they don't feel comfortable is I walk around my classroom a lot. I don't teach from the front so if I suspect or think someone is being inappropriate with another student I'm going to stand right next to that child. Not that I'm going to be mean, but I might just say 'how's it going?' just to let them know that I can do that. I have a lot of eye contact with my classes. All the time. And sometimes when a student is not cooperative I'm finding this with my Title I kids it's so funny. Instead of doing a mean face at them, they're doing a mean face at somebody else and being really nasty, I smile at them and I keep looking at them until I get them to smile. And then I'll say 'Hey things are okay right?' Let's move on and that kind of thing. So again children are not going to create and go off the limb until they feel safe. One of the things that I'm constantly saying to the folks - the teachers that I'm working with is you need to go out at recess and watch how Joey's doing. Find out which kids are being totally isolated. I always went outside at recess time and that told me everything. All you have to do is stand and look around for 15 minutes. And you have these three kids who are being constantly ignored. Now I get it. Now I understand why this is happening in the classroom.
And children want to be loved and so I think it's very important that a lot of teachers are doing this now. Instead of meeting them in the classroom, meet them in the hallway. And I know that the handshakes and all that kind of stuff's been going on. That may stop now. But still that eye contact with them on a one-on-one is very very important. So the other thing in order to make your musicians stronger is within one or two weeks of initial teaching ta the beginning of the school year I track my strongest students, my weakest students, and my behavior students. I make my teachers that I work with do this so that I can see and work with those particular students because that's what makes the classroom unsafe sometimes. And then if you can find ways to take those - sometimes you have some really gifted kids, but their discipline is horrible so you've got to find a way to make them feel good. So after I've determined the low, high, behavior problems, etc, I like to go over to say a student who is gifted, but has an attitude problem, right. I want to find a way to make that student needed and wanted and appreciated so I will go up on a one-on-one, take him to the side and say I need your help. Debby can not do that piece - would you be willing to help?' And 95% of the time they will say yes. And it's just amazing how that can change both and the teacher you have to know your kids. You have to know your kids and like I said - figuring out the high, low, and behavior is the easiest thing to do. Those other students just sort of float and then with differentiated instruction your goal is for all of the students to be lifted up. Not staying in a particular place. And those gifted kids? You better give them extra stuff to do or they're going to get real bored and be behavior problems.
Jessica: I also feel like teaching with the Orff approach is - and you've mentioned this - student-centered. Giving them lots of choice. Giving them lots of input. It's not standing at the front and just telling them everything they need to do or doing all the work yourself. It's very integral to letting them have their voice heard in the classroom. And I think that builds trust and it builds musicianship because they are safe and they're able to grow in their musical skills as a result of that.
Chris: I totally agree. And the other thing is when you ask students for input - A, either speech or just giving an answer or asking them to play a particular something whether it's recorder or barred instruments or whatever, I do allow my students to say pass because some of those kids are not comfortable, but usually about the third time I go around with the class I can usually get about 80% of the kids to participate, but they, you know, so you've got to be really careful about that and not force it all the time. It's a safety issue again.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. So when you do the Orff approach there's so many areas you can start. You can start with body percussion. You can start with speech or with singing. Oftentimes I find I like to start with something other than the instruments and take it to the instruments eventually or maybe not, but I think one of the greatest starting places is speech so how does speech help students in their musicianship, their creativity, and just understanding overall of music?
Chris: Well I think because talking of again about differentiation instruction, not all students learn the same way. And the last thing you want to do with students in a music class is to force them to read notation and so many folks try to do that. Students learn visually, aurally, kinesthetically, etc., but speech is something that we start at a very young age so it's a way to isolate a concept starting with words. Speech. So we could take any concept and hit it hard just with very very simple speech so orally you can use echo-imitation, audition with speech. You can use poetry and again we talked a lot about giving our student teacher directed material with speech. It can be used to reinforce meter. You can use speech at the older age - question and answer. Elemental forms you can use speech. Improvisation. It can also used to enhance body percussion and/or movement and obviously speech can be the first step in a) learning a melody or something on the bars or singing etc because if you're going to sing a song, you might want to have the students speak it first rhythmically and then add the solfege. And I think it's very non-threatening for the kids and again it's an incredible opportunity for the students to create instead of everything being teacher pushed. So... yeah I totally agree. We need to do all sorts of things with speech.
Jessica: So recently with my fifth grade class we've used a poem and then some ostinati underneath and using that speech and getting it to be spoken expressively and not just monotone, you know. because that makes a difference too because if they're speaking expressively then they're going to perform it expressively. And just pulling out that. Allowing them to speak it with the different parts going at the same time for ever and putting it to instruments, but my thought with it is that we're getting ready to transfer that to drums so how does speech and maybe I kind of just kind of shared it, but how does speech work with drumming?
