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