Musical Signals (Vocal Instruction Cues)

Yesterday in Elementary Pedagogy Cyrilla Roswell, an amazing Kodaly teacher from the UK taught her first mock lesson for us (check our her book series here. It is like GAME PLAN but Kodaly based). She used a really great tool for giving instructions that I will definitely be implementing into my classroom in the fall.  Musical signals were given as instructions and she can sing quite a long melody (on a neutral syllable) to her students and they know EXACTLY what to do.  It blows my mind.

I plan on starting this by singing the actual words, and slowing moving to a neutral syllable as they get used to them.  It also will help later with intervals and patterns because some will be recognized right away.   All of the signals are below.

s-d' ~ Stand up

s-d ~ Sit down

s-f-m-r-d ~ Come and sit by me

s-s-m-l-s-m ~ Find yourself a partner

d-r-m-f-s-s ~ Come and make a circle

d-m-s-d' ~ Find your own space


A longer post to come this weekend on more specifics of fun games and such that I have learned so far in Elementary Ped.  from both the teachers, Bori and Cyrilla, as well other other classmates.


NOTE:  In the picture of the African song in the last post (here) there was some incorrect solfegge.  What I typed works, but when we sang the song again in class today I realized there were a few mistakes.  Check it out again and be sure to catch the corrections at the bottom.  I was unable to change the picture at this time, but have given the word and new solfa below the picture.