Orff Schulwerk explained for parents: music through speech, movement, and play

Orff Schulwerk is a way of teaching music through the things children already do: chant rhymes, sing, clap, dance, and bang on things. Children copy a pattern, try it in new ways, and then make up their own. They play xylophones, drums, and small percussion from the first class. Most children meet it in an elementary school music room.

The name is German. Schulwerk means “schoolwork.” People also call it the Orff approach. This guide explains where it came from, what a class looks like, and how to use its ideas at home.

Where it came from

Carl Orff was a German composer who lived from 1895 to 1982. Concert audiences know him for a large piece for choir and orchestra called Carmina Burana.

In the 1920s Orff helped start a school in Munich that taught music together with movement and dance. A gifted student there, Gunild Keetman, became his partner in the work. Keetman did much of the teaching with children, and she wrote much of the music they played.

After the Second World War, a German radio station asked for a series of music programs for children. Orff and Keetman made them. The pieces from those programs were printed in five books called Music for Children. Teachers around the world still use them as models.

In the United States, the American Orff-Schulwerk Association has supported Orff teachers since 1968.

The main ideas

Music starts with play. The American Orff-Schulwerk Association says an Orff class begins with what children do by instinct. Teachers take that play and shape it into music.

Say, sing, dance, play. A class moves through speech, song, movement, and instruments, often in one lesson. A rhyme becomes a rhythm. The rhythm moves to the body, with claps and stamps. Then it moves to a drum or a xylophone.

Copy, try, create. The association describes stages of learning. Children echo a pattern from the teacher. They try it in new ways. Then they improvise, which means they make up music on the spot.

Everyone takes part. The approach is built for all children, not only the ones who seem musical. Each child joins in at their own level. One child may keep a steady beat on a drum while another plays a tune.

Doing comes before reading. Children learn music by ear and by copying first. Reading notes follows as a next step. The approach does not set one way to teach reading.

The work matters more than the show. Classes may perform, but the daily making of music is the point.

The instruments

Orff classrooms have a look you will know at once. Rows of wooden and metal bar instruments sit on the floor or on low stands.

Xylophones have wooden bars and a warm, dry sound. Metallophones have metal bars that ring for a long time. Glockenspiels are small, with thin metal bars and a bright, bell-like sound. Each comes in several sizes, from low to high.

The bars lift off. That is the clever part. A teacher can remove a few bars so that only five notes are left. Those five notes sound good in any order, so a child who is making up a tune cannot hit a wrong one.

Children also play drums, shakers, triangles, wood blocks, and recorders. And they use the body as an instrument: snapping, clapping, patting the knees, and stamping.

What a class looks like

A lesson might start with a short rhyme about rain. The class says it together and claps the rhythm of the words. Then they put the rhythm in their feet.

The teacher adds a pattern for half the class to repeat on the low xylophones, over and over. Musicians call a repeating pattern an ostinato. The other half plays the rhythm of the rhyme on wood blocks. A few children add a soft shimmer on the glockenspiels for the rain.

Then the teacher asks for volunteers. One child at a time makes up eight beats on a xylophone while the rest keep the pattern going. In twenty minutes the class has built a piece that did not exist before, and every child had a part in it.

Who it suits

Orff suits an active child who learns by doing. It suits a child who likes to invent things, and a child who is shy about singing alone but happy in a group.

It is not a path to early skill on one instrument. A family that wants a child to play the violin or the piano will still need lessons for that. Orff aims to build the base under those lessons: a steady beat, a good ear, and the confidence to try.

Most Orff teaching happens in schools. Some community music schools and early childhood programs offer Orff classes too. If your child’s school music room has rows of xylophones, ask the teacher about it.

How to use the ideas at home

Turn a rhyme into a rhythm. Say a nursery rhyme together. Clap once for each syllable. Then clap it with no words and see if your child can guess the rhyme.

Use the body. Make a four-beat pattern: stamp, clap, pat, snap. Do it together until it is easy. Then let your child change one move.

Keep a pattern going. One person taps a simple pattern on a pot and does not stop. The other person makes up anything on top with a wooden spoon. Then trade.

Play question and answer. Clap four beats as a “question.” Your child claps four different beats as an “answer.” There are no wrong answers.

Tell a story with sounds. Read a picture book and choose a sound for each character or event: a shaker for rain, a pot lid for thunder, a soft hum for the wind.

Questions to ask a teacher

• What Orff training have you done?
• How often do the children play the bar instruments?
• Do the children make up their own music in class?
• When and how do they learn to read notes?

To see Orff beside the other approaches, read music teaching methods for kids compared. Our music method quiz suggests a starting point in seven questions. For a beat to play along with at home, try the metronome for kids.