It’s the start of the year! You can’t wait to pull out instruments!
You question whether or not to bring out the big instruments…maybe work up to them.
Starting the year slowly and surely by introducing unpitched percussion (UPP) can be a great way to ease into your classroom.
Percussive Play, by Roger Sams and Michael Vasquez is a supplemental resource that includes ten brimming lessons using only unpitched percussion instruments. They focus on rhythmic skill development and can be easily adaptable to a wide range of grade levels.
The authors purposefully used no barred percussion instruments, so this book will be particularly appealing if you are interested in embracing the Orff Schulwerk process but you do not have barred percussion instruments in your classroom.
What do I mean by brimming lessons? Well, Percussive Play offers layers upon layers of possibilities within each lesson. And because of these multiple layers (pathways), you can teach a lesson over multiple class periods, allowing the instruction to unfold over time.
It includes opportunities for:
Movement
Improvisation
Composition
Partwork
Literacy
simple and compound meters.
I have really appreciated the electronic visuals that are available for Microsoft® PowerPoint®, SMART Notebook™, and Promethean ActivInspire.
Check out a lesson from Percussive Play here:
