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Jun 20, 2019
2 min

The Lion Sleeps Tonight: A Scarf Dance

In one of my previous posts about neuropsychology, I mentioned attending a workshop with the wonderful Robyn Stavely in which she demonstrated the power of teaching through non-verbal gesture by teaching us a whole dance without speaking a word. The dance involved the use of dancing scarves , which were manipulated in a variety of ways to show phrasing, dynamic variation, form and beat and was set to this interpretation of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" The actions were as follows

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Jenny Ferris

Apr 9, 2019
2 min

Cuckoo

Today I'd like to talk about one of my favourite lessons I use with my Year 1 students who have got their heads around so & mi and are working towards discovering both saa (crotchet rest) and la. One thing I love about the Kodaly methodology is the way it makes me look for connections between different activities in order to create a smooth transition, thus keeping my kids focused. This pair of activities has a bunch of natural connections, both melodic and thematic, so they

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The Nutcracker - a Christmas Listening Lesson

Jenny Ferris

Dec 8, 2018
3 min

The Nutcracker - a Christmas Listening Lesson

I'm sure you're familiar with the feeling - Christmas is fast approaching, which means school holidays are just around the corner. And, despite the fact that the kids can sense this too and they (as well as you, let's be honest) have mentally packed up for the year, you're all still stuck at school together for a few more weeks. I love this time because it means that all the assessments and report-writing is over but we still have some time together to make music and have fun

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Jenny Ferris

Feb 18, 2018
3 min

Where's Joseph? He's HAYDN! Surprise!

I'm sure many of you are familiar with Haydn's Symphony No. 94, the "Surprise Symphony" - especially the 2nd movement. If you're not, indulge yourself for a few moments and check it out below: Now that you've calmed yourself down from the heart attack that would have occured around 34 seconds in, you might be thinking (much as I did) "wow, what a great piece of music to analyse with my kids" and you'd be right! This piece is great for looking at form (both the overall form of

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Jenny Ferris

Jan 26, 2018
3 min

Froggy Went A Courtin'

The school I was working in last year was new to the Kodaly approach and had suffered lots of disruptions to their music program in the few years before I started working there, so some of the older students were at times a little difficult to get on side. The idea that I wanted them to sing, and not only sing but sing IN FRONT OF PEOPLE took a bit of getting used to. So too did the idea of folk dances. Eventually they came round and discovered that they can actually be real

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