GOS Practice 16 July

National Day performance is on 6 August! That's just a little over 2 weeks left as of writing this post. It's Isaac posting again. We had full attendence on 16 July. We started practice at around 3.16pm with some warm-ups. However, this lessons' warm-ups were different, as they were led by two of the choristers! These two brave souls were Diana and Ragavi. They led us through some breathing exercises as well as stretching.

After warm-ups, we introduced something called "Story Sharing". Wenye started things of with a story about his ice-cream cake, then Darren came up to share his story. He started out with how he was excited to come to school, then when we asked if anything interesting happened that day, he mentioned about how a water bottle dropped and broke. Shaun's turn came, this time talking about the opening ceremony that took place the previous week. He didn't go for it, and was instead sleeping and playing at home. He also mentioned how he was happy on stage during the Chinese New Year song! Noel spoke about what she saw when she was on stage, as well as expressed her excitement of being on stage. She saw the mics, as well as her parents in the audience which made her happy and excited. Ravin mentioned that it was his first time performing, and that he enjoyed the clowns at the opening ceremony. It's heartening to see the kids happy about all the small things in life, while to some of us, performing on stage might just be a 10minute affair to put up a show for the audience (of course, I myself personally cherish my stage time and can't get enough of it).

At 3.32pm. we proceeded to lessons proper. We did a recap on the techniques, namely tone, breathing and posture. Then, we got the students to turn and face the mirror so that they could observe themselves as they sang. A few points for them to note were to make sure they were smiling/mouth in yawn shape, that their posture was correct, and that they were breathing correctly (i.e. chest should not jerk and shoulders should not move). This would help them when they are practicing at home as they would know what to look out for. Wenye then gave all of us a surprise when he started teaching on respiration. I, for one, was personally amused because I had bio that day and we had just received a detailed labeled diagram of what he was showing on screen.

After the short bio lesson, we proceeded to a short activity to teach the students on how to constipate the sound. We got them to imagine they were pushing something heavy, and then got them to turn around and push against each other palm-to-palm (no children were hurt in this activity). We then added in the "hee!" sound to finish it off. Wenye made a comment at this point that got all the members laughing "Make a 'hee!' sound like a sumo wrestler BOXING" yippee. Back to business, we also got them to ensure that they were suing their stomach to make the "hee" sound. We spent a short while on tone (I scored zero marks/one million to 1-3-5-3-1) thereafter.

At 4.01pm, we proceeded to We Are Singapore. We recapped a few details, then proceeded to sing through the song. The first attempt sounded out of pitch, but the second try sounded alot better. After that, we gave a few pointers, namely:

• Roar when singing "roar"
• Ritatando at the last "Singaporean"
• Sing with pride and patriotism
• Pointed out that some were shouting instead of singing
• Noted that singing slower does not mean sadder

We then had a short break, and resumed practice at 4.21pm. Our back from break activity this time was the ball throwing activity. We got them to sing "Wheee~~", but this time with different sized balls,with size proportional to volume. Hence, the volume would increase as the size of the ball increased. Then we got them to breathe out "underwater", and also do different animal laughters like chickens and dogs. We went back to "We Are Singapore" once, testing them on remembering their pitch, and then moved on to "This Is Home".

Basically for "This Is Home", some knew it well, but some didn't. Hence, you could hear uneven and uncertain singing. We noted to them that this was an emotional song, about being thankful to Singapore, as compared to We Are Singapore. After working on the song, we removed the lyrics. This led to split pitches throughout, which was a sign that some of them were still uncertain about the song. We moved on to recaps, before Miss Phoon conducted an activity so that we could hear each of them sing.

Recap:

• Warm-ups
• Breathing
• Open mouth
• Smile
• Sit up straight 

Miss Phoon's Activity:

The game consisted of 4 lines:

1. Hello Doggy, where's your bone? (5-5-3-3-5-5-3)
2. Someone stole it from my home. (5-5-3-3-5-5-3)
3. Who stole your bone? (5-3-5-3)
4. I stole your bone. (5-3,6-5-3)

Basically, the whole choir would sing line 1, and then a chosen student (the Doggy) would stand infront of the choir, back facing them, and sing line 2. Then choir would then sing line 3, and a selected student (thief) from in the choir would sing line 4. Then the Doggy had to guess who the thief was. This allowed us to hear each student sing individually, as well as get the choir to know each others voices in a fun and interactive manner.

