Meaningful Movement with Leanna O’Brien (Part 1) | 148

Hey everyone, and welcome back to the show!

Today, we’re diving into a topic that will get your students moving—literally! We’re joined by the incredible Leanna O’Brien, a curriculum designer, movement specialist, and professional development expert who has made it her mission to bring music to life in classrooms around the world.

Leanna’s lessons are used in over 500 schools, and she’s known for integrating meaningful movement—think scarf dancing, movement breaks, and activities that teach tempo, pitch, texture, and more—in ways that are joyful, accessible, and deeply effective.

She’s the founder of The Soaring Scarves Academy, where she empowers educators to weave music and movement into their teaching so students can engage, remember, and thrive. Whether you’re looking to boost behavior management, deepen understanding, or just bring more fun into your music room, Leanna has a way of making it all feel possible—and exciting.

Resources Mentioned:

• In the Hall of the Mountain Kin
• Flight of the Bumblebee
• Strega Nona Read Aloud

Connect with Leanna: 

• YouTube
• Facebook Group
• Website: https://soaringscarvesacademy.com/

Where to find me: 

Crescendo Community Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/crescendocommunity
Official Crescendo Page: https://www.facebook.com/CrescendoMusicEd/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/CrescendoMusicEd
Twitter: https://twitter.com/crescendomusic
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbie-o-shea-62a3741b/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CrescendoDeb

Introduction

Here is the Crescendo Music Education Podcast – Episode 148.

This podcast is being recorded on the lands of the Turrbal people. I acknowledge them as the traditional owners of the land and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. They were the first music makers on this land.

If you’d prefer to listen to this episode, click here!

About ‘Read the Episode’: Sometimes, we would rather skim visually than listen to a podcast! That’s a great way to learn too!
The transcript of episode 148 of The Crescendo Music Education Podcast is below.

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Debbie O’Shea 

I would like to welcome to the Crescendo Music Education Podcast Leanna O’Brien. Hello, Leanna.

Leanna O’Brien 

Hey, Debbie. It’s so nice to be here.

Debbie O’Shea 

It seems so odd that it’s so dark here and it’s like early morning, but it’s a very rainy, miserable day today, so it’s a bit dark.

Leanna O’Brien 

Perfect day for a cup of tea.

Leanna’s Bio

Debbie O’Shea 

Oh yes, tea, coffee and recording podcasts, perfect. Okay, now I’m going to start out the way I like to start out. In case the world doesn’t know you, or the people listening, I’m going to read a little short bio and then we’re going to hear all the great things that you’ve got to offer my fabulous listeners. Here we go, meet Leanna O’Brien. Actually, I love that start. I’m going to change my bios to go meet Debbie O’Shea. I love it. Okay. Sorry. I will try not to digress. Meet Leanna O’Brien, a curriculum designer and professional development expert dedicated to bringing music to life in the classroom, with lessons used in over 500 schools.

She specialises in integrating meaningful movement, scarf dancing, engaging movement breaks and activities that teach tempo, texture, pitch, dynamics and more. Passionate about helping teachers feel confident, Leanna believes in teaching students through movement, ensuring they truly experience the fundamentals of music. Her curriculum, built on storytelling and hands on learning, transforms classrooms into engaging spaces where behaviour management improves, understanding deepens and fun thrives.

As the founder of the Soaring Scarves Academy, she empowers educators to seamlessly infuse music and movement into their teaching, creating vibrant, effective classrooms where students engage, remember and grow. Ta da. What a great bio. I love it. And what music teacher is not saying, Yeah, I want that. Yeah, I want that. All right, so listening to that bio, what would you like to add to that little description of what you do?

Leanna O’Brien 

Well I think one thing I’d love to add is just how much more in depth I’ve gotten into really doing professional developments made by this music educator, by music educators, specifically for music educators. In the last few years of teaching, I really started to become very frustrated when I would be put into professional development sessions done by my school that had absolutely no relevancy to me. I was in math professional developments and all this other kind of stuff and I just kept on questioning, well where is the stuff for me to continue as a learner? It’s so wonderful being on podcasts like this and other creators I know, both of us have been on Bryson’s Music Summit, so fun.

