Foreword Introduction To the Music Teacher Contents Reviews The Author

Doug Goodkin's, A Rhyme in Time, with Orff-Schulwerk extensions, sails on welcome wings to both classroom and music teacher's libraries, blurring the curriculum lines, and treating language, music, and movement as "fingers on the same hand." This uncom-monly pragmatic collection, insouciant in spirit and wise in direction, suggests clever and developmentally sound ways to extend a host of musical experiences rhythmically, tonal-ly, and in movement; yet always includes the invitation to the student and teacher to shape the process. This trusting and respectful way of offering materials, i.e. as uncompleted tasks which can travel in many directions, engenders great motivation to explore the ideas abundant in this book, and is wholly in keeping with the philosophy found in the Orff-Schulwerk approach. Organized in a visually logical format, succinct and clear, A Rhyme in Time uses both familiar and lesser known rhymes from diverse cultures as "starting points." The attention in particular to the English strand of rhymes, will most certainly resuscitate interest in using these delightful, musically useful, and ageless departures. That the activities at times demand more advanced musical skills and coordination, illustrates how easily Orff-Schulwerk techniques can adapt to all ages and abilities. Finally, there is a bonus to the alert reader, found in choice excerpts from the literati, and in the droll asides of this witty, articulate, and thinking musician/music educator, Doug Goodkin. Judith Thomas, 1997

This little piggy went to market... Remember those fingers pinching your toes, the tingling in your body as you anticipated the exciting Weeee-weee-weee as the last pig ran home? Probably none of us ever thought about the strangeness of a pig eating roast beef or wondered why that last pig ran home. We were in a world of enchantment, soothed and stimulated by the musical voice of our mother and the warmth of her touch. Without knowing it, we were being taught that language was more than the practical "hot," the scientific "flower," the moral "No!"- it was a world of pure play and delight. Because we were held and touched, bounced and moved as we soaked up the sounds of rhymed speech, we would later be touched by the elegance of a finely spun poem or moved by a well-turned phrase. I wanted to write poetry in the beginning because I had fallen in love with words. The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone. What the words stood joi; symbolized, or meant was of very secondary importance. What mattered was the sound of them... I cared for the shapes of sound that their names made in my ears... for the colors the words cast on my eyes. - Dylan Thomas Those experiences in language are the beginning of our journey into literacy. They also set us on the road towards music. The poet, songwriter, orator and musician alike learn their first lessons from two moth-ers-their own and, in the English-speaking world, Mother Goose. How can we move from the mother's knee to our alma mater and stay connected with our Mother Goose origins? How do rhythmic rhymes nurture both literacy and musicality? This book hopes to explore these questions, give some hints as to how "Dickery, dickery, dare" can lead to Dickens, "Baa baa black sheep" to Bach.

