Conversational Solfege Basics

Once you feel fairly confident that the kids are singing in tune and can move competently to the beat, it may be time
to move toward notation. Generally speaking, and of course depending on the level of your students, you can start
CS in 2nd grade. While you could start in first grade, you might be missing out on the opportunity to "prepare the
soil" during that time in order to strengthen them musically.

Conversational Solfege is a literacy program, not a comprehensive curriculum. The beauty is that you have the
freedom to add solid, meaningful and engaging activities.

In your lesson planning, make the kids glad that they came to music and sorry that they had to leave!

Each individual lesson is comprised of the following 3 components:

1. Doing- This is the fun part, consisting of Orff, Folk Dance, Kodaly, MLT, etc.
2. Literacy- Conversational Solfege
3. About- This the shortest part, and should naturally fit into the other two.

When you are at the "literacy" stage of the lesson, Feierabend

recommends covering the following each time:

1. Past (at least 1 thing)- From an earlier unit. Some kind of rhythm or tonal review from any of the 12 steps.
2. Present (bulk of the lesson)- Your current unit plan.
3. Future (at least 1 thing)- Step 1 for the next unit, introducing some of the new material. This counts as "doing" in
the lesson.

So....when I'm ready to start a new unit in Conversational Solfege, I

begin by choosing at least 6 songs/chants per unit:

First 2 songs/chants are introduced at Step 1 (fun & familiar)

Next 2 songs/chants are introduced at Step 4 (decoding unfamiliar)
Last 2 songs/chants are introduced at Step 8 (sight reading)
At least 1 "classical" listening activity (often at Step 8, but can also be earlier in the unit)

Now, it's on to the actual construction of the Unit Plan.