Are you ready for your kids to have an Orff experience and play instruments but don’t know where to begin? Learn techniques that give kids instant success playing barred instruments in your music classroom.
Using clear terminology and introducing techniques as you play, students will be creating and improvising almost immediately.
The Playlist
How to Play Barred Instruments
How to Teach With Barred Instruments-Day 1
The below video details techniques I found worked very well in my teaching. You may find tips that you can apply or modify for your students.
Fun & Simple Barred Instrument Exercise
Mr. Trevino posted this video and it’s a GREAT example of creating playing opportunities that aren’t songs.
Objectives here would be:
- Understanding scales
- Correctly echoing rhythm patterns
- Mallet technique (alternating hands)
How to play: Mr. Trevino speaks the rhythm pattern on C and students echo play it. C-CCCCC- Then he moves on to D, etc.
Extension: This would make a GREAT center! In groups of 4 for example, one student is the teacher calling out the letters and patterns and the other 3 play. Rotate who is the teacher.
Check It Out!
🎯 This easy-to-use digital tool lets you design and download barred instrument visuals for your elementary music classroom. FREE!
Steps to Playing Barred Instruments
Below are the points I made in the video. The video is great to see it in action.
Getting Started
- I turn my instrument so that my low end and their low end are the same direction in the room.
- I use room references (window wall, door wall) instead of left and right.
- Echo speak in 4-beat phrases.
- Explore the low and high sides of the instrument.
- Use terms such as long/low/big and short/high/little
- Use the note name C and also introduce the octave C in the middle
- Use one hand or both hands randomly. Let students do what is natural for them.
- Begin to combine echo patterns that use both high/low/middle references.
Stepwise Movement Using Letter Names
- Reminders not to PLAY on the letter names if they are located on the end of the bar.
- Give them PRACTICE TIME.
Essential Agreements for Barred Instruments
An essential agreement in my room was to Sing, Play, and Speak Beautifully. For students who want to purposefully make noise (smack, hit, overly loud), reminders of this agreement should take care of it. Some kids have motor control issues and this is NOT for them. They are trying! Give them a mallet that creates less sound.
Playing Techniques on Barred Instruments
- Not a baseball wind-up but a good basketball dribble bounce.
- A nice low bounce that lets the bar ring.
- Wrap your fingers gently around the handles. Pointer/index finger should not be straight but curved too.
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Let’s Play Rhymes
Choose any short poem or rhyme. Starting on low C, play the rhythm stepwise up and down the instrument. Use one hand at a time (just right then just left), then try with two, alternating hands.
- Play in different directions.
- Play in pentatonic
- Improvise or take time for them to create a way to play.
- Easy to switch partners if you don’t have a 1-to-1 instrument situation
Create Form & Arrangements on the Barred Instruments
Form: woods, metals, tutti or soprano, alto, tutti or solo, tutti, solo, tutti (for example)
Do a Round Robin
Every student improvises, one after the other. T can play a broken bordun to accompany.
Orff Resources
AOSA (American Orff Schulwerk Association)
AOSA offers Levels (summertime PD) as well as regional weekend workshops. The workshops are a fabulous way to get introduced to all things Orff approach as well as get new ideas for those who are already familiar with Orff Schulwerk.
Orff Arrangements Ready to Teach
Here are a couple of my TPT best-selling Orff multi-lesson resources that are ready to teach and guide you through the process.
Final Thoughts
Lots of my blog posts, videos, and resources come directly from interaction with teachers like YOU!
Ask a question, leave a comment, share a tip in the comments below!
❤️ It helps all of us in the music teaching community!
I’d love to hear how you can make this happen in a situation where your teaching window for the entire period is 20-22 minutes. I have K-3rd grade for 30 minutes with no transition time therefore transition to and from has to be built into that 30 minute window (I have to walk them to their next destination and meet them coming from another place and walk them to my room). Do you have any suggestions on making activities meaningful when your time is so short and singing needs to be included in that instructional time as well.
Thanks.
Great question! I have two suggestions, Lisa.
Suggestion #1: have ALL back-to-back classes play instruments for a day or week so that you can set up the instruments and leave them up. I’d set up the instruments in the back half or 2/3rds of the room. Then you have 2 options. Option 1: As they enter, they need to stay in their single-file line and you walk them behind the instruments, assigning students in that line order to an instrument. No mallets are at the instruments and Ss have been told to not touch, put hands on head, behind back, whatever. You teach them for 15 minutes or so then reverse that line order and out the room they go. Option 2: If you know they can’t handle sitting so close to the instrument, you gather them around you at the *front of the room similar to if you’re going to read them a book. You set up the instrument lesson fully with them sitting there and then assign them an instrument and let them play.
Suggestion #2: If in that block of back to back classes, you want some to play and some not to play, the players can do option 1 or 2 above. For those who are not going to play, they still have the front half or third of the room and you can still sing, do body percussion, read a book, have a video activity, etc. The instrument setup means they can’t do movement that day but it is what it is.
*My set up was a U-shape with all the bass and alto xylophones. Then inside of the U were rows of soprano xylophones. That was the back 2/3rds of the room. If I wanted students to sit in the front, as they walked in, I stood in the middle of the room at the top of the U and asked them to sit in front of me. That meant their backs were to the screen at the front of the room and they were facing me and the instruments. This worked for Option 2 above where I set up the lesson first.
If I need to add a diagram or explain further, please let me know!
Such a long answer I gave and didn’t completely answer your question! My answer to making activities meaningful if to save time by having the instruments set up and leaving them up. Also, breaking a 30 minute lesson into 2 15-minute lessons is still meaningful. I think you can get a lot done in 12-15 minutes, especially if you use a mini-unit approach where they play every time they come to music for a couple of weeks. To add singing, you can have students play a simple bordun at the end of your instrumental lesson and sing a simple song like 1-2 Tie My Shoe, Starlight Starbright, etc. Or you play the bordun and they sing.