Okay, this is Isaac, signing off. Bye!

020710 First Lesson of Semester 2!

Hi Everyone,

It's Wen Ye writing this blog post again! We just had our lesson with Grace Orchard Choir on Friday, and it was more successful... than usual.

All of us were there at 3pm sharp, and due to the coming open house, Benjamin was busy decorating the choir notice board during the two hours. The rest of us were in the room, teaching the choristers Tone and National Day Songs.

We started off with a sharing session amongst the choir, and we got the choristers to share their holidays with the rest of us, and while it took a while to get the ball rolling, we managed to get some of the quieter choristers to speak up. Also, it served to get the choristers to remember each other after the month-long break. We have to work on getting the choir members to be braver and feel good about speaking and singing, as performing in front of an audience will be more terrifying for the choir members especially if they have not had a chance to experience public speaking.

After a short sharing session, we moved on to Warmups. This time, we only did the physical warmups, like stretching and humming.

Next, we devoted quite a lot of time to teaching tone and breathing techniques. Basically, tone is the term used to group the sound of what we sing. For example, singing with the nose would result in a nasal tone. Singing too deep, would result in a darker tone. Breathing techniques would serve to benefit the choir by imparting skills to help them sing better. When performing on stage, these basics need to be firm, as the choir would not sound nice without developing their tone.
To start on tone techniques, I first demonstrated an example of bad choral tone. I slouched down on my seat, and sang without opening my mouth wide enough. Right after that, I sat up straight and opened my mouth wide. The choir members could tell the difference and they knew which sounded better. During the bad example, the sound produced was thin and soft, while during the good example, it was loud and rounded.
I gave them some things to remember:

1. Open your mouth wide - Think that you are yawning or swallowing a hamburger.
2. Sit up straight, and look forward.

However, this was still not enough to develop tone. We needed the choir to sing with a bright tone, to sound like a children's choir. To do this, I had the choir sing with an unhappy face. They scrunched up their face and sang "I scored zero marks"(13531). They described their sound as a sad and dark sound. After that, I got the choir to sing "I scored one million"(13531) with a happy face. Instantly, they knew that they sounded brighter and happier. To get them to go even further, they sang "I scored one Billion"(13531), with a happy and shocked face. (Open mouth and raised eyebrows and cheekbones). By the third time of "Billion", the choir could tell that the sound they produced was more suitable to their age. We decided to teach through simple expressions, as we did not want to get technical with all the raised cheekbones, etc, and instead told them to feel happy.

Next, we did breathing techniques, and had the students put one hand on their hips, and the other on their stomach. I demonstrated the bad way of breathing - breathing through your lungs. Then I did the right way - breathing with your stomach, expanding with breath and contracting with singing. On the first few tries, most of the choir had not grasped the method, and we did a pair activity, where each pair would feel each other to see how they were breathing. Most still did not grasp the method, and we will be spending more time next week with new exercises to teach this method.

The whole session of teaching basic foundations were quite successful, and we summarised the key techniques:

1. Sit up straight
2. Open mouth wide
3. Happy facial expression
4. Breath with stomach

We reminded the choir to try it at home, see their reflection in the mirror and sing - Bad example, then Good example, and try to make the techniques their own.

We were running short of time, and thus we jumped straight into We Are Singapore. We decided on teaching the song completely without the transposition. If later lessons permit, we may increase the difficulty of the song by adding a canon first, then maybe even transposition. We were quite fast with this song, as most of the choir learnt the song very quickly. Its a simple song after all.

We then had a 10 mins break, and we spent some time interacting with the students. Darren went on the Singapore Flyer! =)

We then had a short energizer activity, titled "Back from Break"! We did the ball throwing activity, but this time with the techniques taught above. And we took photos.

We then moved on to a more difficult song, This is Home. It features more lyrics and complex rhythms. We started by asking the choir what they feel is home. The answers we got were:

1. A place to stay (mine)
2. A beautiful place
3. A house
4. A big room
5. A house with staircases and lifts
6. Mum and Dad (Mummy and Papa - Darren)

I then asked them, does Singapore contain all these things that you said was home? So isn't Singapore your home too? (unanimous nodding) I then demonstrated the song once, and then we got the choir to sing each line slowly. When we came to the line "Where my dreams wait for me", we got the choir to give a list of things they felt was dreams(aspirations). We got some answers:

1. Grace Orchard Choir to perform well! (mine)
2. Score well for exams
3. Have fun during holidays

So, when we sang that line, we reminded the choir to think of their dreams, so that they can infuse emotion into this song.
We continued going through the lines, and stopping the choir at another two lines.

