orff-schulwerk

AOSA supports and promotes Orff Schulwerk as a model for music and movement education in schools in the United States because it offers a potential for active and creative music making by all children, not just the musically talented. This approach to learning, developed by Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman, builds musicianship through singing, playing instruments, speech, and movement. Active music making is the core of this philosophy, supporting both the conceptual and affective development of children. Active learners develop more thorough and better long-term understanding of the material and ideas involved. Children who regularly improvise and create their own dances and musical settings are uniquely prepared to solve problems in many other contexts.
Orff Schulwerk music and movement pedagogy contributes to development of the individual far beyond specific skills and understandings in the arts. These skills and procedures have a wider application and value in several areas:
The Learning Process
The prototype of the active music and movement model known as Orff Schulwerk is the spontaneous play of young children in which imitation, experimentation, and personal expression occur naturally and unconsciously. In the Orff Schulwerk process, aspects of play are developed consciously to involve learners with the elements of music and movement.
These categories of activity, through the use of speech, singing, movement, body percussion, and instrumental play, include the following:
Integration
Children learn about and interact with the world in a holistic way; educational experiences that replicate this learning style provide natural, optimal learning. Children’s play serves as the prototype—speech, song, movement, dramatic situations, and often instrumental play as well, join and overlap as appropriate. The Orff Schulwerk model maintains the concept of integration, combining music, movement/dance, speech, and drama as natural extensions of each other. The process of integration complements the development of skills in each area, stimulates creative imagination, and offers an opportunity for individual strengths to be used and recognized. Integration of these areas results in a unique, elemental synthesis of the performing arts.
Performance
Though preparing music and movement material for presentation to an audience is not a primary focus of the Orff Schulwerk approach, the value of performance is recognized. As discussed above, the process of learning, developing, and creating material is foremost; however, the opportunity to refine and share this material can be highly motivating. It can also generate higher levels of skill development and lead to individual and group satisfaction and pride.
Orff Schulwerk music and movement pedagogy contributes to development of the individual far beyond specific skills and understandings in the arts. These skills and procedures have a wider application and value in several areas:
- Intellectual: The critical-thinking and problem-solving tasks involved in Orff Schulwerk call upon both linear and intuitive intellectual capacities. The carrying out of creative ideas calls upon organizational abilities as well as artistic knowledge and skill.
- Social: Orff Schulwerk is a group model, requiring the cooperative interaction of everyone involved, including the instructor. It is important that artistic development occurs within a satisfying and supportive human environment. Tolerance, helpfulness, patience, and other cooperative attitudes must be cultivated consciously. The ensemble setting requires sensitivity to the total group and awareness of the role of each individual within it. Problem solving, improvisation, and the group composing process provide opportunities for developing leadership.
- Emotional: The artistic media involved—music and movement—provide the individual with avenues for non-verbal expression of emotions. The exploratory and improvisatory activities can provide a focus for emotions, a means for release of tension and frustration, and a vehicle for the enhancement of self-esteem.
- Aesthetic: As knowledge of and skills in music and movement grow, students will have opportunities to develop standards of what is considered “good” within the styles being explored.
The Learning Process
The prototype of the active music and movement model known as Orff Schulwerk is the spontaneous play of young children in which imitation, experimentation, and personal expression occur naturally and unconsciously. In the Orff Schulwerk process, aspects of play are developed consciously to involve learners with the elements of music and movement.
These categories of activity, through the use of speech, singing, movement, body percussion, and instrumental play, include the following:
Integration
Children learn about and interact with the world in a holistic way; educational experiences that replicate this learning style provide natural, optimal learning. Children’s play serves as the prototype—speech, song, movement, dramatic situations, and often instrumental play as well, join and overlap as appropriate. The Orff Schulwerk model maintains the concept of integration, combining music, movement/dance, speech, and drama as natural extensions of each other. The process of integration complements the development of skills in each area, stimulates creative imagination, and offers an opportunity for individual strengths to be used and recognized. Integration of these areas results in a unique, elemental synthesis of the performing arts.
Performance
Though preparing music and movement material for presentation to an audience is not a primary focus of the Orff Schulwerk approach, the value of performance is recognized. As discussed above, the process of learning, developing, and creating material is foremost; however, the opportunity to refine and share this material can be highly motivating. It can also generate higher levels of skill development and lead to individual and group satisfaction and pride.