Welcome to music class! My name is Leonard Madsen, and this is my eighth year teaching music at J.J. Hill. In my classroom we are singing, saying, dancing and playing. We sing many different kinds of songs that are almost always accompanied by movement. Many times the children are creating movements that go with the song. We also use the natural rhythms of speech and poetry in order to create music and improvise using the voice or other instruments such as: xylophones, drums, recorders and other untuned percussion.I am a fully certified Orff-Schulwerk teacher. This teaching process allows students to play with the elements of music (melody, rhythm, form, etc.) so that they can create their own music. For more information on Orff-Schulwerk, go to the website of the American Orff-Schulwerk Association at  www.aosa.org. I also teach instrumental music (band) after school to students in fifth and sixth grade after school on either Tuesdays or Thursdays starting on October 9th.

For more detailed information about what we are doing this year in both classroom music and band, click on the links to the right.