The Effective Teaching of Comparing Orff Music Method with Traditional Music Approach for Music Reading and Melodic Patterns Singing for 3rd Grade Elementary Students in Taiwan

The Orff music method has been internationally practiced and recognized as one of the leading music methods in the past fifty years. The success of this approach is that this method encourages all students participating in the designed music activities in the music class to interact with the teacher and other classmates using the Orff approach rather than the traditional one-way music learning approach in the traditional music classroom in Asia. While the children are situated within an environment where music activities and bodily movements are stimulated, the children's aesthetic music knowledge can be influenced significantly (Carlson, 1990). In this study, there were a total number of 180 3rd graders from three elementary schools in Taiwan who participated in this research. The control group which consisted of three classes with a total number of 90 students was the class using the traditional music method taught by a regular classroom teacher, while the experimental group, which consisted of another three classes with a total number of 90 students, was the class taught using the Orff music method by the researcher. The study was controlled in the sense that the six music classes were ascertained to be of equal ability in their understanding of music before the experimental factor was applied. As well, there were no significant differences in age or mental capacity, while the difference in genders was only minimal. The results of this research revealed that not only did the students who had the Orff music method training perform better than the traditional music method on both melodic patterns dictation and music reading tests, but the Orff training also helped the experimental students to have a solid understanding of rhythmic structures and basic music knowledge.