Experience Combing Ward and Kodaly?
  • Jonathan_CulbreathJonathan_Culbreath
    Posts: 34
    In addition to my full-time job as the music director at my parish, I will be taking on a part-time position as music and choir teacher at the K-8 school next to my parish -- which is not currently a parochial school, but enjoys a close relationship with the parish and I believe the school administration desires to come under the parish again. Anyhow, I've expressed to the principal of the school my desire to teach real music literacy in the general music class, as well as my desire to start a choral program, with the eventual hope of having a group of choristers from the school sing together with my adult choir for weekly Sunday masses as well as solemnities. I'm thrilled to report that she's very on board with this plan, albeit my teaching time will probably be limited to 45 minutes a week with each grade, except only 30 for pre-K students. I am pushing for twice a week, 20-30 minutes each, with the very young children, but we'll see.

    But this is a very new thing for me. I have led an adult choir for some time now, with much success, and I have taught Latin and theology in school before, but never music yet. In the general music classes, I plan to rely a lot on the Kodaly method, but I also want to incorporate elements of the Ward method to ensure they become familiar with chant. I am curious whether anybody in this forum has experience combining Ward with Kodaly in this way? In terms melodic training and notation, it doesn't strike me that it should be very difficult to do, since both methods rely heavily on solfege; one need only impress on the students that music may be written on four or five lines, sometimes with square notes or sometimes with circles, but in both cases it is important to know where Do is on the staff, etc... It is where rhythm enters the picture that I have more questions. Kodaly emphasizes metrical rhythms right from the beginning, which will of course be necessary for choral music if they are to become choristers. But what are your experiences and perspectives for teaching both metrical music and Gregorian "free rhythm" (I dislike that term, but for lack of another phrase) simultaneously? Or do you teach them not simultaneously at all, but in a specific sequence? Do you expose them to free rhythm before metrical music, or vice versa? Can Ward and Kodaly be profitably combined and adapted to one another?

    And any other thoughts and experiences you may be moved to share!
    Thanked by 2m_r_taylor GregoryWeber
  • rvisser
    Posts: 93
    I use Ward method in my teaching (K-8 Catholic school, plus one high school class) and am finishing up my second year. I taught high school for two years previous, and incorporated some Ward in my teaching there. I am not trained in Kodaly, but am familiar with Kodaly's approach to solfege, and this was how I was taught music in elementary school.

    A few thoughts -
    - people have VERY strong opinions about Ward hand signals (measuring gesture) vs. Kodaly solfege hand signs...in my experience the Ward measuring gestures are immensely helpful because they show on the body the distance between pitches. Kodaly is a bit more abstract. I was initially very skeptical of switching from the Kodaly hand signs, but I am glad I did.

    - I was wary of the Ward rhythmic method last year and didn't fully start teaching it until this year. With my K-2 classes, I have just gotten to the part in Ward Book 1 where it translates la and long into quarter and half notes. The students have no difficulty understanding this, and I think they have a stronger rhythmic understanding because of it. I supplement with Ed Sueta's rhythm charts with all of my classes (especially in the older grades).

    - I am now of the opinion that introducing musical notation with a do clef is the most efficient and least confusing for young students. It takes the concept of musical notation and breaks it down into its absolute smallest part - one line and a do clef. My Kindergartners are now understanding how to notate 123 correctly on a staff, which I think will correct the problems I am seeing in the older grades (mostly, students writing notes on all the lines and skipping the spaces). I am teaching 5 line notation (with treble clef) to Grades 3-4 right now because they are playing recorders. For Grades 5 and up, they read standard 5 line notation but I do not work on note names (lack of time) and instead tell them where do is and have them figure out the solfege. My students don't seem fazed when I give them a staff with 2 lines, or 4 lines, or 5 lines.

    - Free rhythm is just groups of 2s and 3s...I do lots of the Ward rhythm gestures with younger students to help them find the pulse of the music. We practice this with metrical hymns (ex. I will find a hymn that is upbeat binary and we practice the rhythm gesture while singing). I teach free rhythm and metrical music simultaneously...it just depends on the liturgical season and what music I want them to learn. Ward method doesn't just enable students to learn chant. I find it works for metrical music as well.

    I taught youth choirs for many years before going through the Ward Level 1 training and teaching K-8 music. I am fascinated by how well this method works - the students are learning to sightread, their intonation has improved, and this is after only two years. They are receiving a solid musical foundation, and I can't wait to hear how these students sound five years from now. Fwiw, I see my Grade 1-8 classes twice a week for 45 minutes, Kindergarten is twice a week for 30 minutes, and high school is once a week for 90 minutes. The high schoolers do not make as much progress with the 90 minute block as my middle schoolers do with the two shorter classes.

    I wish you the best with you new teaching responsibilities!
    Thanked by 6Jonathan_Culbreath SMays m_r_taylor Jeffrey Quick Bri GregoryWeber
  • Bri
    Posts: 145
    A little bit about my background - I completed Orff Level 1, Kodaly Level I, and Ward Level 1 (in that order). I currently teach a youth choir (ages 4-8) in a parish setting. We meet once per week for 45 minutes. The choir is more of a class to prepare students for the elementary choir, although the choir does join the elementary choir 3-4 times per year to sing (e.g., the Jubilate Deo Mass; 1-2 hymns) at Mass.

