St. Patrick’s Day Performance

For the first time ever at Villa Maria, the 3rd grade girls, along with Miss Connors and Sister Margaret, prepared a St. Patrick’s Day performance for the IHM Sisters at the Motherhouse by following what is called the “Orff Schulwerk Approach.” The “Orff Schulwerk Approach” was created by a man named Carl Orff, who believed that all students have the potential to create and perform music.

“The creative process that we followed included Language/Speech to teach rhythm. Speech is the foundation for all that we do,” said Miss Connors. “This helps students to understand that rhythm is simply the way the words go. Next, we incorporated movement; this helps students internalize rhythm so that it can be applied later in a full performance. They did a beautiful job! I’m so proud of them!”

“I have found the “Orff Schulwerk Approach” to be extremely beneficial mainly because it is geared to all learning styles – kinesthetic, visual, linguistic and mathematical,” said Miss Connors.

They began with a spoken poem, followed by ostinato patterns that the girls moved and played to. And they concluded with a melody and full accompaniment all based off the original poem.