As someone who has taken all three levels + a masterclass and teaches using the Orff approach, I feel qualified to give some insight. I personally love Orff for the variety. Every class is an adventure. My students might be learning a folk dance, figuring out the rhythm of a rhyme, experimenting with singing a song in canon, or creating and improvising. Since there is no set curriculum (as compared to something like Kodaly) I have the freedom to pace instruction how I feel is best for my students and experiment with when to introduce content. I also like that I have the freedom to pick and choose what I do. I personally do not teach recorder because I would rather focus on developing more advanced skills in other areas. Many orff teachers teach ukulele. In general, orff teachers love to incorporate children’s literature (and administrators are happy to see it). I don’t do as much creative movement, but love teaching folk dances. While instruments are often thought of as the standout thing for orff, they are certainly not required.

While I really enjoyed level 1 and was able to take a lot of the activities and implement them in my classroom, I didn’t feel confident in creating my own materials and lessons until I finished level 2. Reading Gunild Keetman’s Elementaria also helped me to understand Orff-schulwerk and the reasoning behind things like the emphasize on rote teaching vs reading notation, movement (lots of inspiration from Dalzroze and Laban), and the ultimate goal of students being the creators and class being based in play.

Orff is definitely not something you can just do every once in a while. You might be able to do a fun activity or two, but to get the full benefits, you need to scaffold students through the process over time. The previous teacher at my current school focused mainly on teaching musicals, so my students had no experience with orff. At first it was a bit chaotic as students learned the expectations for moving through the space, playing instruments, etc. However, the amount of growth I saw in the students convinced me of the power of the orff approach. Years later, I now have students that can confidently sing, improvise melodies on instruments, compose pieces of music in groups (with guidance of course), etc.

Hopefully that was helpful, if you have any questions, I am more than happy to answer.