Kodály Music Teaching Certificate

Levels I, II, III will be offered in-person at
Fuller Middle School, Framingham, Massachusetts

July 2025 (Dates TBA)
Weekdays 8:00 am-4:00 pm

Already earned your Level III Certificate? Post Certificate courses are also available!

LEVEL I COURSES

Pedagogy, Musicianship, Conducting, Choir, and Repertoire & Strategies are taken concurrently in order to complete a Kodály Certificate Level.

This course combines Kodály Pedagogy with the study of Music Materials. The underlying principle is to create a teaching sequence from carefully selected musical materials of high quality and developmental appropriateness.

Pedagogy: covers beginning concepts and elements for learners of all ages, and includes the development of tuneful singing, differentiated learning styles, readiness concepts, and beginning stages of musical reading and writing of rhythmic and melodic elements and patterns. The pedagogical process includes preparation, presentation, and practice of specific elements and concepts, skill development, long and short-term planning, and the application of materials to any age student or teaching situation.

Music materials: Participants will learn 30 songs that include simple playground songs, nursery rhymes, folk songs, singing games, dances, canons, and art music of many periods. Participants learn a diverse repertoire of activities and explore how materials supports creating culturally responsive spaces for student learning and musicality.

Thesis–Song Collection and Retrieval System: the capstone project of the Kodály Institute is begun in this course. Level I students learn songs and how to research, analyze, and catalogue the songs for use in the classroom.

The first course in the KMI solfège sequence includes Kodály-inspired ear training, development of sight singing, dictation, musical memory, conducting, and improvisation skills. Sight singing is developed through relative solmization and absolute letter names. Also developed will be the use of hand signs, stick notation, and standard staff notation. Included is a comprehensive study of the note groups and intervals of the pentatonic scale through listening, singing, reading, playing, analyzing and improvising. Rhythmic skill, part-work, and intonation are developed through movement and all activities listed above.

This course is an introductory choral conducting class. It will be a live choral laboratory during which each student conducts his/her peers. Each student will “warm-up” and rehearse the group. Through this process, the class will examine a variety of topics including: basic patterns, warm up and rehearsal techniques, interpretation of different musical styles.   Conducting culminates in a performance and laboratory during which each student conducts his/her peers and is adjudicated by the conducting faculty.

LEVEL II COURSES

This course continues to weave together Music Teaching Pedagogy with Music Materials.

Pedagogy: Thorough teacher preparation makes learning music not only more effective for children but a more joyful experience for all involved. This course will review and expand on the principles of the Kodály methodology; specifically the sequential teaching of music skills based upon the use of an organized body of music literature, starting from the folk tradition, as a foundation for musical literacy. Specific course topics include readiness techniques; the exploitation of different learning styles among children through the preparation, presentation, and practice of intermediate rhythmic and melodic concepts and elements; lesson planning firmly based on child development; short and long term planning; assessment; basic song leading; and teaching chorus and recorder from a singing classroom perspective.

Music materials: Participants will learn approximately fifty songs and games from a multicultural folk tradition as well as some art music from the classical canon. Strategies for integrating movement and folk dance sequentially into music classes will be introduced, based on Education through Movement by Phyllis S. Weikart.

Song Collection and Retrieval System: known as the capstone project of the Kodály Institute is continued in this course. Participants will analyze and memorize songs, and begin to develop their music retrieval system.

Between Levels II and III: Video of a lesson using Kodály Pedagogy and Materials. In lieu of video, the participant may request to have a KMI mentor personally observe and document a lesson for an additional fee. This option is usually available only for local participants residing in New England and for people who work in a school or organization that does not allow videotaping of students, and will include additional fees for transportation costs of the mentor.

The second course in the solfège sequence includes Kodály-inspired sight-singing, dictation, transposition, analysis, improvisation and ear training through the medium of the human voice. Both movable “do” solmization and fixed, absolute letter names are used to develop relative and perfect pitch. Training begins with unison pentatonic, diatonic, and chromatic melodies and leads to complex modulating part-music. The class will practice the following skills: in-tune unison, solo and part singing, relative solmization, absolute pitch names, and rhythm names, pentatonic, diatonic major and minor and modal systems, sight-singing and musical memory, rhythmic, melodic and intervallic dictation, conducting, hand signs, chromaticism, G, F, and C clefs, modulations and harmonic progressions. Musical material includes folksongs through masterworks of all periods and styles, and includes many of Kodály’s composed exercises.

This course is an intermediary choral conducting class. It will be a live choral laboratory during which each student conducts his/her peers. Each student will “warm-up” and rehearse the group. Through this process, the class will practice a variety of topics including: conducting patterns with complex meters, score preparation including phrasing and dynamics, vocal production through conducting gestures, advanced rehearsal techniques. Conducting culminates in a performance and laboratory during which each student conducts his/her peers and is adjudicated by the conducting faculty.