Chris: I think it works really, really well. If you've got a particular ostinati that the students are not able to rhythmically read in notation, they can certainly say it. As we all know the students can perform more advanced rhythmically - rhythmic patterns - than they can read, right? So speech is a great way to do your drumming, etc... One of the things I learned from Jim Solomon is:
speak - pat - play
And sometimes depending on what I'm doing I'll had one little step in there and do:
speak - pat - air - play
In other words you speak it. You pat it on your legs. Play it in the air over the drums and then on the drums. Why? It's because each step is an opportunity for the teacher to assess. So if you don't do these steps, you go directly on the drum you're going to have 70% of the kids doing it wrong. And if you do this speak-pat, you can instantaneously see which kids can do it. So what I like to do is watching the children do the speak. Do it on patting. And then just invite those who are correct to put it on the drum, which enhances the other children to pay attention vs. saying okay everyone on the drums now. So I think you've got to be careful.
Obviously with your drumming you've got to make sure that the kids can do a steady beat. Speech echo-imitation is phenomenal. Short ostinati. A typical example would be if it's been raining for three days and the kids are so mad and they walk into your classroom because they can't go to recess, I'm going to start a beat and I'm going to say, "Hey what are you upset about? Talk to me. Yeah - you hate the rain. Why do you hate that rain? Tell me now. Hate the rain...etc." And then we just start doing that. We start doing that on our legs and taking it to the instrument, etc. Those spontaneous opportunities to use speech with the drums is so fun. And sometimes I can go 30 minutes with that and ending up creating an entire song. You just never know and even though my objective was ostinati, steady beat, layering, etc, I'm still meeting that. And I think that's what we call 'going off the page.' It is going off the page, but it's still musical and you're still reinforcing those concepts.
Also with the speech idea and the drum, using the rhythmic building blocks, it's so simple to visually show those. Get yourself a theme and then use those to make those. When I'm working with the kids, if I want to see whether or not they are successful to move on within the next sequence, I might create a very simple bass pattern with lots of space. One of the things that especially older students tend to do is you ask them to do an ostinato and it's all eighth notes and sixteenth notes. THere's no rests in there. So you have to force that. You have to force that. And sometimes the way I force that is: Give me an 8 count ostinati. This is the bass part. Keep it shallow. You have to be able to raise your hands up at least two times throughout that pattern, which forces your break. Rests.
Okay so you do that and the idea as the teacher is I have to assess whether or not they can add another layer. So there's two ways of doing that:
A) I could have them just keep playing that bass part and I could start messing around on another pattern and see if they can hold on to that. If they can't hold on to that, they're not ready to do another layer. If they can hold on to it, I'm going to move forward as fast as I can. Etc...
B) If you want your children to create a pattern. An ostinati against the bass pattern. Your bass pattern is 8 counts. Ideally you ask your students to do a complementary length of 4 counts. That in itself is asking the students to listen carefully to make sure that the rhythm is not the same as the bass. And that takes a lot of practice. And so the way I do that is if I have a bass part going and I'll have maybe two kids doing a pattern and I'll say, "Okay raise your hand every time it's the identical rhythm." When you can't hear two different parts, it's too similar. So after a while you can do that.
Another way with using speech as the children are working through the speech, you as a teacher during the pieces, people always say to me, "Do you ever let go of the speech?" I let the students decide that. If you need it, fine. If you need to audit it, that's fine. Whatever you're comfortable with. You want to do this song with the speech or without the speech. 90% of the time they'll say without the speech. However, because it's so different to create programs if you're thinking as a teacher, "How in the world can I make this 30 second song into 2 minutes?" When you present it, do it with speech first. I mean that's really a cool effect to do that. It also provides the opportunity for the audience to see what you're doing. Layering, etc..
I also like to go around the room and using speech patterns again - either/preferably student directed -having the students perform them alone. Play it 3x and then have the class join. And that 3x is very important. It's for the security of the individual who is playing the pattern. If you only have them play it one time and everybody joins them, chances are that because of nerves they're going to have played it wrong and that's one of the areas a lot of people forget to do that. And you just keep layering and layering and layering and eventually at some point you can take that speech away if you want. Does that answer?
Jessica: Yes it does. So what do you do if your students - that 90% of the time say they don't want to speak with the drums, does that show that they're not as comfortable with the speech or does it just mean they're more.... cause I've had this recently where I was doing a drum piece and it was with the Drum Ensemble so these students are used to speaking, but the idea of being in front of their peers... it's like all of a sudden when they know that it's not going to be in the comfort of that classroom, but they're going to be in front of the entire school they just kind of... middle schoolers I've seen them do this several times, at least with me, where they kind of withdraw and they go as I say more internal because it's like 'oh gosh I don't want to be vulnerable to speaking.' So how do you encourage that?