1. As my senses tell me - What are my senses, how do we know its Singapore?
2. I won't be alone - Why? Family and Friends

The reason for going through the lyrics line by line was to help the students understand the meaning behind the song. Compared to the patriotic We Are Singapore, this song is delicate and more emotional, and we want the students to bring about this emotion when singing.

Next, we got them to sing the song once through, and after a few more tries, we removed some words, replacing them with drawings(pictograms), and got the students to try to remember the words.

Finally, we ended the lesson with a lesson recap, and asked the students to recap on what we did.

1. Breathing techniques (see above)
2. We are Singapore
3. This is Home

They also remember the fun activities that made them laugh, and we will try to do more of this in the next lesson. They also prefer We Are Singapore compared to This is Home, thus we will try to focus more on This is Home. We will also see how far they have developed after practicing at home on their own. Also, we have to keep in mind not to take pictures of the students during lessons, as it is a major distraction. Many of the students are camera-shy (unlike Benjamin). Lastly, we will need to work on boosting their courage and giving them an experience of public speaking, so that they will not freak out when performing on National Day.

Signing off,
Wen Ye

Reflections on Camp + 020710 Lesson Plan

Hey Guys, the camp was so successful that we are all doing posts on it. =) I’ll be focusing on the teaching of the canon aspect of the camp. We divided the choir into two groups, with Isaac and Me leading one group, and the Bens the other. For our group, we started by reinforcing the song Glory to God, and then me and Isaac demonstrated the canon, with me starting in. We then split up our group into a further 2 parts, and we utilized the two whiteboards to guide the two groups, by writing the song out on the board and then pointing at the words. Isaac led his group in, and I led my group in at the second line. It was quite a good try, and after a few rounds, we let the groups face each other, with the whiteboard separating them. Then we removed the laptop, and the two parts were singing to each other. And we succeeded. =) The students were all very glad that they could achieve a two-part canon. Even though we lost in the showdown later on with the other group, the students enjoyed themselves greatly. One moment of note was how the students started talking right after their own part, and did not wait for the other part to finish their song. Ms Phoon intervened and told the whole choir about respect for each choir member. We will definitely be repeating this message, and teach the choir to respect each other in future lessons when the need arises.


The students learnt to respect each other as singers, and also learnt how to continue singing during a canon, and not be distracted by each other.

Now moving on to the rest of my post unrelated to the camp, the opening ceremony of Grace Orchard School will be held next Friday, and so, we are going to be decorating the choir notice board and make it very nice. As of now, it will have pictures of the choir inaction, and a list of all the choir members, and maybe with individual Shots too! Of course, it will be very bright and cutesy. But we will see the new noticeboard first this Friday before deciding on what to do. It will have Hobe done by next Thursday, a day before the Opening Ceremony. Talking about Friday, I’ve uploaded the lesson plan. The focus will be on the National Day Songs, and also on developing tone, and leading to pitch the next lesson.

Lesson Plan 020710

Sitting Postition

Warmups Physical

Tone exercises

-Posture (Neck,Cheekbones,Eyebrows,Tongue,Teeth)

-Stomach (Compress air)

-Practice with breathing techniques

-Less reliance on throat, more on chest/stomach

Vocal Warmups

Chew Face, Snake Hissing, Jog Run Jump, Ball Throwing, Underwater bubbles,

Imitation clapping

-This is Home

-We are Singapore

-Grace Orchard

-O Sing we This Day

We will be focusing on Tone exercises to improve their singing posture and overall choral sound, as that will be important during performances, to ensure that their voices blend properly.

sarpino's

HELLO!

This is Benjamin posting. I think I should do this post to start off, maybe the person with the paper recording down everything we did can add another post to stuff I missed out.

I named this blog post as sarpino's because it is what we had for lunch (the pizza) and it is the tangible thing which we brought back with us (literally) after the camp. And food is important to me, too.

Alright, so this post is going to be about the one-day camp we had planned for almost 3 weeks that happened today, 16 June 2010. I'll try and list it in chronological order, with the help of Benedict who is in a msn conversation with me right now.