LEVEL III COURSES

Pedagogy: This course will review and expand upon the principles of Kodály methodology—specifically the sequential teaching of music skills and the use of an organized body of music literature, including folk, jazz, multicultural, and classical, as a foundation for musical literacy—and provide pedagogical methods and materials for realizing these principles. Specific course topics include advanced rhythms (internal upbeats, external upbeats, various 16th note combinations, syncopation); half steps (fa and ti); presenting various scales (pentatonic, pentachord, hexachord, all diatonic modes and scales); altered tones (fi, si, ta); harmonic function of scale tones; intervals and interval inversions; triads and their inversions, seventh chords and their inversions. Other topics may include curriculum planning for the school, discussion of outlining musical elements; pacing of the year through units of study and individual lessons; and judging readiness of classes to move on to new element(s) and concepts.

Music materials: Participants will learn approximately fifty songs and games from multicultural American and world music folk traditions, jazz, and art music from the Western classical tradition.

Thesis–Song Collection and Retrieval System: Capstone project of an annotated Song Collection and Retrieval System Data Base can be completed with Level III work as one of the requirements for the Kodály Music Teaching Certificate.

Exit examinations: Conducting and Pedagogy Labs and a video of your teaching a Kodály-style music class are also requirements for the Kodály Music Teaching Certificate.

The third course in the solfège sequence includes Kodály-inspired ear training and sight singing. Listening and performing skills will be developed using pentatonic, modal, diatonic, and chromatic excerpts from the music literature. Course work will include basic teaching techniques and activities used in Kodály instruction. Each area of instruction listed below will include sight singing, performance drills, and the acquisition of recognition/dictation skills.

Rhythmic work will include a review and more difficult work in simple and compound meters with conducting, syncopation, asymmetric and changing meters. Melodic work will include a continuation of pentatonic, major and minor scales and intervals.

Church modes, melodies with chromatic alterations as non-harmonic tones, secondary chord functions, and as modal mixture along with an introduction to twentieth-century melodic idioms will be included in Level III Solfège.

Harmonic work will include cadences and more elaborate chord progressions, seventh chords in root position and inversions, secondary dominants and secondary sevenths chords, modal mixture chords and an introduction to the Neapolitan-sixth chord and augmented-sixth chords.

Pedagogical tools will include further hand-sign work, two-part hand-sign technique, memorization of two- and three-part canons, use of different modal sol-fa system, modulation: sol-fa changing strategies, The course features many games, activities, and exercises to promote memory, coordination, inner hearing, and accurate intonation.

This course is an advanced choral conducting class. Each student conducts his/her peers and is adjudicated by the conducting faculty. Topics include review of how to prepare and memorize a score, correct conducting patterns in 2/4, 3/4, and 4/4 plus more complex meters (5/4, 7/4, 6 – French and German, 9 and 12), proper choral conducting techniques and body stance, interpretation of unison and part music in different styles, and rehearsal techniques. Cues and cut offs will be integrated with dynamics, left hand independence will be developed as will use of baton and creating an ictus without a baton. Each participant will conduct the adult choir in pieces equal to level of difficulty of Benjamin Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb as a final exam. Constructive feedback will be given to each participant as to the next steps needed in their development as a conductor.

PLENARY SESSIONS required for those enrolled in Levels I, II, III

Performance pieces that center the singers’ experience, provoke thought and discourse, and build bridges.

Day 1: Choral Performance Beyond the Printed Page

Presenter: Dr. Mary Ellen Junda

Participants will experience using choral selections and folksongs in creating performance repertoire for students K-12. We will arrange songs, dabble in composition and in the final hour, work in small groups to come up with pieces relevant to our own students.

The assessment for this class will be done in class in small groups. No reflection paper is needed.

Day 2: Keep On Walkin’, Talkin’, and Singin’!

Presenter: Janice Allen

Participants will learn and sing freedom songs of yesterday that are relevant to the issues and struggles that we face today.

Participants will use the last hour to write a 2-3 page reflection paper thinking about what sparked your interest, what you agree or disagree with, what you will bring back to your classroom.

Day 3: Choral Repertoire for the New Generation

Presenter: Kenneth Griffith, Music Director of the Boston Children's Chorus

Participants will broaden their repertoire and learn to use it to engage the consciousness of the community of singers and audience. Participants will use the last hour to write a 2-3 page reflection paper thinking about what sparked your interest, what you agree or disagree with, what you will bring back to your classroom.

All Institute participants attend daily choir rehearsals and perform in a final Gala Concert. The repertoire will be varied and challenging. KMI Choir is an important place to practice and refine ensemble performing skills. It is also the place where the whole Institute comes together to sing and make beautiful music.

Post Certificate Study, July 1-18, 2025

Kodály Certificate course graduates may return to refresh their skills and pedagogical practice

• Conducting

  KMI 807, 1 Credit, July 8-19 afternoons

• Solfège

  KMI 808, 1 Credit, July 1-12 mornings

• Pedagogy

  KMI 809, 1 Credit, July 1-19 mornings

• Thesis: Song Collection and Retrieval System

  KMI 800, 2 Credits, July 1-19 Independent Study

Please contact us at kodalymusicinstitute@gmail.com to create your personalized schedule for post-certificate study.