"Apple Tree" Orff rotation

My 1st graders are working on playing the steady beat on an instrument. Eventually I will assess them on playing a steady beat bordun. We practiced this by rotating through a series of instruments and playing the steady beat while singing the song. I set my rotation up so that every student would have an instrument all the time. This seems a bit crazy, but I found that it worked better than when I used to just line all of the students up behind the xylophones and metallophones only. When I did it that way, only 5 students could play at a time and the other 20 quickly got off task. This way, everyone has something to play every time and stays focused.

I set the instruments up so that there was a barred instrument every 2 or 3 instruments. I also used a variety of drums and woodblocks to have different timbres. We played through the song one time and then chanted "One, two, three, four. Mallets down get off the floor. Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Hurry don't be late!". By the end of the chant, each student was at the next instrument and ready to play. We rotated through about 8 instruments and the students never got tired of playing the same song over and over again.

Apple Tree

The 1st graders are studying apples in their classrooms, so we thought we'd do a few apple songs in music class. Here are the 1st graders singing "Apple Tree".

I put 4 students at a time on the xylophones playing the steady beat while the rest of the class played the game. Once a student had been the tree, they rotated over to the instruments and the last instrument player came back to join the game. This way every student got a chance to play 4 times. The second day we did this, I assessed steady beat on the instruments as they played.