The activities offered here use language as a means of musical development. They were inspired by the practice of Orff-Schulwerk and are based on Carl Orff's perception that speech is a natural way to enter music for the young child. Rhymes and poems build a foundation for rhythm, phrase, and form from which an understanding of the more abstract aspects of music may be built. What is the connection between music and language? The most important link is simply that they both enter through the ear. As such, attention to nuance of rhythm, pitch, timbre and phrase is common to both. This common ground, though ultimately leading to different ends, can be mined in our early experiences in music and throughout our musical growth. Though they remain connected through song, music and language do part company early on as they move toward their own proper craft. Nevertheless, it is clear that the language that succeeds best, whether it be poetry or a political speech, is that which has retained a certain musicality, rhythm, timbre, phrase, cadence and form. Likewise, the music that succeeds best is that which communicates in the manner of the best language, speaking directly to the heart, the jazzman's plea "Hear me talkin' to ya." As music teachers, we're entrusted with leading each child's innate sense of rhythm towards an under-standing of rhythm's many facets. We're asked to lead the natural love of song towards the intricacies of melody and harmony. We're challenged to tune the ear to timbre and turn the mind toward form. Orff has shown us that rhymes will help us in these tasks by bringing the abstractions of music down to the ground of the young child's love affair with language. How can we spin the thread of musical development from the raw material of rhymes? Rhythm: Rhymes are rich in rhythm. All rhymes are grounded in beat, meter, duration values and phras-ing. Specific rhythmic elements can be learned from certain rhymes; "Johnny Works with One Hammer" solidifies the experience of beat, "Bate Bate Chocolate" clarifies the relationship of quarter and eighth notes, "Pease Porridge Hot" introduces rests, "Roses Are Red" highlights phrases and "Whoops! Johnny" explores various meters. All poems may be notated with the children after the experience to solidify the connection between word rhythm and traditional rhythmic notation. Melody: Nursery rhymes are traditionally spoken, but some have been set to existing folk melodies ("Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star", "Baa Baa Black Sheep," and "ABC" are all sung to the French folk song "Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman"). In this collection, the emphasis is on the spoken tradition, with attention to pitch variation (as in "Whoops! Johnny" and "Wee Willie Winkie") and the expressive speech that pre-pares both good singing and melodic contour. Harmony: Numerous examples of multiple texture are given that use devices such as complementary ostinati ("Pin Marin") and canon ("Tantos Rios"). Timbre/Orchestration: Instrumental timbres that approximate vowels and consonants are explored in "Pease Porridge Hot," dynamic comes into play in "Tie My Shoe" and "Bate Bate Chocolate" and instru-mental qualities are integral to "Wee Willie Winkie." Orchestrating the various timbres includes thicken-ing of texture in "Johnny Works with One Hammer" while "Man In Car" offers a complex orchestration made simple through language cue. Exploring various orchestral devices from the base of rhymes is one of the unique features of this approach-it extends the work begun on the mother's knee and moves it towards new levels of musical understanding. Form: The structures of the various rhymes suggest a variety of musical forms. Students may explore a number of variations-transferring words to body percussion or instruments, internalizing the text while moving, improvising through a phrase and then combining ideas to create simple forms. This work suggests that the rhyme is one of the most accessible and effective means of engaging young children in creative music-making: they can move with ease from the known (the language of words) to the unknown (the language of music); the imagery of the texts captures their imagination more readily than abstract explanations of the principles of music; the meaning of the words translates to the sensation of sounds and renders those sounds more meaningful; finally, the playful approach to transforming rhymes into music by following and internalizing the structure of the texts allows for some satisfying and complex pieces which would be impossible to teach any other way. (Try having students read a score of "Man in Car" and note the difference). Most importantly, they are involved in every step of the creative process rather than being passive players of a composer's score or a teacher's lesson plan. That these rhymes are a central feature of dynamic music education has been made evident by the chil-dren's response and the impressive results. And though as music teachers we turn the rhymes toward musical goals, we should also be aware of how this work serves the child's language development. Some of the benefits of this awareness are: A music teacher able to explain to parents, school boards and fellow teachers precisely how musical experiences aid language and mathematical development will broaden their understanding of music's contribution to the overall school curriculum. Not only does music give our children a way to speak without words and feel the order of pattern without number, it can lead them to greater understanding of both words and numbers. Knowing these connections helps us integrate our work with our fellow classroom teachers. Ideally the language arts teacher and the music teacher will collaborate, using the same rhyme or activity, each focusing on his or her chosen field. (For a good example of this, Working the Word by Judy Thomas and Susan Katz.) Our primary mission as teachers is not necessarily to teach music, but to teach the child through the vehicle of music. How satisfying to know that the work we do helps nurture all of their intelligences. It is not just musical intelligence that is awakened and trained, but logical/mathematical through the inher-ent patterning of music, visua1/spatial through working with intervals on xylophones and dance in space, kinesthetic through experiencing every concept in the body, intrapersonal through the improvis-ing, composing and expressing oneself through sound and movement, interpersonal through the intense social demands of group dance and music-making-and linguistic through song, poetry and rhymes. * The more aware we are of these potentials, the more consciously we can bring them out in these activ-ities and serve the whole child. * These named intelligences reference Howard Gardner's definitions from his book: Frames of Mind.

Contents - 64 pages Introduction 4 To The Music Teacher 5 To The Classroom Teacher 8 The Activities 12 One-Two, Tie My Shoe 14 Whoops! Johnny 17 Whoops! Johnny - Percussion Piece 20 Yes Papa 22 Johnny Works With One Hammer 24 Wee Willie Winkle 26 Second Story Window 28 Second Story Window - With Drums 30 Second Story Window - With Opposite Cards 32 Lucy Locket 34 Two Little Blackbirds 36 Roses Are Red 38 Pin Marin 40 Bate Bate Chocolate 43 Tantos Rios 46 Man In Car 48 If All The Seas 50 Pease Porridge Hot 52 Peter Piper 55 Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater 57 Glossary Of Musical Terms 61

