Reflections on Kodaly Level One

This summer I had the opportunity to take Kodaly Level One through my local university. I had taken Orff Level One last summer (read about my experiences in my blog post here) as the start of my post baccalaureate diploma, and I had originally intended this Kodaly course to be my last course. I still have a couple classes to finish up this fall, but I thought I would share my reflections on Kodaly Level One to help anyone who may be interested in taking the course.

As I shared in my Orff post, my university education was based entirely on instrumental middle and senior years teaching, so I had little experience in elementary pedagogy despite teaching elementary music in every job of my teaching career so far! I enjoyed Orff so much that I thought Kodaly would be another great step to fill out that missing educational background.

A walkthrough of my days:

I found it interesting that I had heard many people say Kodaly Level One was more intense than Orff Level One, as I didn’t find this to be the case at all. Maybe the one point where this was the case was the scheduling – Kodaly has a higher hour requirement than Orff, so we had to do a few hours of before course assignments, stay late one evening to create materials to take back to our classrooms, and our lunch was only one hour every day instead of our two hour lunch we had during Orff (although there were no assessments to be done during that lunch period). Our morning started with a short session with the level 2 students, before breaking off into our main Pedagogy and Materials class for the rest of the morning. After lunch we attended Musicianship, Conducting, and Ensemble classes to round out the afternoon.

My biggest takeaways:

I will say overall I felt this course will change my teaching much less than taking Orff did (more on this later), but one big takeaway I did have is that it’s okay for kids to do songs without understanding all the concepts in a song. The Prepare – Present – Practice model of Kodaly teaching has made me think about spending much more time in the prepare stage and then bringing back those songs later in the practice stage once the concept has been named. Kids love coming back to old songs and I think this really plays into the natural way children learn as well as being an educational experience for them.

Would I recommend this course to someone?

If you are in a similar situation to me where you are teaching elementary music without a formal education in elementary pedagogy, I think this course can be a great tool in the toolkit, although I would recommend Orff over Kodaly (again, more on that later)

What would I say to someone else before they take this course?

It’s funny looking back on my reflections on Orff Level One, because my recommendations would be exactly the same as I made for that course!

3. There is a good amount of partner and group work, so spend the first couple days getting to know people and finding people who’s teaching style will mesh with yours for group projects

2. Brush up on your singing skills as much as possible before coming in – solfege in all forms, singing the different pentatonic scales, Curwen hand signs, sight singing, etc. As someone who comes from an instrumental background my singing is a weak spot, and Musicianship was definitely the hardest part of this course for that reason! You may also want to practice finding different pitches starting with an A from a tuning fork, which is a weird “Kodaly-ism” that I had never experienced before but was very pervasive throughout the two weeks.

1. If possible, take this course after having already taught for a few years. It provides so much more context and makes the abstract more concrete. You’ll also be able to more easily move from the somewhat contrived and “fake” teaching of your adult musician peers in Kodaly class to teaching the same concepts in an actual classroom.

Orff vs Kodaly – which one to do?

I’ll start off by saying I think this is something that will differ from teacher to teacher and everyone’s natural teaching style will fall somewhere different. It’s also not a spectrum with Orff and Kodaly and opposite ends – most people who take both then use aspects of both in a blended way! However, I would say I felt taking Orff Level One changed my teaching much more and was much more helpful to me as an elementary music educator. Kodaly was too narrowly focused on singing for my teaching style, where Orff’s larger approach with instruments and movement being more central fits what I like to do in my classroom better. Also, despite Orff being a whole lot more work, it was a whole lot more fun to take as a student! Overall, I am happy I was able to take it as part of my post bacc studies, but I probably would have been disappointed if I was just taking it as PD on its own.