I actually just had the absolutely amazing pleasure of being at the NAMM conference, the National Association of Music Marketers and that happens in California, and that was definitely one of the biggest professional development sessions I’ve ever done. I was so incredibly honoured to be selected for that and it’s just making me see that I love teaching little kids, but how important and how powerful it is to teach other music educators and advocate for them and allow them to advocate for themselves. This has been like a total whirlwind, just these last couple of months, but it’s been really, really fantastic.

Debbie O’Shea 

It’s so important to teach the teachers, isn’t it? Because your reach, it’s a ripple effect. It’s those people that you reach, reach more children. It’s so important.

Leanna O’Brien 

Especially for music educators, we’re islands. We are so often the only teacher that does what we do and we never feel like we have the support under us to even have the ability to grow as constant learners.

Debbie O’Shea 

I hear you. I’m there too, yes! So I think we need more of us, don’t we?

Leanna O’Brien 

 I agree.

Debbie O’Shea 

So how many people are at NAMM? Just tell me what’s NAMM again?

The NAMM

Leanna O’Brien 

NAMM is the National Association of Music Marketers, but basically, it’s this three day, no excuse me not three day, five day conference that happens twice a year, once in LA. Then I want to say the second one changes, I might be wrong about that. But it happens twice a year and it brings music, either producers, creators, educators from all over the world.

Yes, I met educators from Australia. I met educators from the UK. But it’s a massive conference that takes place in Anaheim, California, at the biggest conference center in California. It was really incredible. My husband was like just see, you want to teach more teachers, put in your name and a little bit of what you do and see if they reach back. That was last year and they did. It was incredible to be asked to go and do that. Yeah, that was this past January.

Debbie O’Shea 

Oh, lovely. Oh, I love the sound of that. That sounds great. Congratulations.

Leanna O’Brien 

Thank you. It’s so great, I’ve been going to this conference since I was in college, so being able to speak at it was pretty amazing.

Debbie O’Shea 

Wonderful. All right, can we talk about gratitude? I like to talk about gratitude with all of my guests, because I think that’s important for you to think about you and your self concept and who you are. And it sends an important message to everybody to stop and smell the roses for a moment and just think about all of the things that you’re grateful for. So I’d like you to have a chat about that.

Leanna’s Take on Gratitude

Leanna O’Brien 

I absolutely love that. I think gratitude is one of the like best ways to stop and actually take a look at where you’re going in life and where you’ve been. One of the things I am definitely most grateful for is the journey that I’ve been on to discover who I am as an educator and to know that I am by no way, shape or form done growing in this profession. But I’m so grateful for all of my stumbles from those first couple of years that you look back and you just shudder. Well, why would I think that me just playing a classical piece of music would immediately engage my students? Why? Why would I think like that as this baby educator?

But yes, definitely, just this journey that I’ve taken to stumble and come out on this other side with this concrete knowledge of my biggest goals when I teach and how to prevent behaviour instead of managing behaviour and how to ensure that my students are going to have this experience with music instead of a passive learning time. How to see my students as these beautiful, wonderful little individuals who I just want to be able to now, at the end of the day, give the gift of independency when it comes to music and literature. So that wherever they go after me, they’re going to have the skills they need to take on any sort of musical challenge that they want to take on.

Debbie O’Shea 

That is wonderful. And speaking as somebody who’s even further down their journey than you are, you never ever stop learning and developing and growing and doing better. I’ve often said and lots of people will tell you, that if you decide you know everything then you need to get out of teaching. So I have run across a couple of people in my career who go their whole attitude is like I know it all. Well they’re not going to be good teachers. You’ve gotta keep learning, haven’t you? That journey to where you are now, helping the individuals on their journey, that is wonderful. Love it.

Leanna O’Brien 

Oh thank you Debbie.

Debbie O’Shea 

Alright, I want to talk about movement. So all of the people that are having a listen to this podcast. I’m guessing that they’re sort of thinking, Okay, what sort of thing does she do? Like movement seems to be coming out in your bio. I think we all know that for kids to be truly engaged, their body has to be engaged, doesn’t it? So why do you feel it’s important to have these music elements in the music lessons? And what do you think is stopping people doing it?