I just realised that this whole portion on top has to be deleted when we file our blog for report purposes.

Looks like we're all set to go, so here's a quick insight as to what happened today.

It was a rainy start to the day but it didn't dampen our spirits. Luckily Grace Orchard isn't in Orchard, or we'd have wet games the whole day in a muddy swimming pool. Flash floods...

The day started out very simply with Ms Chan's two-hour session with the, if i am not wrong, students who were selected to perform for their opening ceremony.

I've been observing Ms Chan and her lessons very closely. She's very well versed and prepared at all times and she's really good at the piano and she knows what she's doing. I also realised that whatever terminology that she uses, the choir members actually understand them, which really goes to show that we don't have to simplify things so much even though they might have difficulties understanding at the start.

I've also noticed that her lessons are very fast-paced. Fast-paced in a sense that it's always moving and there is no gap in between segments. She doesn't even have words like "okay let us move on to ..." But her fast-paced is not those kinds when the students cannot even catch up. I think when our lessons are compared to hers, it is a bit pale, but I strongly believe that she's a paid professional and we're just students not used to teaching choir stuff when we are still in the process of learning it. That said, we have lots of areas we can improve on, starting from the pace of each activity.

Also, she individually tests the choir members and somehow the attention is still kept. Today there were about 10 students attending the extra practice session in the morning and each of them took turns to sing a tune. And the results were good. Not only did this affirm our idea that individual help is good for them, when wenye guided Terence, who has undergone puberty and has a low voice, individually, and Ms Chan commented that he was doing well. It's something interesting we can look at as well.

Towards the end of the 2hour session we moved to the Multi Purpose Hall, hereafter referred to as MPH, and what they did there was to practice voice projection for the opening ceremony, if I'm not wrong and it was our venue for the rest of the camp.

Ms Phoon and Ms Kwan ordered pizza and to our surprise it actually "fits into budget", but it was delayed for half and hour or so. So instead of having lunch before icebreakers, we had icebreakers before lunch, which proved to be a good move because people were all warmed up during lunch and were laughing and chatting a lot.

So before lunch we had icebreakers, which in the end, did not really follow the proposal because the response at the start wasn't that good, so we played a scaled down version of whacko called tap-o, first within small groups then we played as one whole choir, and Ms Phoon joined in as well and things really warmed up doing the mass tap-o. Of course we had some choir based icebreakers, like asking, "What is your name? My name is [insert name here]", and also there was splitting of groups, we had a yellow team, which was super unanimous on the part of that team, but we had a Red and Blue team because they couldn't really decide among themselves which colour they prefer, so we ended up giving them the colour they liked.

When the icebreakers began I realised that the older AM session choir members are more open, and the PM session choir members know their "seniors?" already. But still, we had to get them warmed up so that things would go on better later on.

When pizza arrived we went down for a meal and I think we all had a great time laughing chatting and playing with each other. Which was the reason why putting Icebreakers at the start was a good idea because people could start talking to each other and opening up to each other.

After Icebreakers we went back up to MPH and had a little bit of problem getting starting because we struggled with the whiteboards. We moved on with canon and tried various ways to get them to the notion of canon and even did twinkle twinkle little star in the form of a canon.

After they got used to the idea of a canon, we tried canon-ing Glory to God as one big group. The facilitators did the second part of the canon (ie we came in later) and the students were instructed to listen. Later we broke up into our teams and moved to 2 corners of the hall where we practiced the canon in the small group before facing off after about 30 minutes or so. Red and Blue team won this mini competition, and yellow team did a small forfeit.

We had a short break here before moving on to Poison Ball and Captains Ball. But at this point many of them were very tired and about 8 of them KO-ed and sat out of captains ball after poison ball, which was a little bit sad but we had no choice. Still we had lots of fun playing captains ball and poison ball, a game I might not forget so soon.

Then was the debrief.

"Was this Camp fun?"

(resoundingly) "YES!"

That probably sums up how much fun, laughter and learning we experienced in a day-camp with the choir members.

Before I close this entry, may I remind all other group members to type something out in their personal blogs for RESL on this. It's something you sure have lots to talk about :D

I'm gonna click publish post after this,

Benjamin :D

GOS Practice 21 May

Hello world. It's me again, Isaac. I know this post is very overdue, but hey, better late than never :p

First up, attendance for 21 May. Everyone was present.

