Update for 27/7/2011

Hello everyone,

Marc here with an update on our group progress. Previously, we were making the board for the conductor at Grace Orchard School to assist her in writing out new songs for the children to learn. We were also producing lesson plans for use during regular music lessons. In addition to these two volunteer services, we have been offered the opportunity to teach some children from the School a performance segment for Teacher's Day. We have decided to undertake this endeavour, and will be going down to Grace Orchard School this Friday 29th of July to conduct the lessons. These lessons will be running for the next five weeks, and we will be teaching two classes to perform "You Are My Sunshine" at the teacher's day celebrations.

We have also finished constructing the board, and we will be presenting it to the teachers this Friday.

-Marc

Update 06/07

Hi everyone,

We just came back from an enriching experience at the Grace Orchard School Choir Camp. Just to update everyone, this was a morning camp where we played games and sang with the GOS choir members. The camp enabled us to interact with the Choir members and learn more about interactions with MID and autism. It was a valuable experience to organize the camp, as well as a lesson in flexibility when we had to change the plans on the spot to accomodate for difficulties we had not anticipated. We organized and planned the camp activities, and acted as facilitors during the camp itself.

We were also given the opportunity to conduct music lessons in GOS on a weekly basis every Thursday. We are also in the midst of planning a lesson package for GOS relief teachers to use. This lesson package should ideally allow relief teachers with no music background to teach music effectively in Grace Orchard School. We have thus decided as a group to undertake this new venture to assist the School in serving and nurturing our charges.


In addition to this, we are working on a board for use in choir lessons. This board consists of velcro upon which solfege and rhythm pieces may be attached. This would make it easier for the conductor to produce basic music scores for the children to learn from. David is working on this board, and we hope to complete printing and production by Monday of the next week.

-Marc, on behalf of Stand up and Sing @ GOS

Update 20/4/2011

what david said
starting um. er. whatever stuff we're going to start doing for the recording.
touch briefly on concert plans.

Hello everyone,

Marc here with an update on our group progress so far. David went down to the school on 15/2 to observe the lesson one more time, as well as to discuss our plans with the teachers. So far, we have decided to proceed with helping out with the choir camp. We will be teaching these students a song during this camp, as well as various team- and character-building activites. We have started the planning process for the camp activites, spearheaded by Arjun and
David.

Also, the teachers at GOS have requested for us to organize the recording of the GOS school song. We have agreed to look into the request, so we will be sourcing out for any possible recording studios, as well as looking into the possibilities of using our own recording devices. We have asked Ms Chiang for help in this respect.

Finally, we have proposed the idea for a concert to be held at the end of the year, firstly to raise funds, as well as to provide performance experience for our charges. We will run this proposal in greater detail past the teachers at the next meeting.

That's all for today!
-Marc

Choir lesson 8/4

Hi! This is Vivek. Last Friday, David and I went over to GOS to observe a lesson of the choir there, and we found out about the methods used by the conductor to teach the students.

First, with regard to rhythm, some symbols were used for each note value, with corresponding names.

Also, to help the students visualise the pitch better, "staircases" were drawn, where the stairs would move up a step if the note is ascending, and down a step if the pitch was descending. For example,

The conductor played games with the students at the end of the lesson, where singing took place, to increase their passion in singing.

The conductor mentioned to us that another method was nursery rhymes, where she would use the familiar nursery rhymes to teach the students solfege and various rhythms. For example, a nursery rhyme that was used before was "Rain, rain go away". In this rhyme, the conductor was able to teach the 'sol' and 'mi' solfege, as well as the crotchet and quaver rhythms. So a possible area for us to help out is to think of nursery rhymes with increasing complexity, so that the conductor can use them to teach the students.

Well, that's about all for this week. On Friday, we'll be going down to observe another lesson before deciding exactly what we can help out with!

Thanks!

- Vivek, on behalf of Stand Up and Sing

Update on Group Progress 30/3/11.

Hello, Marc here. Here's an update of what we have gone through since the last blog post.

After careful analysis of the options available to us, we rated the possibilities in terms of feasibility and possibilty. We realized that the Choir Camp and the Poster educating the charges on the correct solfege and singing techniques were the most feasible of all our options. We thus decided to start planning the choir camp and begin designing the poster. The technical aspects of teaching will have to be left to the choir members of our team, while the aesthetic components of the poster can be left to Arjun and David.

The second tier of options were those that required more time and effort, as well as planning and logistics. We felt that it was not possible to undertake all of these initiatives at the same time, due to limitations in resources and availability. However, we decided that we could forward one of these ventures if the other options proved fruitful and manageable. This list of options included the noticeboard quiz, weekly game activites teaching basic musical principles to the choir members, as well as fortnightly music video production. We were also offered the opportunity to synergize with an RI(JC) Project Work team involved in raising awareness on MID through cooperating with Grace Orchard School. They proposed writing a song to help increase public knowledge of MID. We hope we will be able to at least try out one of these options over the course of the year.

