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