Leanna and Movement

Leanna O’Brien 

Oh, yes, 100% these are my favourite things to talk about, because at the end of the day, any musician will look at each other. The second that I say dynamics, the simple second I say articulation, tempo, texture, a musician’s mind will immediately have the experiences required to go, oh, well, I know what this is, but when we’re teaching it, we’re teaching vocabulary. Vocabulary is something so abstract that until we give our students a fundamental core experience with these abstract concepts, then just teaching the vocabulary will never be enough for a student to have the emotional experience, to actually connect what that means.

I think that’s one of the biggest things that I found with movement, it’s not only going to engage my learners more, it’s not only going to help me prevent behaviours instead of managing them. It’s not only going to get my students more ingrained in what the concepts are, but it’s going to introduce them without me having to even use the vocabulary once. I don’t teach based on, here’s the vocabulary, now here’s what it means. I teach based on here’s the experience.

A lot of times I do that through scarf dances. What I love is it’s a way to get my students up and engaging and moving to the music that I want them to learn anyway, so that I can teach them about the composers that I want to teach about. But it also gives their bodies the experience where, if we’re small and we’re tiptoeing at the beginning of In the Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Grieg, then they can feel that. Then, as the song goes, it completely changes. Suddenly they’re running in place and their bodies are big and their movements are big because it’s forte and the tempo is fast and having that concrete feeling and then being able to then, okay, now I can talk about tempo. Now I can talk about dynamics, because now they’re engaged with it. The same thing with composers. Now if I play the song, does anybody know this?

Oh, Miss, I know that. Oh, look, we can go da da da da da da da da da. They’ll be humming it. They’ll be singing it. They’re engaged with it. They know what I’m talking about and that makes me go, Well, then let’s talk about who made it and they care. They care before, if I just put it on and expected them to have an experience with just a piece of music, they’re not at that learning stage. They need to move to it. Students spend, I think the new statistic was 63% of their day sitting, 63% of their day where they cannot move and it’s so easy. It’s such a connection to music, where to teach that through movement is just so effective, and to the teachers who just feel like, it just feels so they need to have the certain training, right? Well, I can’t do that yet I haven’t been trained right.

Or they just feel lost and don’t know how to bring it in. Any form of movement in your classroom, any form, if it’s the games, if it’s a scarf dance, if it’s a song where they’re also connecting their bodies to it, they’re going to be so much more engaged and have a deeper connection, so that it’s a learning experience.

I’d say to those teachers that it’s just so important just to start in any way, in the smallest ways possible. One of my favourite movement breaks that I bring out anytime that I feel like maybe my students are starting to spiral, is just these two hand signs. If I put my hands like this to show the hand sign for for standing up and then go to the hand sign for sitting down and just seeing who’s focused, who’s engaged and if I’m starting to lose my students because I’m talking too much, then just giving myself that reminder you’ve been talking too long, engage with your students.

Debbie O’Shea 

Oh, okay. there’s so much gold in that. So you’re describing basically just a good pedagogical sequence, aren’t you? That’s the way you should teach anything, children should feel and hear before they are introduced to the symbol or the term. I’m a Kodály inspired teacher. So that’s just good pedagogy of anything. If you’re teaching a mathematical concept, you don’t start with the symbol or the term. You do all of the understanding first and in music, feeling is really important.

You would never teach the beat without doing activities where they’re moving on the beat would you? So it’s just an extension of good pedagogy, but we can’t forget as they get older, kids still need it. I think teachers are more confident doing it with 4 year olds than they are doing it with 11 year olds. But I can tell you, the 11 year olds need it too, don’t they?

Leanna O’Brien 

Yes, it might need to look a little different, right? You can’t baby it. We can’t make it cutesy. My middle schoolers hate when I make it cutesy. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t move. They always need the ability to move, even if they don’t know they need it.