We started choir at right about 3.13pm on a bad note (pun not intended) with Miss Phoon giving a pep talk to the choir She then proceeded to talk to Phyllis outside. Wenye took over and gave a short "speech", then Phyllis suddenly runs back in. After some "events", we proceeded back to practice proper (without the presence of Phyllis).

We started with reintroductions, followed by some warm-ups of shaking the body and stretching. We then processed to use so creatures to show the  body movement, by making the choristers cuddle up when the snail is shown, and do a star jump when a starfish is shown. The breathing exercises also got taken over by the balloon. Some of them thought the balloon would "burst" when breathing in because of too much air. After that was the all famous throwing of water balloons with the "whee~~~", and then some mouth exercises by making them chew and hum. Following that was some running, jumping and raising hands to get the kids active.

After that was done, we got on to some pitching, by getting the choristers to do "Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha" in the tune of 1-3-5-3-1, and then some more breathing, this time pretending to go underwater and "bubble out" the air. Yes, I do realize at this point that our warm-ups are going everywhere. Anyways, back to topic. We then continued with some rhythm by making them clap and stomp. They have a really good sense of rhythm btw. Then, we moved on to trying to stomp the tempo to a song. We tried it with my arrangement of Apologize, and erm, everyone including Wenye failed. Sorry, my arrangements are too great. We tried to revert back to the standard songs but encountered some technical errors so while sorting that out, we got them to do "Hello, how are you?", and then proceeded back to stomping to twinkle twinkle little star.

At 3.30pm, we finally moved on to a song. We got them started on doing the tunes of 1-2-3-2-1 and 1-2-3-4-3-2, and then put in the words. I would like to mention at this point that the song we are doing is We Are Singapore. Anyways, we asked them to place emphasis on the word "roar" in "Hear the lion roar", like they were doing a roar. The students really enjoyed that part, and it also keeps them attentive and adds a spark to the song. Wen Ye then went on to compare the solfage for the lines, and then got a little bit confused, but the choristers progressed fast following that. After a bit of dispute in the tune of the last line, we finally ended the song and gave them a break.

Lesson resumed at 4.07pm, with warm-ups. Started with dog panttings, and the run-jump-walk game (so amptly named) as well as getting them to throw imaginary water balloons and glissando down the scale as the balloon is thrown. Moved on to Bugle's Calling at 1610. Worked more on finding their pitch from a note this time, and them managed to get them to do a 2-part harmony. The time spent on it was fairly short, about 7 minutes, and then we moved on to Glory to God.

For Glory to God, we did not tell them that we were doing it. Instead, we got them to guess the song we were doing by playing the tune. Eventually, they managed to guess we were going to do glory to god. We tried to get them to use the water balloon "technique" to reach the high notes, and after solving that problem, proceeded to doing the song. Wen Ye messed up at this point. He told them to do solfage, but he did words instead. Also, he messed up the tune and stuff. So Miss Phoon intervened, and then we finally got back on track. We eventually decided to get them to stand up and sing as they were getting restless, and wenye gets things wrong on the 3rd line this time. After Miss Phoon's intervention once again, we finally got back on track (once again). The main problem for the song this round was rhythm, so we got them to clap the rhythm before we moved on to the next song.

At 3.31, we worked a bit on the school song, mainly solving some pronunciation problems. For example, they were saying "praise" instead of "place". We moved on to a short game after about 4 minutes. The students had to pass a message, in this case the message was a part of the song "glory to god". We did a little competition between the rows, and the back row won (yay).

After that, we ran through we are singapore, bugle's calling and glory to god, before proceeding to the last song of the day, O sing we this day. Because we were unsure of the song, Miss Phoon did a demo (she has great voice) of the song, and then wenye attempted to take over. However, he failed at trying to teach them to go downscale. The students were doing a glissando instead of a "stepped" downscale. With much perseverance however, we managed to get them to do it. For the 4th time in the day, Miss Phoon takes over again, and progressed quickly with the students. She also put in names of students and got everyone to sing to get them familiar with singing downscale. Eventually, the students managed to sing without the piano.

We ended at 1655. I feel that this lesson has taught us that we have much to learn about guiding the choristers, and we should not be complacent just because we've managed to teach them a song or two. We also need to find new ways to keep them engaged and we should be open to new ideas.

