#kodalymethod

Have recently been looking into the Kodaly style of teaching for primary schools and am finding it fascinating so wanted to share some information for everyone!

What is Kodaly teaching?

Kodaly is a performance and listening based practice of teaching that is employed by many teachers around the globe! The lessons usually involve a lot of movement around the classroom, using this to entrain the concept of beat and rhythm into students. To get an idea of how one of the classes works here is a short excerpt of a class starting to introduce the concept of music notation to young students:

Rather than teaching music by teaching the theory and then applying it to performance, Kodaly switches this around. Ensuring students have a very solid understanding of a concept before even introducing the concept to them. In this previous example, these students will have been singing using these high and low pitches since starting Kodaly lessons as it is how the majority of their songs are structured. Due to this, when their teacher introduced the idea of high and low sounds the students immediately understood what he was talking about. Not only this, but they were also able to form the basis of music notation placing the tokens high and low on their page in the right order.

Another specific activity that I stumbled upon was one that helps students distinguish the difference between beat and rhythm:

By using this simple poem, students are more easily able to grasp the concepts of beat and rhythm which is something quite difficult for someone just learning about music.

How do I use this in my classroom?

Now these strategies may seem intimidating to any teachers who aren’t so confident with music, but playing around with some Kodaly exercises can be fun and there is no pressure to start with anything too difficult! A nice way to introduce this method to a class and to get used to it yourself is to make singing and rhythm a bigger part of your classroom. In the following example the teacher reads from a book in a rhythmic and melodic way (start at 14:45):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzAi1KZjbbY&t=673s

This method entrains students to recognise a constant beat and encouraged them to all read and sing along to the book. It is also an activity that isnt too daunting to begin with!

I will also link you all to a resource that shows a whole range of different musical games in the Kodaly style to look at:

http://www.kodaly.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/fun_ideas1.pdf

(Steal the Bacon looks like a particularly fun game!)

Using techniques like those in Kodaly will also help you check off some syllabus outcomes in your classroom. For those NSW teachers it especially is useful for the performance outcomes as the students are experiencing performing and moving in a group while being aware of different musical concepts.

Hope this was an interesting intro to Kodaly, I know I’ve had fun looking into all the fun activities you can do. If anyone has any great experiences with Kodaly make sure you let us know, we would love to hear from you!

This method is a natural extension of being a folk music buff as the learning material is drawn, in the early years at least, from folksong.

When I was about 15, my singing teacher at the time introduced me to a method of writing called tonic sola. I had only heard of this in fun before [who hasn't heard that do is a deer a female deer?] This lead me to investigate an discover Zoltan Kodaly and a book which had the music of every song I ever loved as a child.

Kodaly was a Hungarian who in 1925 heard children singing songs they had learnt at school. He thought they were substandard. So the seed was planted for the Kodaly Method.

The interesting thing about the method is that nothing is new - Solfege comes from England, rhythm duration syllables and some material are borrowed from Dalcroze.

The method has specific ideas and tools which are briefly as follows:

Singing as a means to learn.

A child developmental approach that draws from the folksongs of the students' country.

A process of learning which is hear, immitate, create in nature.

The use of Solfege, rhythm syllables and other developmental tools to learn stuff.

Interestingly, to put some of these things in context, the first lesson of the Kodaly method after singing lots of songs and teaching how to step beat, soft loud etc, is the minor third. This is found in the chant "You can't catch me". It is first heard so much that it is internalised by the student then it is named so-mi and hand signals are given to it. [There is a whole song related to the gestures on YouTube]. The student is then taught to write So-Mi. Progressively over the years at school a musical language is built up until the student is musically literate.

An important thing to Kodaly was that music should belong to everybody. It should be taught daily a long with Maths and reading and writing. This is one of the many reasons I am writing this series be cause I firmly believe music should belong to everybody.