The Author Doug Goodkin teaches music and movement to children between three years old and the eighth grade at The San Francisco School, where he has taught since 1975. He is an internationally recognized practitioner of Orff-Schulwerk, teaching Orff courses throughout North America, Europe and Australia. He is the director of the Mills College Orff Certification Course in Oakland, CA and teaches his own course on Jazz and Orff-Schulwerk through San Francisco State University. Doug has published numerous articles on Orff in contemporary culture and is an author of the Macmillan/McGraw-Hill textbook series Share the Music. He is a founding member of the Orff-based adult performing group Xephyr. Doug is known for his innovative application of Orff-Schulwerk across various disciplines, particularly language arts, jazz, and multi-cultural music.

Review by Barb Shearer, VOSA President I have only recently purchased this book, and already it is becoming one of my favorite resources. Each of the lessons I have built from this book have been highly successful and well enjoyed by the children, from Prep to Grade 6. The rhymes are quite varied, in age appeal, content and cultural background. And yet, the highlight of the book is the great variety of ways that each is explored. Each rhyme has a wealth of suggested activities that can be tried, and then used as a starting point for your own and the classes ideas. The suggested activities use all of the aspects of music: beat, rhythm, pitch, timbre, phrase, metre, form etc. There are also many language activities integrated into the lessons. And of course each of these ideas can be used with rhymes that you find elsewhere, or that you and your children create. Which makes the application of this book unlimited! This book is an excellent starting point for anyone, but especially those new to Orff. At our recent "Music for Children Day" we explored Volume 1 of the Keetman/Orff publication. Work with speech is foundational within the Orff approach, and in A Rhyme In Time, Doug Goodkin has given us a wealth of ways of using speech to enhance our music program. An excellent resource that will be well worn within a short time. Destined not to gather dust!! A sample: (I introduced this rhyme at the "Music for Children" Workshop) Man in car, went to bar Feeling nifty, doing fifty Hit a pole, poor old soul Doctor's fee, cemetery. A great rhyme, enjoyed by the middle years classes, this is rhythmically simple, with an important message in a fun package. While Doug's ideas are based around language activities, working with nouns, verbs, adjectives and prepositions, I used this rhyme for other purposes also. Mainly consolidating beat/rhythm (yet again for the Grades 4 - 6!!), stepping the rhythm out across the room, while we clapped the beat and vice versa. Working in pairs, tapping the beat or rhythm on each others hands, so that each child was responsible for one of these, while still feeling the other. In groups the children then created their own ways of "playing beat/rhythm" while "feeling" the other. Then working with speech ostinato, and leading to activities with non-melodic instruments. Which of course will lay a good foundation for moving with ease and success onto melodic instruments. Enjoy!! Barb Shearer, August 2000 Review by Suzanne Gerozisis, NSW Orff Association Book Review from the New South Wales Orff Schulwerk Bulletin October 2000 This resource book, sub-titled Rhythm, Speech Activities and Improvisation for the Classroom, is another valuable publication by Doug Goodkin. The content is suitable for primary and lower secondary classes, and is presented in a similar format to Name Games with the addition of a Classroom Extension section. The repertoire is a mix of familiar and new material, including some delightful rhymes in Spanish. 'Bate Bate Chocolate' is one such rhyme, and with the first line notated only in crotchets and the second in quavers, is a useful piece of repertoire to highlight the relationship between these note values. The variety of activities such as using accented syllables and cumulative speaking and audiation of phrases extend the skill demand of the rhyme. Secondary teachers can use material in this book quite successfully. The use of techniques such as canon, hocket and polymetric accent presented in accessible speech rhymes provide an easily graspable introduction to these musical features, and ideas in the Variation and Classroom Extension sections encourage students to apply techniques to other material or their own compositions. In the Spanish rhyme "Pin Marin", one Variation suggestion is to create a melody for the text (an example is given) and there are many opportunities to used melodic instruments in addition to speech, singing, body percussion and non-melodic percussion. In the glossary the author, in defining metre, states that of the most commonly used time signatures, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4 and 6/8, 6/8 is the natural metre of most nursery rhymes. It is perhaps a pity that there are so few examples of material using this metre in the book. However, as with many Orff resources, the given examples are designed to be used as springboards for other material, and the content of this book should provide inspiration for teachers in many ways.

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