Morph With Orff- Joy Reeve

Our second workshop of the year, Morph With Orff: Developing Music Fundamentals with Creation, was presented by the very exuberant and engaging Joy Reeve.

Participants worked through the creative process using Orff media, movement exploration and melodic and harmonic composition. It was a workshop full of so many layers, variations and extensions that could be used with classes from Grade 1 through 6.

We started our the morning with a few activities focusing on beat keeping, partnering, and imitation and echo using the songs "Acka Backa" and "Copy-Cat". These activities demonstrated positive social skills with partners, allowing students to work cooperatively to keep a beat and also allowing them the opportunity to be leaders and copy-cats.

Participants then had the chance to work through "Emperor Napoleon", an activity that focused on rhythm, word elimination, body percussion and "internal audition". Joy lead our participants through performing the song with BP, eliminating the words while using BP and finally transferring the BP to NPP instruments.

The next activity that Joy taught used a call and response chant ("Fill It In") that could be altered depending on the needs of the class. Joy provided development ideas for beat keeping, echoing, imitation, improvisation and pitch/melodic exploration-- all using one song! Amazing!

Our next activity had our participants keeping the beat in their feet and throwing out some great dance moves. "Here's The Beat" was fun activity that could be used as a rhythm assessment or an improvisation activity using sequences of moves involving direction, levels and taking turns.

Joy also led our participants through several other activities (suitable for Division 2 students) focusing on ostinatos, rhythm composition (using a grocery list!) and rondo form. "The Staff Song" was an activity that could be used to support treble clef staff knowledge and the relationship between pitch, absolute note names and solfege. 

The last two activities "Pachebel's Canon" and "Step-Wise Up" both focused on melody and harmony. Participants learned that by using one song, students could create final compositions that involved sequence patterns, echo, question/answer and melodies/harmonies.

It was a day packed full of so much knowledgable, fun and creative ideas from Joy!