Raffles Community Leaders Forum (Pre-Forum thoughts)

Hello once again!

Its Wen Ye posting once more, but this time it won't be about our lessons (well mostly), as Isaac will be posting on our most recent lesson, soon.
I recently attended the Raffles Community Leaders Forum's Pre-forum and would like to share my experience, and link it back to how we may learn and apply to our lessons.

But first, just an update, we'll be going to Grace Orchard School on the 16th of June from 10am to 4pm for the Choir Camp! We obviously have exciting plans, but I'll leave that till another post.

The RCLF officially starts tomorrow, but the Pre-forum was held last Wednesday, and our group, or SIG(special interest group) for the Physically Disabled. Yeah you read right, wasn't given the Intellectually Disabled SIG, but that's still fine, because, as I learnt, there are quite a number of similarities.

The Preforum started out with icebreakers within our 15 member group, and for us to learn more about each other, and start interacting. Also, we took turns to ride a wheelchair throughtout the activities, and when it came to my turn, it wasn't easy to control the wheelchair. It may seem fun, but I cannot imagine sitting in it everyday of my life.

Next, we watched a documentary titled "Emmanuel's Gift", which is about how a physically disabled man in Ghana overcame social stigma and fight for the Physically disabled in their country.

We then went to the Singapore Association for the Visually Handicapped (SAVH), where we were treated to lunch - in the dark. :) Basically, diners have their food in this completely darkened room, and they are served by a blind waiter/ress. I had read of this activity in the papers, but I really didn't expect to be experiencing it. However, it was definitely one of the best lunches I've had. The food wasn't fantastic, but the experience was great. We were greeted and briefed outside the darkroom by our waitress, then led into the darkroom, and we took our places around what felt like a table. We had no idea of telling what our surroundings was, as it was so dark that I couldn't see my hand when I put it infront of my face.
We experienced what is like to eat if you are blind, you have to listen and follow instructions clearly, 'your cup is on the right of the serviette', but when you are in the dark, you sort of go crazy. One thing was that my eyes kept on closing, and suddenly I felt very tired. My other group members also started talking very loudly, maybe trying to keep themselves awake.
Once the lights went on, I got a shock. My plate was pretty clean, but one of my SIG-lings had spilled the water in his cup. Another had poured creamer (intended for his coffee) into his ice-cream bowl instead.

So how does this relate to our RE project at hand? Sometimes we may blame the choristers in the class when we are unable to teach the choir or manage the choir ('So and So was dancing and singing during the lesson!'), but actually, many of the kids have tried hard to behave themselves, but are unable to. Sometimes, we just need to experience what its like to be  disadvantaged before we know how hard it is. If you asked me before dinining in the dark whether it would be easy to, I would say I wouldn't have trouble eating even if I were blind. After experiencing it for 30 mins, I am extremely glad for my sense of sight. However, this has brought me to be more patient when working with the choristers, as I have never been able to feel whats it like to be like them.

Signing off,
Wen Ye

GOS Practice 14 May

Hi, it's Isaac here, finally posting on the group blog for once. MYEs are finally over! Anyways, I'll be posting for what happened during the last pratice (14 May). The whole team turned up this round, (Wen Ye, Benjamin, Benedict and me).

The choir came in at 3.07pm, and we began after a bit of delay. We first started with reintroductions (familiar slides much) and then proceeded to warm-ups. Wen Ye first got them to the write sitting position, then asked them to stand up instead. Then he proceeded to do the hissing warmup. The new slides were mainly pictures, so there was a small snake to represent a soft hiss, and a larger snake to represent a louder hiss, but I don't think the choir really quite got it at the start.

He then got the choir to do some running and jogging on the spot to warm-up themselves, then got them to do a "Whee~" glissando down the scale. He started on a soh. The choir then proceeded to make "bubble sounds" coupled with Wen Ye's nie underwater slide.

After that they had a little activity. Wen Ye would clap a sequence and the choir had to mimic it. They generally did gerat, and Shawn even gave a demo. The children really enjoyed it, and then we moved on to pitching.