Debbie O’Shea 

Yes. So it just makes so much sense. Now let’s go back to the hand signs you talked about. So if you’re not watching this on YouTube, you can pop into my YouTube channel and have a look. So those two hand signs you did, let’s describe them for the audio people. Also, did you make them up? Or are they like part of your official sign language for deaf people?

Leanna O’Brien 

Yep, they’re just the American sign language, so ASL, and it is, if you just google the hand sign for standing up. You take your left hand and you can make it flat. You take your right hand and you point it downwards, as if you’re pointing to the floor, but instead of one finger, using two fingers and then you stand up. Now your little hand person on top of this little podium and that is the hand sign for stand up. The hand sign for sit down is left hand with two fingers extended out, as if you’re pointing to the right. Your right hand now still two fingers up in the air and you make a sitting motion, as if your right hand is going over and across the left hand to show sit and then stand.

Debbie O’Shea 

Okay, that’s good. We should check that out, my Australian listeners, let’s check out what that is in Auslan, because we have a different standard sign language. I think there’s lots of crossover. But I think that wherever you’re teaching, you could just check out whatever system is used by your hearing impaired people, because that’s a great idea. I mean, many of us develop our own little sign language, like one of mine is I just go, those people just listening, I’m just pointing to the ground and making a circle in front of me on the ground. I do that once, everyone just pops up and stands in a circle, but I hadn’t thought of stand and sit. Like that makes sense. Great.

Leanna O’Brien 

Oh, Debbie, it’s so very obvious that we’re so used to teaching from looking at our students. Oh, thank you for the reminder that we are on a podcast.

Debbie O’Shea 

Oh no, and if you’re listening, you should go in and see Leanna’s bright happy face. Yeah? Nice background, this guitar and all that. Yeah, yeah, perfect. Okay, I’m digressing a bit here, aren’t I? Alright, let’s look. I love your In the Hall of the Mountain King example. That’s great. So let’s have a look at some ways movement can reinforce music concepts, obviously listening, creating and specific vocab. Just give some little practical tips so that people who are listening and if, oh, I should also say, if you’re driving your car on you’re on the treadmill, it’s okay, there are show notes and there will be a blog post with the whole transcript and any links you talk about. So don’t worry about writing it down. It will be recorded for you. So let’s get onto some of your movement ideas.

Leanna’s Movement Ideas

Leanna O’Brien 

So what I find is building your routine and your structure around having multiple movement breaks throughout. Again, I’m somebody who it’s very clear I can talk and I can talk and I can talk, and that’s true also with my teaching. So what I find is building my routine and my structure around concrete I stop talking to get them up is really helpful for me. So my routine may look like generally and we’re talking this from K through Fifth grade. When I get to Fifth grade through Eighth grade, I generally have more independent moments, because my students are then at that point, starting to have their own identity as a musician and they are interested in different things. So I do allow a little bit more of a creative expression when it comes to my middle schoolers, still guided, but definitely some more independence.

When it comes to Kindergarten through Fifth grade, I have my structure where they come into a scarf dance. Every single one of my lessons begins with a scarf dance without any talking beforehand. What I love about that is I’m not only able to begin by introducing them to a new classical piece or a modern one, so that later on I can talk about the composer, but I’m immediately giving them an experience of what I want to teach.

So if I want to talk about, let’s see tempo, a good one is Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee. It’s so fast and it’s also a great way to talk about some articulation. There’s two parts in there where it’s very clearly staccato, is kind of the overall feel of the part of the song and then the next section, it has a more legato feel to it. So it’s a great comparison right there. Again, if I want to talk about articulation, well, I’m going to choose a song more like that to, then again, have my students experience it and have that be the first thing that happens in my class. I do that every single day. From there, we’ll go on to what I call my main chunk, which is going to be some sort of review on what I want to teach.

That’s where I get a little bit more of some visual stimulus for my students and still some tactile so a lot of stuff with the SMART Board, my students coming up to the board and dragging and dropping things that we’ve previously talked about. So if there’s a song that we need to sing for our main chunk, then I’m going to have my students add in the solfège and going based off the colours that we use in America, which is just the rainbow, but do is red. I don’t know if you do that as well.

