Music,+Drama+and+Movement

I recently had the opportunity to take a master's class from Barry Oreck through the State University of New York

Taken from the amazing Barry Oreck's webpage:

Favorite Lines: When using a song with lyrics, ask students to look at the lyrics and see if there is a line in the song they particularly like. Ask students to share and discuss those lines. After everyone has shared their favorite lines, sing the song again, asking students to remember the feelings different people have expressed about particular lines. Ask them to try to feel the word and convey the meaning as they are singing. This type of exploration of a song and its lyrics encourages awareness of self; lack of fear of selfexpression; reaching places in selves that have not been touched; a sense of music and lyric working together and affecting one’s emotions and understanding.

Creating New Verses for Existing Songs: Branice McKenzie advises, “When using an academic topic as source material for song writing, present and study the material (text, film, etc.) first; don’t tell the students that they will be creating verses from their reading. Reading the material to come up with verses is not the point. The point is to go back into what they’ve already learned and use the song to understand it more fully.” (For example, students who worked with Ms. McKenzie to create new verses to the song “Freedom’s Coming” had been studying the Underground Railroad for some time before Ms. McKenzie began working with the class. Ms. McKenzie says, “They had that information and could call on it when I said, ‘Let’s just write some verses.’ Some students might appear not to remember a great deal from the chapter on the Underground Railroad. But this might be when they learn it. They start singing verses and then someone says, ‘Let’s talk about how it’s not a railroad.’ So then they sing a verse about that and for the first time they learn and remember that particular aspect of the story. There’s a whole other learning that takes place.”) Use music you like and with which you are familiar when applying this in the classroom. Find out what students like and ask them to bring recordings for class listening. Use music from a particular period when studying that era in history. Take care when introducing music from a particular culture. You don’t want to be disrespectful of the music of a culture, taking a melody or song out of context and just writing up lyrics to it. Listen to music from different cultures to gain understanding of those cultures. You’re not teaching the culture, you are experiencing the music of a culture along with your students, perhaps while looking at pictures or slides of the country and its people. Give credit for the music you use. If you play “All Blues,” for example, you should say, “All Blues” written by Miles Davis.