Kodaly’s love and appreciation of music for everyone was inspiring, as was his mission to preserve the songs of the people. He believed that music education could engage students on a spiritual, cultural, and emotional level. Choosing repertoire for your choir embodies this. It not only builds their music skills but also broadens their understanding of our country. In this session, you will discover beautiful unison and two-part choral repertoire by Australian composers that you can use with your upper primary choir (Years 4 – 6) on different occasions throughout the year. Some pieces can be learnt in a few rehearsals, while others will take time and develop their capacity. Let’s have fun singing through repertoire that will educate, inspire and engage!
Primary Lower
Advocacy in its simplest form is about speaking up. It is about making change and being an active participant in this change. As Music Educators, we all need to engage in advocacy for the children we teach to maintain and grow the opportunities they have to be music makers and music learners.
Deb & Debbie will share about the advocacy they have engaged in over the last few years including the very successful Music For Every Child Every Week campaign to reinstate music education in all state schools in Queensland; Together Sing and school based advocacy to raise the profile of First Nations histories and cultures within their schools. They will also discuss opportunities for you to advocate in your own context as well as on a wider scale. Together we are stronger. Deb & Debbie will share about some of their collaborations, the way they work together and with others and the importance of communication, collaboration and relationships.
This will not just be a lecture! You will participate in discussions and begin or build on your own planning for advocacy in your context. Being a change agent is exciting and rewarding and vital in our context of Music Education.
As music educators we can embrace a multimodal approach in the classroom. By prioritising play-based activities that incorporate movement and visuals in conjunction with the aural stimulus, we can maximise engagement and scaffold learning and assessment for all students.
Concepts such as beat and rhythm, high and low, quiet and loud, must first be experienced through movement. Children may unconsciously keep the beat and perform the rhythm as they move to music. They may show the pitch of a melody as they playfully enact a song’s text. Expressive devices arise innately in games and creative movement, giving meaning and purpose to the play.
Visual representation of concepts can deepen understanding. Children may use their bodies to physically represent the rhythm. They may incorporate props to isolate musical elements. Concepts can be further scaffolded through visual means, including manipulatives, flash cards and word walls, with many opportunities to practice concepts before assessing student learning.
This interactive workshop will focus on the prepare and practice stages of the Kodály-inspired teaching methodology, including student assessment. Ideas for classroom organisation and visual displays will also be shared. The resources and activities presented will be suitable for 5–8-year-olds.
An Experiential Practical Session.
The Kodaly philosophy is singing based yet few early childhood educators, teachers, and carers, who are with children throughout the day, feel confident with their singing voices. Most will not use the full range of the voice. Musically trained teachers benefit from music PLD sessions, but generalist ECE staff cannot easily change learned behaviours and assimilate new material effectively into classrooms. They use pre-recorded material and do not understand how to create effective goals, process, or reflect on their sounds or programs. Unintended mis-educative musical practice by generalist staff negates most of the good work music teachers do.
My PhD research looked at what happens, why and what can be done to create change. Musical process is understood in other areas of the curriculum but is mostly absent in music. The Contour Vocal Play Framework which complements the EYLF addresses this. Simple to implement, daily, you will be able to help the generalist teachers in your school support your sessions rather than undoing the good that you do. This process helps to simultaneously give vocal agency to ECEs, teachers, carers, and their children. Discover why the initial instruction is a counterintuitive: STOP SINGING SONGS! Where do we go from there?
In this interactive pedagogical workshop, Deb will take participants through a selection of brand new games/action sets written specifically for this conference, including some using repertoire by First Nations artists. Together, we’ll work through how teachers can use practical games and activities as part of a sequential, developmental music literacy program to empower upper primary/secondary students. Join Deb to ensure your students really know musical concepts and elements – and have the skills to go on teaching, learning and creating themselves – and while you’re at it, gain resources you can take straight from conference to classroom.
A Positive Start to Choral Singing: A Kodály Approach: Young Voices of Melbourne Training Choir, with representation from some of our youngest members
A demonstration rehearsal highlighting techniques for developing vocal, aural, reading and performance skills in a positive and engaging context. How to prepare performances whilst nurturing music learning
What is Inclusive Education and why is it important? What does inclusion look, sound and feel like in the Music room? This interactive session explores the barriers to accessing Music education faced by children with disabilities and those from diverse cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, and introduces the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework. UDL is a well-established approach to teaching that guides the development of programs, assessments and lessons that are accessible by all students, including those with disabilities. Through the lens of UDL we will explore practical steps we can take to craft an attitude, teaching space and program that makes Music accessible to all students regardless of their backgrounds and their physical, neurological, behavioural and social-emotional abilities. This session draws on the presenter’s experience teaching children with special needs alongside students without special needs at an Inclusive Education primary school.
Research: Music in education: Beliefs and Understandings of Primary School Teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand
- This research / paper session will include two papers in the one session
While many of the attendees at this conference will likely be music specialists, many schools across both New Zealand and Australia do not have access to specialised music staff. In these contexts, the teaching of music falls to the generalist classroom teacher. Research literature internationally indicates that where the teaching of music is the responsibility of the generalist primary school teacher, many teachers struggle. Certainly, music is not consistently taught in English-medium state and integrated primary schools across Aotearoa New Zealand. My doctoral research is investigating the beliefs and understandings that primary school teachers hold about music in education and how these impact their reported practice. This study seeks to investigate a) what primary school teachers believe about themselves as music makers and music teachers; b) how they understand music as a curriculum subject; c) the place of music within their own lives and d) how these things interact to influence their classroom practice in music. I have gathered the voices of those who consider themselves musicians and those who don’t; those who teach music in their classrooms and those who don’t. In this presentation, I will share the preliminary data analysis from interviews with generalist primary school teachers.
Music is one of the strongest tools we can use to develop language. This interactive workshop will provide you with lots of songs and activities that you can use to extend students’ vocabularies, develop an understanding of syllables and develop language structure. All activities are either suitable for, or can be adapted for, students who are neurodivergent or from ESL and low-socioeconomic backgrounds, including students who are non-speaking or use alternative/augmented forms of communication. There will also be opportunities within some of the activities to highlight rhythmic and melodic elements with your students. No student will be left out in your music classroom!
National survey results of music teachers’ perspectives who have completed Australian Kodaly Certificate courses
- This research / paper session will include two papers in the one session
Professional music teacher associations are increasingly left to fill the gaps created by the erosion of music teacher education in Australian universities. Despite these ongoing challenges in the tertiary sector, community-based organisations have increased their professional development support. This paper presents the national survey results and analysis of a larger mixed-methods funded research project that investigates the perspectives of music teachers’ who have completed levels of the Australian Kodály Certificate (AKC). The AKC is an internationally recognised professional development course which has been offered by Kodály Australia for the past 30 years. It is estimated that thousands of participants have completed courses across Australia and internationally. The online survey asked participants about their motivation to complete AKC courses, their learnings, impact on practice, and what university teacher education can learn from its success. It also incorporated a range of published quantitative measurement tools including self-efficacy, musical self-concept, and the PERMA profiler. The project uses a sequential exploratory research design where the results from the survey will be interrogated in follow-up interviews. The potential impact of professional music teacher associations is yet to be realised and this study generates new knowledge on the importance of local professional associations in supporting teachers.