Resources for Equity:
- Decolonizing the Music Room - a site that supports music teachers in their efforts to create a class where all children are treated equitably.
- Songs with a Questionable Past - a resource by Lauren McDougle of AKI that catalogues songs that have a history of racism, adult themes, questionable authenticity, or questionable meaning that have been used in American music education.
Link to Newsletter with Most Recent Lessons!
My Resources:
- 50 Breathing Gifs: 50 Gifs I've collected to help your students refocus and regulate.
- 58 Elemental Meters: Triangle- and circle-based visuals for exploring different meters while you improvise.
- Chromatic Recorder Fingering Chart Visual: C Fingerings
- Chromatic Recorder Fingering Chart Visual: F Fingerings
- Elemental Harmonic Changes: A Google Songmaker playground where you can use embedded Songmaker files to improvise over or create melodies over elemental harmonic shifts.
- Elemental Musical Adventures: Music making without notation - let your students explore, create, and perform!
- Kate's Deep Dives: I'm getting a start on tracking down the history of the pieces we teach and making sure we know where our repertoire comes from!
- I Love Modes: A currently under-construction collection of modal pieces Kate has either created or found on the internet!
- Modes in Space: Go explore the seven diatonic modes - what can you improvise?
- Recorder Land: A website (currently in its beginning stages) where students can independently explore and practice the recorder.
- Peter and the "What If..." - Website about Peter and the Wolf. A lesson plan can be found on ACEMM.org.
- This link will take you to a Google folder titled Kate Bright's Resource Sharing Pack. This has icons for body percussion, rhythms, interactive solfa ladders, and an ever-growing library of visuals you can use with your students! If you want to use something in a workshop, need something fixed, or have a request, contact me and I will be happy to do my best!
- Twinkle Twinkle in Every Mode
- Working with I/V: A Songmaker Playground where learners can practice adding I and V chords to melodies, or adding melodies to I and V chords.
Link to Google Folder of Visuals for Teachers
My (Unpublished) Canva Lessons for the Classroom:
- 12345678 Challenge: Take the Tiktok trend and use it to help cement music literacy.
- Agua de limón: This link has the lesson process and the link to the Canva visuals.
- Animals and Music: An Improvisation Adventure: Allow your students to improvise with movement, unpitched percussion, pitched percussion, or recorder. At the end of each animal, you have three videos where you can create some sort of performance with elemental form.
- Apple Tree: Play the game and then create with apple rhythms inspired by the song!
- Bow Wow Wow: The classic partner-changing game with an additional interlude in triple. Practice reading basic duple and triple rhythms as well as the pentatonic scale.
- Carol of the Bells: Learn about the history, listen to great performances, or perform the rhythms and melodies!
- Chantoria: Take any rhythmic speech piece and go on adventure through a magical musical land. What will you create?
- Cuckoo - Random Animal Adventure: An illustrated folk song, draft #1, with more random animals
- Cuckoo - A Normal Forest Adventure: An illustrated folk song, draft #2, with clickable map
- Exploring Our Feelings with "Rain, Rain, Go Away": A Songmaker book that features different versions of the song "Rain, Rain, Go Away!"
- Fractions and Music: Explore how fractions affect pitches and rhythms!
- Frosty Weather: The classic folk song with an animal twist - practice moving in a variety of ways and reading the do-pentatonic scale.
- Hot Cross Buns - Far too much information about Hot Cross Buns.
- I Got a Letter This Morning: This link has the lesson process and the link to resources and Canva visuals!
- Improvising in the Pentatonic Modes: Visuals for barred instruments, soprano recorder, alto recorder, and ukulele in the most commonly used pentatonic keyalities.
- In the Museum: a la-pentatonic triple-meter game for you and your students.
- Let Us Chase the Squirrel: Play with the elements of music while also playing a super-fun circle game!
- Macrobeat vs. Microbeat: Explore macrobeats and microbeats with duple and triple visuals and pieces of music.
- Ms. Swizzle and the Six Sebastians - Just because your name is the same doesn't mean you don't have to be the same kind of person!
- Old Chicken: A parody of "Skin and Bones" that tells the tale of a chicken that sneaks in the music room...possibly to have a drum party?
- The Old Gray Cat - An illustrated folk song, with opportunities for students to improvise and create
- Tempo Vocabulary
- Wild Wintery Wanderers - A simple look at footprints in the snow and an exploration of how we can use them to explore beginning mallet techniques.
- What Is a Steady Beat? - Use movement and a variety of musical examples to explore the concept of a steady beat.
- Who is Trombone Shorty? - Explore the life and music of Trombone Shorty, including an animated form chart I created in Canva.
- We Are Dancing - A popular singing game that, in my version, involves the wolf looking for the best pose. Pose suggestions and a wordwall included, along with rhythmic and melodic decoding.
- The Wolf is on His Way - A retelling of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." It is accompanied by a song - the entire lesson can be found here.
Links
- American Center for Elemental Music and Movement - this organization provides online resources, grants, scholarships and more to elemental music and movement teachers.
- Folk Dance Footnotes - a website that has a lot of background knowledge about folk dances and the cultures from which they came.
- Folk Dance Musings - a website that has a wide collection of international folk dances.
- Teaching with Orff - a website filled with free elemental music lessons and resources.
Resources from Past Workshops
- September 16, 2023 at the Detroit Area Orff Schulwerk Association, presenting "Elemental Musical Adventures: Composing and Creating with Students." Click here for slides and notes.
- September 12, 2023 at Teaching With Orff, Kate presented "Illuminating the Path to a Successful School Year" with Crystal Pridmore. Click here to purchase the recording and notes.
- April 18, 2023 at Teaching with Orff, presenting a webinar "Over, Under, and Through" with Jeaneau Julian and Liban Gomez.
- April 15, 2023 at the Greater Chicago Area Orff Schulwerk Association, presenting "Elemental Musical Adventures: Composing and Creating with Students." Click here for slides.
- April 1st, 2022 at the Long Island American Orff Schulwerk Association, presenting "Elemental Musical Adventures: Composing and Creating with Students." Click here for slides.
- March 18th, 2023 at the Central Ohio Orff Schulwerk Association, presenting "Elemental Musical Adventures: Composing and Creating with Students" Click here for slides.
- February 25, 2022, via Zoom, at the James River Orff Schulwerk Association, presenting "Elemental Musical Adventures." Link to slides.
- February 22, 2023 at the Canadian Orff PLC, presenting "Just Like the Moon and other Stories." Link to slides.
- November 5th, 2022 at the American Orff Schulwerk Association's National Conference, presenting "Steps to Prep the Recorder."
- September 24, 2022 at the Mountain Laurel Chapter of AOSA, presenting "Elemental Musical Adventures: Composing and Creating with Students." Click here for notes.
- August 12, 2022 at the F-Flat Annual Back-to-School Symposium in Philadelphia, presenting Using Elemental Music and Movement to Explore Emotions. Registration is pay what you will, and you can register here.
- June 22, 2022 at the West Chester University Orff Levels, "Moving Through the Pentatonic Modes." Click here for slides.
- May 31, 2022 on the Afternoon Ti podcast with Jessica Grant, discussing Elemental Music. Find it anywhere you listen to podcasts, or click here!
- May 25, 2022 at the Orff PLC (Canada) presenting with Jeaneau Julian "The End Is Just the Beginning." Click here for slides. Click here for notes.
- April 23, 2022 at the Low Country Chapter of AOSA, presenting "Elemental Musical Adventures." Click here for notes.
- March 26, 2022 at the Greater Baltimore Area Orff Schulwerk Association's Chapter Share.
- April 12, 2022 via Zoom Webinar with Liban Gomez & Jeaneau Julian, presenting "Growing Through the Magic of Children’s Literature." Click here to purchase the recording from Teaching with Orff.
- March 12, 2022 at the New Mexico Chapter of AOSA, presenting "Elemental Musical Adventures: Composing and Creating with Students" Click here for notes
- February 22, 2022 at the free "Celebrate the Number 2!" workshop.
- February 5, 2022 at the Heart of America Orff Chapter, presenting "Elemental Musical Adventures." Link to slides
- January 11, 2022 & January 25, 2022 at the Tidewater Orff Chapter of AOSA, presenting "Elemental Musical Adventures." Link to slides
- January 15, 2022 at the American River Orff Chapter of AOSA, presenting "Elemental Musical Adventures." Link to slides
- October 9, 2021 at St. Thomas University to present for the Minnesota Orff Chapter, presenting "Elemental Musical Adventures" Here is a link to my slides.
- August 13, 2021 at the Central California Orff Chapter, presenting "Elemental Musical Adventures." Here is a link to my slides.
- June 6, 2021 at the International Sunday Sharing USA workshop: "The End is Just a Beginning!" Here is a link to my slides.
- May 15, 2021 at the Baltimore Orff Chapter Share.
- April 22, 2021 at the NAFME Eastern Division Virtual Conference, presenting "Digital Resources for Elemental Music Making." Here are my slides!
- April 18, 2021 at "The Golden Seed" Book Launch Party and Workshop. Watch the workshop and get the free resources here!
- March 29, 2021 at Otterbein University in Westerville, OH, presenting "Cross Curricular Integration."
