Creating Elemental Music and Movement Experiences
in an Online Learning Environment
By Drue Bullington, Reverberations Contributing Editor
and AOSA Teacher Educator
Many of us are exploring how to create elemental music and movement experiences in an online learning environment. The recent weeks have had a steep learning curve for nearly all of us. I’m hoping to share some of the successes I’ve had in the following series of short videos I created for my own students. I was guided by the basics of elemental process teaching: a familiar model, imitation, discovery, exploration, improvisation and individual creativity. I’m hoping that sharing these will help encourage you to explore elemental approaches in your own videos for your students.
Music Box Echo Patterns: Exploration and Imitation - Here we take the newly found box drum and imitate patterns in echo fashion. The teacher provides a model for immediately copying.
Music Box Creation with Chop Chop, Chippity Chop Patterns: Imitation and Notation Literacy - We progress a little farther and deeper with our learning as we continue imitation experiences with the added layer of rhythmic speech notation with words and musical symbols.
Statue Game - Rhythmic and Movement Improvisation: The Create Stage - Here students are given a model with a short demonstration of how to play the “Statue Game,” which we have played multiple times together in our F2F classes usually with the teacher as the creator of the musical stimulus for reaction in movement. In this case, the students are asked to take over this role of musical improvisor/stimulus creator in the hope that they can find someone else in their home with whom to play the game.
When you are inclined to explore the possibilities of connecting online with your students, what magic could you uncover if you trusted yourself enough to learn what you needed to know along the way? This new journey is teaching you; be kind and patient with yourself as you would with one of your own students who is doing their best in unfamiliar territory!
We may have a long way to go, but with these few weeks under our belts, look at how far we’ve already come! Keep going, AOSA!
Drue Bullington teaches elemental music and movement at Brownstown Elementary School in Lancaster, PA. He teaches in several Orff Schulwerk Teacher Education Courses around the U.S. and offers numerous workshops yearly in the Orff Approach. Drue serves as President of the American Center for Elemental Music and Movement.
Reverberations - April 21, 2020