Debbie O’Shea 

Some teachers use a colour based scheme. I don’t think it’s really common, but it is used a little, yeah.

Leanna O’Brien 

So I’ll have either that for my littles, who are just starting to learn some solfège and only doing like so mi do songs. Oh, and then for my older students, they’ll be putting in either the treble clef letters, the bass clef letters or still doing that solfège. So then having some sort of tactile component, I get independent students to get up, maybe grab a quick assessment.

So then for my main chunk, which is going to be whatever I talked about during the scarf dance, whatever they felt during the scarf dance, is what I am then making concrete in my main chunk, which is usually some sort of story or some sort of instrument play along, things like that. So what I like is my routine is going to have different sections where I’m going to have movement breaks, so that at every single part of my lesson I know that I’m going to be reinforcing the concept.

So say, if we’re talking about articulation with Flight of the Bumblebee. Well, then I’m going to have a movement break somewhere in the middle. That is also going to be about articulation. One of the ones that I love it is so simple, all of these are so simple. We like to keep things simple. But you’re just taking two Lummi sticks and you’re going to be doing two different forms of tempo and seeing if your students bodies can change with it. So say I’m giving them a beat that’s very staccato. This is sta ccat o, getting that vocabulary in, but still in a way that makes them feel what’s going on. So then they’re up and they’re jum ping, jum ping, then changing it and maybe taking the Lummi sticks and sliding it.

This is sta ccat o and seeing my students bodies change. Then maybe I add the music back in and say, Okay, well, we did this at the beginning. Can we now listen in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee? Where’s the staccato? Where’s the legato? Show me with your body. Or if my students at that point, they might need a little break from movement and more, just on thinking. Show me with your hands. If it’s staccato, can you tap your left hand? If it’s legato, can you slide your right hand up and down your left arm? Show me a smooth. Again at that point I’m like, alright, we need to sit down and collect for a second. But yeah, so having many multiple musical experiences throughout it that are going to solidify whatever I’m trying to talk about.

So scarf dances, movement breaks, a lot of the videos on YouTube are so wonderful. As far as you can not only find rhythm patterns, but you’re also going to find rhythm patterns that then go with the same songs that I’m trying to teach. So yeah, lots of movement in my class for sure, but I do find that it is a way that I can just make concrete experiences, that my students can understand these abstract concepts, so that when I ask them the question, well what do we hear in this music?

What’s the dynamic of this music? I don’t hear things like, Oh, Miss. It’s really high. You’re going, Oh, that’s not what I asked. They’re having concrete understandings. Because it’s movement based, I find, and studies have proven this, that the more movement that’s also involved in the learning, the more retention that you’re going to see your students having. It’s an experience is always going to beat a lecture.

Debbie O’Shea 

I love that. So in that example, the articulation. So when you’re planning these experiences, so you’re thinking across a lesson and you’ll pop this concept through a lesson, if that’s one of your main objectives. Though I imagine you’re also planning across years. So whereas you might introduce, we’ll go with the Flight of the Bumblebee. You might do that sort of activity with the equivalent of our Preps, your four and five year olds, your little ones. But you’re not going to spend a whole lot of time talking about articulation. You’ll bring that back in years to come. So you’ve also got to plan, like long term, not just within that one lesson. So I’m on the right track, aren’t I?

Leanna O’Brien 

Oh, 100% and what’s great about that is again, something like this does not get boring and that’s what I’ve been able to see throughout my time at this one school. I’ve been lucky enough to be at a school now for the last six years. So my Kindergarteners have grown into middle schoolers before my eyes and I’m able to see that a song that they had an experience with in Kindergarten. I can then come back and again, challenge them in new ways, right?

Maybe that’s when I bring in the vocabulary, but then the ability to press play and have them hear it, I know that, and to see them now they have a concrete experience. They might not have heard it for a year right, or two years or three years, but they remember it. They have that concrete experience and now I can dive deeper. Now I can also bring in form, now I can also bring in texture. Now I can take something that we simplified so much and they’re able to see just how much is in each one of these songs that we’ve been able to look at over the course of the years.