Finally, we rejected certain options completely due to a lack of resources. One of these options was to re-record the school song, but we decided against this because we could not find a cheap enough recording studio with high enough quality to enhance the artistic license of the song, given the limited funding our group has access to. Thus, we would not consider these initiatives unless the circumstance change.

So we have decided to begin planning of the activities we have chosen and begin laying out the groundwork of the plan we will be implementing. Thanks~

:D

Update on Group Progress: 09/03/11

Hey guys! This is David on my first blog post. Let's see, what have we done since the last post...

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All the groups went to Grace Orchard School to see the facilities, Ms Kwan, and the kids. We had a meeting with Ms Kwan and discussed our objectives and the possibilities for our projects. She outlined a few things for us:

1. The Choir has a conductor, and we might interfere with her plans and lesson style.

2. We could organize a Choir camp for our charges.

3. We could teach music theory instead of singing.

There were quite a few things for us to consider, as our original plan had been simply to teach the charges how to sing. It was apparent we were going to have to take another look at our plans and adapt to fit the situation.

After the meeting, she took us on a tour on the facilities of the school. Their Choir room has a computer, screen, a piano, keyboard and several benches. This is the room we are mostly likely going to have to use. They also have a Band room which has many different instruments including a piano, and has a smart screen that requires a tablet with the necessary software. Unfortunately, the Band practice coincides with the Choir practice on Fridays, so if we still persist in having the lessons, we can't use the Band room.

The next session, we completed out group project proposal, submitting it after we had all contributed something to it.

Research Proposal:

1. Interest Areas
1. Choral singing
2. Musical Theory
3. Teaching those with Mental Disabilities
2. Research Topic
1. Teaching music to those with Mild Intellectual Disability (MID)
3. Rationale for Topic
1. Music is a conduit to connect with the children
2. We want to lift the spirits, self-esteem and support the children in their lives and learning.
4. Aims and objectives for study
1. Service Objectives
1. Inculcating a love for music and singing in GOS students.
2. Developing communication and expression abilities through singing.
3. Helping build confidence through singing and performing.
4. Inspiring the students through music.
5. Cultivating a sense of belonging among the choir as a whole.
6. Helping them understand the importance of teamwork.
2. Learning Objectives
1. Learn about the behaviour of students with MID and how best to interact with them
2. Learn to guide and teach students better
3. having patience, determination etc, that I will need to successfully guide them well
4. pushing my creativity to think of good methods that can be used to teach
5. To be more adaptable and flexible
6. To be more patient and determined
5. Research Questions
1. How can we enrich the lives of our charges through music?
6. Significance
1. This will help our charges in their daily interaction with others, as well as exploring their hidden potentials.
7. Methodology
1. After every session, write a description of the session, including the problems that we faced and the behavior of our charges.
2. Write a reflection. This will consist of the possible reasons for the problems arising, as well as possible solutions to them. We will also try to understand the perspectives of our charges through their actions. Over the many weeks, we hope to gain a clearer picture on our charges and their methods of learning. This will also help us to gain an insight into the world that they experience.
3. In the lesson plan for the following lesson, we will try to incorporate the solutions to the problems from previous lesson and utilise the knowledge of our charges, to improve upon our teaching methods. Hopefully this will help our charges to learn better. In the next reflection, these solutions will be assessed and appropriate changes may be made.
8. Resources
1. Our choir members and their training
2. Our instrumental abilities and background.
3. Our other strengths such as drawing, organising etc.
4. Online and offline research on MID
5. The teachers at GOS
9. Flexibility/Manageability of research (possible challenges)
1. Miscommunication between us and charges
1. Can be overcome using different means of communication e.g. visual rather than solely verbal
10. End Product
1. Concert by charges GOS or RI
2. Choir/Enrichment Camp for charges
3. Recordings of songs by charges
4. Teaching package

Here it is. :)

I guess that's all for now. We'll be checking back here as we continue our journey with the kids and ourselves. Thanks! Bye!

-David on behalf of Stand Up and Sing

Objective Setting at First Meeting (09/02/11)

Hello all,

This was our first meeting as an RE-SL group, where we thrashed out the objectives for this Research Learning objectives. We were required to produce both service and learning objectives. The service objectives are listed here:

2.1 Inculcating a love for music and singing in GOS students.

2.2 Developing communication and expression abilities through singing.

2.3 Helping build confidence through singing and performing.

2.4 Inspiring the students through music.

2.5 Cultivating a sense of belonging among the choir as a whole.

2.6 Helping them understand the importance of teamwork.

We also began planning the first meeting with GOS students, which will happen at Grace Orchard School on Wednesday, 23rd February. We set an agenda of interaction, and our main purpose of going to GOS is to find out where GOS Choir most requires our assistance, as well as to interact with the charges at GOS.

Things to follow up upon:
1. Set Learning objectives and email to Marc by Monday, 21st February. Each person to provide at least one personal learning objective.
2. Produce an agenda for first meeting with the charges so that our interaction would be meaningful.
3. Prepare a list of criteria we have to fulfill for this project to be successful. (Optional)

Looking forward to a great 2011 of RE-SL!
-Marc, on behalf of Stand Up and Sing!