Online Workshops
Teaching With Orff has partnered with some amazing educators to bring you online workshops that are designed to provide new ideas for lessons and enhance your teaching.
We invite you to explore our offerings below. Registration for live webinars includes access to the recording and materials. If you missed a live workshop, recordings and downloadable materials from past webinars are also available for purchase.
Thank you so much for offering these workshops – they’ve been absolutely fantastic, and it’s nice to be able to attend these workshops and get professional development while staying socially distant.
Alison, Music Educator
If you are trying to access a recording you have previously purchased, please click here to login to your online course library.
Upcoming Live Webinars
December 7, 2021
Dr. Ware will discuss all aspects of working with students will special needs from decoding an Individualized Education Plan through working with (and without) teacher assistants. Examples of active music making with be shared and discussed. We will discuss adaptations and modifications including adaptive communication devices and adapted music making equipment.
Past Workshop Recordings
The 2021-2022 school year has teachers all over the world facing staggering challenges. After a year and a half of enormous stress and global trauma, teachers and students find themselves struggling to find their way back to stability in the classroom. In this webinar, Crystal Pridmore offers insight towards framing the way we think about the mindset children come to school with from a brain-science perspective. Once we explore the way trauma affects the brain and behavioral patterns, we can come up with strategies to manage the behavior and manage ourselves as teachers.
Jeshima will provide support for you to successfully facilitate a community drum circle in your classroom. You will experience using nature as the impetus to create rhythmic building blocks for improvising on a percussion instrument. Jeshima will share drum circle activities that are scaffolded for various ability levels and provide time for you to experience each one in a safe environment. In addition, they will share peer-reviewed research supporting the need for community drum circles in schools and how it will benefit your students and communities.
Music Educators are busy people. Music classrooms and learning spaces are busy places. When busy people are in busy places the environment can get out of hand causing undue stress for everyone. We will learn ways to manage and organize our learning spaces to minimize opportunities for disruption and streamline routine tasks freeing up your time to focus on your musicians in class and your life outside of work.
Children’s books can be the perfect launchpad for a lesson, unit, or performance in your music class. Join the Chaotic Harmony podcast team members – Marc Keehmer, Crystal Pridmore, and Jonathan Seligman – as they share lessons they’ve developed from their favorite children’s books. These lessons are applicable online, in person, or hybrid. Participants will walk away with three ready-to-use lesson plans from the given books and tools for selecting an appropriate book for the music room.
Ritmo, Tierra, y Cajón, is a unique opportunity to learn traditional rhythms and techniques of the Afro Peruvian cajón while exploring ways to integrate them into our music classroom practices. Participants are guided by experienced cajón player and trained Orff Schulwerk educator, Sebastian Guerrero. Sebastian will share his intimate knowledge of the zapateo (tap dance) tradition and delve into how the cajon is an extension of that form of movement. He will offer practical applications and lots of inspiring ideas to get you and your students excited about the magical box drum from Perú!
In this workshop teachers will learn how to embed social and emotional learning into their instruction through musical activities that affirm the brilliance of our students. Come and learn creative teaching strategies and lessons that use the Orff process while promoting the five core components of Social Emotional Learning (CASEL): self awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, relationship skills and social awareness. Teachers will learn a new dance, songs, book recommendations, and a rhythm stick routine. Finish the school year strong with meaningful lessons that teach so much more than MUSIC.
Welcome the spring as we use children’s literature to inspire and invigorate your music class. Whether you are teaching in-person, virtually, or hybrid, Shoshanah will share ideas you can use by taking elemental music ideas such as using rhythmic building bricks, elemental forms, improvisation, rhythmic movement, and more to enhance stories and engage students.
Música es Vida! From education to social gatherings to celebrations, music and dance play an active role in the Dominican Republic. Whatever the current “new normal” may be, students still depend on their teachers to create conditions to engage in joyful learning experiences. This session seeks to provide music teachers with brief, engaging activities you can adapt in your music classroom, virtually or in-person. Bring your WEPA and get caught up in the rhythms, melodies, and flavor of the rich and diverse island of the Dominican Republic.
Technology has become a necessity in our classrooms. Despite the bewildering array of apps available to us, all that may be required are just one or two purposefully selected apps to create engaging lessons for joyful music making, to stay connected with our students and to maintain our relationships with them. Students can continue to explore, create, improvise, compose and collaborate while staying connected through digital devices.