Debbie O’Shea 

Yeah, that sounds amazing. It also sounds a little daunting, as in, there’s so much, there’s so much. I am digressing a bit, but that’s okay. My listeners are used to me digressing. That’s music teaching, though it’s daunting. It’s a massive area. I know this isn’t on my list of guiding questions, but how do you approach the planning of these things? I mean, is it easy to give us a little insight into your long term and short term planning?

Because I think that’s actually the art of teaching. One of the most difficult things to do is to get a handle on good planning. I mean, I’ve been doing it for such a long time and I think I do it fairly well, but I still have this feeling I could do it better. There are still things I’m missing out. How can I do this more thoroughly? So how do you attack your planning?

Attacking Planning like Leanna

Leanna O’Brien 

So what I’ve found, and again we’re still talking about this very young teacher who does have lots and lots of work, lots and lots of growth ahead of her 100%, but what I do find is that if I just stay organised. I have had the pleasure of being able to develop my own curriculum since I started teaching, once I graduated college. For the first couple years, I didn’t write many things down and really saw that I just forgot. I forgot what I did from year to year.

And so the first thing that I did Debbie, before actually learning, well how do I want to connect all these things? Is just learning to keep track of them all, so every single one of my lessons I have planned for Kindergarten through Eighth Grade now and I have my set curriculum so that I’m able to see the intros, the experiences and then the really developing. Which is again, why for my middle school, my now let’s say 12 year olds to 14 year olds. Having them have that more independent time where they know the basics of literacy.

They know the treble clef, bass clef letters. They know how to read simple and complex rhythms. They know the form of a song. They know all the basics that you need and then really seeing, okay, well half of them are very interested in ukulele, where the other half of them really want to compose their own songs on GarageBand, versus this half over here. So how do I get them to this state where they almost no longer need me. I think that’s the most important thing that any music teacher can do, is get your students to a point where you are no longer necessary. And how do you do that? So the first thing I did is made sure that I knew everything that I had.

So even if I didn’t need say, I use Google Slides presentation like PowerPoint, right? All the time, that’s all I use. And even if I didn’t need that slide for that day, I would still make a presentation so that I knew what I did, even if it’s just in the notes, this is what I did on this day, right? And again, just like you said, what are the main things that are going to help my students be musically literate to get them to that middle school area.

So really, my Kindergarten and my First Graders, their whole thing is just introducing music and providing them with the experiences to immediately get them singing. Because if we don’t get our students singing, it becomes so stressful down the line. But if you start them off young, oh, it’s so simple. It’s so easy. I came to a school my first couple years at this new school, the teacher before me didn’t sing at all.

And yeah, it was hard. It was very hard. And I would leave with my students saying things like, Oh, that was so boring or just being so stressed out and so terrified. Immediately I realised what I was doing wrong. I was sitting behind a piano. I was plunking out the notes. No, no, no, this is my pitch and I’m a singer, so hearing that from my students absolutely broke my heart. Until you’re going to see where I’m probably going with this, Debbie, but until I added movement.

Debbie O’Shea 

I had a feeling you were going to say that next Leanna.

Leanna O’Brien 

Yep. So again getting all the things so that I can lead my students to them being musically literate and interested and curious about where their own musical path is going to lead them by the time they’re in middle school. Yeah, I feel like, if we really wanted to go through all of my different plannings, it would take probably far too long.

Debbie O’Shea 

But no, that was good. Even just the fact that you have your lessons on Google Slides. No, no, that was great. Thank you. That’s got me thinking too. Well that’s what this whole thing is about, thinking and learning and sharing, isn’t it?

Sign-Off

Thank you for joining me for this podcast. Don’t forget, you’ll find the show notes and transcript and all sorts of information on crescendo.com.au. If you’ve enjoyed the podcast or found it valuable, you might like to rate it on your podcast player and leave a review. I’d really appreciate it if you did. All I can be as the best version of me. All you can do is be the best you. Until next time, bye.

Just for Laughs

As we know, laughter relieves stress, don’t lose sight of the funny side of life.
What kind of music do mummies listen to? I’m sure you all know this one, rap music.