Chris: To do the speech or not to?
Jessica: To do the speech because when they're like 'oh we don't want to do the speech, but you know either you want it elongated or in the case of a piece I'm doing it has such cool rhythms and sounds so great when it's spoken that it's like what an awesome way to demonstrate that music goes beyond just 'hey we're playing drums.' That you've got this extra musical way of showing learning.
Chris: Right and when they get up on the stage and their peers are up there they get so intimidated sometimes. And that speech element is touch. I always say to the students, "when you do the speaking part, where do you think you should be looking? At your peers, at the audience, or over their heads?" And the answer is over their heads. Because what happens is they will look out there and just freeze so we practice that. If I'm on the stage with the kids, I"ll say "Where are you looking? You should be looking five feet up on this window. Pretend like your dog is there or your friend or whatever." The other thing I always do is "Who in this classroom can I count on being a leader? I need three students who are going to promise me that if your peers freak out and drop out, you're going to still be there." So if you can get 3 or 4 students to commit to that, then you're going to get 60% of the class to stay with them because that's a huge responsibility. And then you want to position them. How do you want to position them? All three next to each other? Or spacially? And that just depends on the kids. Sometimes I'll even ask them that, but that's the way I handle that one. I ask leaders.
Jessica: That may help no-one else, but it helps me. I'm like I need to know the answer to that question.
Chris: Good. Good. Try it. Let me know.
Jessica: I will. I'll try it tomorrow. Well yeah... probably in Drum rehearsal I'll try it tomorrow, but it's interesting because in the same thing I've found with middle schoolers with singing too where they will sing out in the classroom and then as soon as they're in front of their peers it just - that comfort goes away. So that's something I continue to work on and I think singing works with barred instruments just like speech works with drumming. You know, where you can take a melody and sing it and then transfer it to barred instruments so let's talk about barred instruments a little bit. What benefit is there to using barred instruments in the classroom?
Chris: Okay. Obviously they're fun. The kids always want to play them. They're very engaging. It's a different medium. They're interactive in so many different capacities because then you can combine them with the singing. You can combine them with movement. Speech. Ukulele. Guitar. Etc. So that's fun that you can do that. The other thing is there is a wide variety of musical material that you can use. You can use the Carl Orff/Gunild traditional Music for Children volumes. You can use them to do phenomenal things with elemental form and jazz pieces. I am also not opposed to do contemporary pieces and one of the things that I have loved to do is contemporary pieces; however, it's a lot of work on the teacher's part because the first thing you have to do is make sure the lyrics are appropriate. One of the issues I get all the time with students is they'd come to me and say, "I want to do such and such a piece," and I'd say, "Do you know what that means?" They'll go "Oh we're going to do it without words?" I'd say, "Does anybody else in this classroom know what they words are." "Yeah well everybody knows." Exactly. Course I've learned this the hard way.
So I never ever did pieces that had inappropriate lyrics and just did the instrumental. And the students do love the barred instruments and sometimes that's a carrot for me. So if you have a class and they have a behavior problem, at the end of the class you can say, "Oh wow. I was going to bring out barred instruments in the next class, but I'm not sure I can do that. Can you show me in the next 15 minutes that you really want to do the barred instruments?" I think the other thing with barred instruments is it all goes back to classroom management again. You have to have a protocol. You have to take time to show those kids how to hold the mallets. How to move them to another - how to move the instruments, etc. And I would always take probably half a class period just to do that. Pull the instruments out. Put them back in. Pull the instruments out. Pull the bars. Etc. Because if you don't, children can break those very very easily. The other thing that I have a standard procedure with my students, I say, "If you break them you're going to come in during your recess and you're going to have to repair the bars." And I've done that many, many, many, many times. Problem with that is sometimes they really like it.
Jessica: They're like, "Man that was fun!"
Chris: Also with classroom management you know how do you keep the kids continue to pay attention. Again it's all about your protocol and your classroom management. So first thing you do is take the mallets away, but so many teachers don't want to do that. They don't want to take the mallets away. I always say, "Hey I'll take the mallets away. I'll give them back to you if you can continue playing correctly with your fingers and then I'll give them back to you." I always had another area in my classroom with four chairs facing the classroom; however I could see them where they had to go up there without a barred instrument. Then i would invite them back to the barred instruments when they were paying attention.
The other thing with doing the instruments is very few teachers have enough barred instruments for every individual student to have their own, which is really okay. Because the best way really to teach the barred instruments is to have two on the barred instrument: one observing, one playing. And then you say switch. (40m 28s)
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