In this webinar, Kate Bright and and Manju Durairaj demonstrate a few applications for engaging music making for teaching in a pandemic, be it remote, in- person or hybrid. They showcase various lessons and activities that they are using in their programs to continue process teaching in these difficult times.
Brent Geyer and BethAnn Hepburn will explore engaging lessons for elemental music-making with a new virtual blues scale xylophone created by Brent. We will keep the rhythm swinging with improvisation using the book, Rap a Tap Tap, by Leo and Diane Dillon. Each lesson will explore how rhymes can be used as the inspiration for melodic and rhythmic compositions and improvisation suitable for grades 1-5.
Connect your students’ home and school musical traditions and encourage family involvement by conducting a folk song collection in your own music classroom!
Christa Jones shares her experience with conducting a school-wide folk song collection and creating a school songbook that celebrates her students’ various backgrounds and musical traditions. Students and music educators alike benefit from a culturally responsive classroom environment that affirms students’ backgrounds and links students’ home and school communities. Learn how to conduct a song collection at your own school, explore issues of cultural responsiveness, and discuss how to respectfully integrate music of student cultures into the Orff Schulwerk music classroom.
No singing, no shared instruments, no teaching in the music classroom.
Do you find yourself frustrated by the negatives of teaching music in a pandemic? Are you struggling to fulfill state and national standards without singing or playing instruments? Are you exhausted and looking for new ideas?
Dr. Phil Wilson and Dr. Rob Lyda developed standards-based lessons that have worked in their classrooms and kept students safe during COVID-19. They will share ideas that are both low and high tech and can be accomplished in a variety of instructional situations. Join us as we explore teaching music during a world of COVID “NOs”.
In addition to the materials, all registrants will be provided access to a recording of the workshop so that you can watch live or as your schedule allows.
This workshop will explore ways to utilize storytelling with musical elements to support learning in the music classroom and in the general elementary music classroom. In this lively webinar, you’ll experience the joy of storytelling first hand as Jocelyn & Robert Dabney and Roger Sams share stories from diverse cultures with musical elements embedded in them and coach you on the basic principles of storytelling.
In addition to the materials, all registrants will be provided access to a recording of the workshop so that you can watch live or as your schedule allows.
This series focuses on culturally responsive teaching, multiculturalism and social justice education in the general music classroom. Students can collaborate and create together, using protocols defined for culturally responsive classrooms. Through movement, body percussion, songs, chants, and games, Manju models culturally responsive teaching as best practice, especially in virtual, in-person, or hybrid teaching situations.
In addition to the materials, all registrants will be provided access to a recording of the workshop so that you can watch live or as your schedule allows.
Every year in his classroom Franklin Willis looked forward to producing a Black History Month Program that highlighted music, poetry, art, books, and culture of African Americans. In this session he will share some of those classroom activities and ideas to encourage you to teach the rich cultural heritage of African Americans. Music teachers will leave this session with an enlightened perspective on how to plan, produce, and perform a Black History Month Program.
In addition to the materials, all registrants will be provided access to a recording of the workshop so that you can watch live or as your schedule allows.
This timely, pre-recorded webinar features Kanisha Howard, Roger Sams, Gerard Stokes, and David Thaxton. Includes right-now lessons for supporting teachers and students in musical co-creation within a diversity of settings. Together we use the folk song Michael Finnegan as a springboard for music and movement learning activities that explore possibilities for active music making and creating today.
Educators will learn how to use Rap and Hip-Hop techniques to facilitate a positive classroom culture and empower youth to express themselves through Hip-Hop in a respectful and culturally appropriate way. Participants will experience four ready-to-use lessons with customizable Google Slides and resources that can be used for online, hybrid or in person learning.
During this season of love and gratitude, we are so excited for this online workshop with Bev Willms Best and Roger Sams. They are including oodles of materials so that you’ll have everything you need to teach beautiful lessons for the next few weeks!
Bev’s original songs are based on three picture books that explore themes of love and gratitude. Her corresponding activities include art, movement, chanting, and percussion that all lend themselves to learning in person and online. She and Roger also discuss ways to support social emotional learning whether you’re in person or teaching from afar.
Roger Sams shares tried and true picture books that enhance music and movement learning and create a playful environment in your classroom, be it socially distanced in person or remote. He models lessons that include singing, chanting, movement accompanied by piano, rhythmic activities, and basic music literacy. Detailed lesson plans are included as well as ideas for how to modify the activities for diverse learning situations and contemporary challenges.
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