- March 27, 2021 at the Virginia Highlands Orff Chapter, presenting: "Nurturing the Unexpected" Here are my slides!
- March 23, 2021 with Manju Durairaj for Teaching With Orff: "Applying Playful Process with Seesaw: APPs for Elemental Music Making"
- Monday nights in February and March as a panelist for the AOSA Professional Learning Network. Here are my slides!
- March 16, 2021 at the Arkansas Orff Chapter: "Playing with Music." Here's a link to my slides!
- March 5-7, 2021 at the MMEA Annual In-service Conference. Here are my slides!
- February 4-6, 2021 at the Ohio Music Education Association's Virtual Professional Development Conference; presenting "Cross-Curricular Integration" & "Using Literature to Develop Musicianship"
- January 30, 2021 at the Utah Chapter of the American Orff Schulwerk Association, presenting "Nurturing the Unexpected."
- November 14, 2020 at the AOSA Virtual Symposium, presenting "Steps to (Virtually) Prep the Recorder"
- October 2 & 3, 2020 (virtually) at the Idaho Orff Chapter in Boise, Idaho, presenting "Around the School in 80 Beats."
- September 26, 2020 (virtually) at the Green Country Oklahoma Orff Chapter, presenting "Nurturing the Unexpected"
- September 12-13, 2020 (virtually) at the OMEA Virtual State Music Conference, presenting two sessions on creating interactive Google Slide presentations: "Building Virtual Music Classrooms for Active Music Making" & Interactive music with "Google Slides for the Elementary Music Classroom"
- September 19, 2020 (virtually) at the Greater Cincinnati Chapter of AOSA, presenting "Nurturing the Unexpected"
- May 9 & 16, 2020, with Drue Bullington, Ardith Collins, Michelle Przybylowski with a two-part workshop titled "You Are Enough."
- May 9 & 16, 2020, with Drue Bullington, Ardith Collins, Michelle Przybylowski with a two-part workshop titled "You Are Enough."
- April 18, 2020 at the Baltimore Orff Workshop titled "Teaching to the Void."
- February 29, 2020 at the Central Florida Orff Chapter of the American Orff Schulwerk Association. Click here for link to the slides & notes.
- February 1, 2020 at the Peabody Saturday Series, presenting "Orff without Instruments" with Warkenda Williams Casey. Click here for slides & notes.
- December 7, 2019 at the New England American Orff Schulwerk Association, presenting "Around the World in 80 Beats" Click here for slides.
- November 20-22 at the ACEMM Booth at the AOSA National Conference. Click here for the movement cards!
- October 14, 2019 at the PMEA District 7 Professional Development Day, presenting with Lisa Sempsey. Link to Centers slides. Link to Recorder slides.
- September 14, 2019 at the Greater Cleveland Orff Chapter. Click here for slides
- April 6, 2019 at the 2019 NAFME All-Eastern Conference, presenting "Egg Cartons & Scrambled Eggs: Exploring 6/8 in the Elementary Classroom" with Becky Burdett Link to Slides
- March 30, 2019 at Marywood University for the PMEA District 9 Professional Development Day; link to Notes
- March 23, 2019 at the Twin Tiers Orff Schulwerk Association, presenting "Around the World in 80 Beats" Link to Slides
- February 17, 2019 at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, calling a family folk dance event
- 9, 2019 at the Greater Baltimore Area Orff Schulwerk Association workshop "Let's All Dance: Planning a Family Folk Dance Night" Link to Notes
- February 2, 2019 at the Maryland Music Education Association conference in Baltimore, Maryland, presenting two sessions: "The Wolf is On His Way" and "Around the World in 80 Beats" Link to Around the World Notes. Link to Wolf Notes.
- January 19, 2019 at the Philadelphia Orff Schulwerk Workshop, presenting "Star Light, Star Bright" as part of the Tossi Aaron memorial workshop.
- November 8, 2018 at the AOSA National Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio presenting "One Piece: a Song to Spiral Through Your Curriculum." Click here for links to her slides!
- October 19, 2018 at the Maryland Music Education Association Fall Conference, presenting "Egg Cartons & Scrambled Eggs: Exploring 6/8 in the Elementary Classroom" with Becky Burdett
- October 13, 2018 at the Northern New Jersey Area Orff Schulwerk Association, presenting "Around the World in 80 Beats." Click here for a copy of her slides!
- October 8, 2018 at the PMEA District 7 Professional Development Day, presenting two different sessions: "Steps to Prep the Recorder" and "Dancing Through Your Curriculum." Click here for notes!
- September 8, 2018 at the Greater Baltimore Area Orff Schulwerk Association workshop "From Storybook to Stage."