Hi, Claire.

 

My advice would be to search for some Kodály summer workshops with top notch clinicians, and all your questions will be answered.  My late wife used introductory Kodály methodology with lower elementry school children, starting with "sol-mi" calls, I believe, but it's the WAY the methodology is used that's important.

 

All the best,

 

John

 

 

Earlier in my career teaching elementary music, I used solfege and curwen hand signs as early as Kindergarten.  The key for that age group is to limit the complexity of the patterns: (ie. "so - mi", "so - la - so - mi", patterns within the pentatonic scale).  Familiar folk songs work well to reinforce these patterns.  As a secondary vocal music instructor, I strongly encourage elementary music teachers to use solfege to help teach these common melodic patterns found in all music.  It is a bit disturbing that when I get them too many of them have lost this ability to easily call and respond to these simple melodic patterns.  A part of this problem is a lack of directed communication between the teachers at the schools throughout the school system where I teach.  I hope this helped.  (Sorry for the side tangent.)

I first remember learning solfege when I was six.  We started off by singing the song from The Sound of Music, and then we played around with hand signs afterward.  Nothing fancy, but I do not remember ever being uncomfortable with solfege.

If you are teaching solfege to a group of singers that will be singing much music in Latin, the traditional solfege syllables are a great way to work on pure vowels (minus diphthongs) along with learning the syllables. Hammerstein's mnemonics do just the opposite. And John, Hammerstein was very practice, the line is "La, a note to follow Sol (sew)".

 

Charles Q. Sullivan

cqsmusic(a)hotmail.com

Claire,

I've been teaching elementary music for, well, more years than I now admit. We start singing solfege as soon as the children start school, and we use handsigns. Definitely take a Kodaly class. Reading a book will give you a sequence, but it won't give you the essence.

 

As for Doe, a Deer.... besides the dipthong problem - which is huge in itself - the song doesn't teach solfege intervals. It's rather like a pre-schooler reciting the alphabet by rote, but having no clue how to put the sounds together to make words. We don't kid ourselves into believing that a child who can say the alphabet can read. In the same way, we can't say that a child who can sing a scale using solfege syllables knows solfege. The point of solfege is understanding intervalic relations between the degrees of the scale.

 

If you use the Kodaly sequence, the intervals are presented in the order that students learn most accurately. Use that sequence, because it's good stuff.  When I've dabbled in teaching the order differently, my students have not been as successful. Now I stick with the tried and true. My 5th grade students sight-read better than many of my college classmates (music majors) who were in sight-singing class.

 

Susan