How We Learn
The Kodaly Concept
In our music class, we follow the methodology of Zoltán (cool name, huh?) Kodály, pronounced kó-dye. Read about him in the section below.
When we learn new stuff, it's so much easier to stick the new information onto old knowledge in our brain that we've already learned. That's why we sing songs repeatedly and play games with them. Once we've sung a song so many times, it's really in our head. Then, it's simple to pull a musical element out of our song and give it a name and a symbol. We continue to practice it along with the other musical things we have learned throughout the year and before you know it, we're a bunch of literate musicians! Thanks, Zoltán!
Zoltan Kodaly
Zoltán Kodály was a Hungarian composer of classical music. He was born in 1882 and died in 1967. He wrote some pretty serious stuff that was played by symphony orchestras and sung by amazing singers. What he really liked to do though, was help kids learn music!
He would travel around his beloved Hungary, listening to children in neighborhoods and on countrysides as they sang songs and played games. (This was before TV and computers, so there was a lot of playing outside.) Then he'd write down the songs and the directions to the games to teach his music students.
After his students had sung the song about a zillion times, it was really stuck in their heads. Since the music was so familiar, it made it easy for them to learn about the musical symbols that were behind what they were singing.
Kids in Hungary were lucky to have such a smart guy looking out for their music education and lucky for us, we're learning music his way here in Round Rock, TX!