I hope that you have all had a happy and restful Chinese New Year break. It is lovely to be back at school and hear everything about the children’s holiday and all sorts of fun activities they were up to!
Without any doubts I can say that our Year 2 children were the little super stars of the first part of the second term. Their production ‘You are special’ highlighted their many musical and artistic talents.
Year 1s performed new songs every Friday at the beginning of the assembly and during our music lessons we learned together that between music, dance and movement is a deep connection that we must explore. Both artistic disciplines are structured in and through time. Actually, this closeness is what makes it possible to see dance as an explanation for music, and vice versa. The children have presented lovely performances and shown a great understanding of both of it.
After a few PA lessons based on Juilliard Creative classroom topics, Year 3s are getting ready to dive into a new artistic journey. They work hard continuing their recorder sessions, and learning their songs for the productions that they will perform it at the end of the second term.
I can’t wait to share with you other amazing news about the Year 4 students. Practising recorder with great enthusiasm in every single Performing Arts session, they mastered and performed several musical pieces and finally we reached the Black Belt level.
For the very first-time Year 5s learned about the major and minor Pentatonic Scales. They showcased their learning and understanding by composing original musical pieces dedicated to the Chinese New Year.
Last but not least, both Year 6 classes have shown a good understanding of music theory. They revised the fundamental concepts in music theory such as reading and writing music notation, major and minor scales, music intervals, and key music vocabulary terms such as dynamics, tempo, form, melody, and rhythm. From now on, they will focus on musical ensembles and singing in choir, performing a range of musical pieces from notation, with adequate tonal awareness, using a range of dynamics and recovering from slips and composing short musical pieces-based on looping and remixing.
As you can easily observe we have lots of exciting learning and engagement opportunities in different musical activities until the end of the term and sure the outcomes will be just as amazing as the previous ones.
By Cornelia Crainic
Head of Performing Arts