    I primarily use the lessons from the Ward book, but I do incorporate some Orff and Kodaly elements as well.

    I use the Kodaly/Curwen hand signs for a few reasons: (a) I am just more familiar with them, (b) students are familiar with them from their regular schools or homeschoo co-ops, and (c) when singing actual music (not just the exercises), there is a need to go outside of the one octave range that the Ward signs cover. I did my training through CUA, and the instructors there seemed very flexible about which hand signs to use, so I just went with what I and the students were already comfortable with.

    That being said, I think there is real pedagogical value (especially at younger ages) to the Ward signs, so I might experiment with using those next year.

    I supplement the rhythm exercises in Ward with some rhythm activities I learned from my Orff training (e.g., using words to for rhythms; in this case, I use words that are derived from the note names such as "quart" (1 beat), "half-note" (2 beats), "half-note-dot" (3 beats), and "whole-note-hold-it" (4 beats)). We do some "translation" activities to move back and forth between the Ward and the Orff approaches for this.

    A teacher with early childhood music teaching expertise recently recommended that I look at the John Feierabend's First Steps in Music resources (which are Kodaly-based) since I have young students, so I have started to utilize some of his materials as well. I found his "pitch exploration" activities to be especially helpful, particularly for those children who were having trouble finding their head voice.

    One thing that I actually really love about Kodaly is that it avoids half-steps for quite some time. I would love to adapt Ward so that it utilizes only whole steps (or larger) in the beginning -- but, frankly, I just haven't made the time for a project like this. (I am taking a class called "Children's Choir Essentials" this summer, and the final project is to adapt a currently existing resource for our context, so I'm thinking this might be the motivation I need to work on something like this.)

    Overall, though, I do think that Ward is just a fabulous resource! In addition to the focus on Catholic texts and music, I think one of the great practical benefits of Ward is that everything you need (and, frankly, more than I can use in my current situation) is all planned out. With Kodaly and Orff, you need to design more from scratch, which is a challenge for busy teachers!

    @Jonathan_Culbreath, have you taken a Ward class?

    If you are looking for a class, CUA has one in June (but, sadly, it is at the same time as the Colloquium), and "Teaching Gregorian Chant to Children" at St. Patrick Seminary's Catholic Institute of Sacred Music is based on Ward as well (although registrations are now closed, I believe).

    https://music.catholic.edu/faculty-and-research/areas-of-research/ward-method-studies/index.html

    https://catholicinstituteofsacredmusic.org/summer-courses/

    Also, I'm happy to share resources that I have. Feel free to PM me if you'd like me to send these to you.
    Thanked by 4GregoryWeber Jonathan_Culbreath rvisser CHGiffen
  • HildegardeVonBingen
    Posts: 19
    Personally, I use Kodaly gestures with the Ward measuring. So Do is the fist on the bellybutton, Re is a slanted hand over the chest, Mi a flat hand on the chin, etc... My kindergarteners sometimes struggle to move their hands fast enough, but for older kids it doesn't seem to be an issue.

    Last summer, when I took the Ward class at CISM, I asked Dr. Jenny Donelson about the Kodaly/Ward thing. I also was coming into a school where they had no previous training in Ward so I'd essentially be starting from scratch with every grade, K-4. She just said, "I think you should use whatever method you think you would teach best." You sound experienced. Trust your experience. I firmly believe that methods are methods; literacy is achieved by internalizing musical concepts via whatever method adequately teaches them. Take solfege; I know instrumentalists who learned to sight-sing as adults and still use the fingerings from whatever instrument they learned in middle school, while I grew up in children's choir and just need to know where Do is in order for the page to sing itself in my brain. Same outcome, different methods.

    I do love using Kodaly to prep rhythmic concepts. We do iconic beat placement through 2nd grade whenever I'm introducing new rhythms. However, I think Kodaly-trained teachers (at least the ones I know) become overly pedantic when it comes to these things. Children learn things via rote repetition fairly easily and don't seem to be any less enthused by my saying "this is ta and this is ti-ti" than if I spent 8 weeks saying "I WONDER what this NEW RHYTHM is?????"
    Thanked by 4Jonathan_Culbreath Bri rvisser CHGiffen
  • Jonathan_CulbreathJonathan_Culbreath
    Posts: 34
    Thanks all three of you for these answers, this is very helpful. (And more input from anybody is still very welcome!)

    @Bri, I have not taken a Ward course, nor a Kodaly course, due to my own family commitments which make it difficult to travel anywhere. I'm hoping to take Dr. Donelson-Nowicka's course at CISM next summer, if possible. But I have done a lot of reading and continue to do as much as possible. I also have several of Feierabend's books and have started using them with my own kids at home, and it's been wonderfully rewarding already.
    Thanked by 1Bri
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