First Steps in Music and Conversational Solfege

For the past 3 years, I have been using two method books as the primary resource for my classes.  For all grades, I use a method called "First steps in Early Childhood" and in 2nd-5th grade I use a method called Conversational Solfege.  Both of these method books are written by Dr. John Feierabend.  First Steps is primarily for Kindergarten and 1st grade students - teaching accurate singing and steady beat.  I use this in all of my classes to give them a foundation.  After we have built the foundation, I will only use this method in Kindergarten and 1st Grade.  I use Conversational Solfege to teach my students how to listen for, read and write rhythm.  I have to admit though, that I always start well but I have never even finished unit 1!  I am determined this year to be successful at comleting unit 1!  Then I will be able to set my goals for next year...teaching units 1 and 2 hopefully.

First Steps in Music is a method that teaches young children to sing in tune and to keep a steady beat.  It is an 8 step method...vocal warm-up, echo singing, singing simple songs, arioso (creating), movement warm-up, movement for form and expression (purposeful movement), beat motion, and songtales.  Each lesson contains all 8 parts.  What I like most about this method is that even though it is mostly for young singers, you can apply any of the activities to any age and it is still appropriate.  I use the vocal section of the book for all of my classes K-5th grade.  I also like the "whole-song" approach to teaching kids songs. 

Conversational Solfege is a method of teaching music modeled after how one learns language.  First you hear language, then you begin to speak words.  Then after you have been speaking for a while, you learn to read those words.  And then finally you learn to write.  In Conversational Solfege, students hear rhythms using rhythm syllables, they echo these patterns, then they have to learn to "decode" (hear a pattern and then say it back using rhythm syllables).  Once they have mastered the speaking part, then they learn to read the rhythm patterns.  And then finally, they learn to write them.  I highly recommend this method.  Even though I have never finished, my students really like it and they are fairly successful with it.

The hardest part I think is learning how to decode a rhythm.  My students in grades 2-5 have been working on decoding for about 6 weeks now, and when I did individual assessments during the last class, I noticed that only about half of them were able to say the rhythms correctly, and half of those took more than one try.  I am hoping that the more I teach this method, the easier it will be.