We went to each individual choirister and asked them question abuot themselves like "What is you name?" or "How old are you?" by singing it in a tune (5-3-5-3). Most of them could reply, although some had problems fitting their answer in a tune, while some mistook the question "how old are you?" as "how are you?" We then recapped the "do mi soh" with them, and ask them which is higher, lower etc. We did everything in D major and Wen Ye didn't realize, and he even gave an "A" for a "mi" xD

Proceeded to Bugle's calling after that, we recapped the song with them, then tried to introduce the concept of multi parts (harmonization). At first, wenye would do a "mi" for the last note, then the rest did a "soh" or a "doh". After that, we split them into 3 groups and got each group to do either a "doh", "mi" or "soh" for the last note. My group was very quiet, had to coax them abit before they sang their note, which was "doh". We had a short break, and decided to swap the parts, so my group did a "mi" instead, which better.

After that, we got them to do the dog panting, then some star jumps, hopping on the spot, and some running, jumping and walking. Went through the school song, a few times to make sure they rememebered it, then we proceeded to teaching them moer of the scale (d - r - m - f- s).

They got confused a few times, but we managed to settle it, then we taught them "Stand up for Singapore". We tried to help them find their pitch by using the concept of steps, and also used to our hands to represent how high or low the note is. Then got them to play a game we'd liek to call "Clap Clap Jump" because they were getting tired, then went back to singing stand up for singapore. At this point, they started to sing louder!

We consolidated the lesson, and then ended off practice. Miss Phoon then gave us some feedback. She said that our slides this time was something "refreshing", but maybe we could start withan easier song instead of "Stand up for Singapore". I feel her words are qutie true, so next lesson we intend to teach them an easier song instead.

Typing off,
Isaac

GOS Practice 7th May (Conductor Ms Nita Chan)

Hey its Wen Ye posting again!
Been pretty busy during the MYEs week, so now I'll be posting on what happened during last week's practice (7th May). Ms Nita Chan took over the choir practice for that week, and I (Isaac and Benedict inclusive) picked up MANY new pointers and methods from her.
To start off, Me, Benedict and Isaac were present during this lesson.
Ms Chan started by stating the ground rules for the lesson - have fun but not be disorderly.
She then did the full body warmups, eg neck/head rotation, body stretching, touch toes, shake legs and hands, squeeze hips.
She then proceeded to vocal warmups, with snake hissing, face chewing and massaging.
Then she made the choir run, jog and jump, then throw imaginary balls at each other. From my observation, the choir really enjoys physical activites, I suppose sitting down for 2 hours isn't fun at all. =(.
Ms Chan also did the "ya-ha-ha-ha-ha" (1-3-5-3-1) warmup and then got the choir to chew their mouths and humm. Imagine chewing a hamburger in your mouth and then humming a note.
Moving on, she made the choristers imagine that they were going underwater, firstly by taking a deep breath, then blowing/raspberrying it the air out. The kids really enjoyed this.
Next up was imitation clapping, where Ms Chan clapped a series of simple rhythms, then got the students to imitate. The students responded quite well, and the clapping was pretty uniform.
She then got the piano to play a prerecorded MIDI file, and then increased/decreased the tempo, and choristers had to adjust their walking speed in relation to the tempo. Another fun activity!
Apart from Imitation clapping, she also did imitation sounds, where she would make a sound like "M" or "N" or "NG" and got the choir to follow. The "NG" sounded quite like an ambulance approaching!
The last of the warmups was the Q&A session, where she personally asked each student a question like "How old are you?" (5-3-5-3) and the chorister would reply "I am thirteen."(5-3-5-3), basically she wanted everyone to repy with a tune, and get them to have their own 5-second solo. Most of the choristers were quite shy, but after coaxing them to sing, the voices that came out were extremely nice! Maybe I should keep my mouth closed more often. Oops.
After the warmups, Ms Chan started on reinforcing the concept of Solfege. She wrote D-M-S on the whiteboard, and when she pointed to each solfege, got the choir to sing it. Pretty in tune, and we can tell that they have got the concept of higher/lower pitch.
She then went on to teach Bugles Calling. One technique we learnt here is that before she got the choir to sing, she first had the choir to listen to how it sounds like in their minds, sort of like thinking before speaking, she asked them to think before singing, and surprisingly, the choir was in tune! For the first few tries though, it was evident that the choristers were abit shy and each member did not want unnecessary attention by singing too loudly, but after a bit of coaxing and reminding, the choir got to a reasonable volume. This is one aspect we have to work into the lessons we plan, getting the kids to concentrate on the song before singing. Also, after she reinforced this new method, she added on by telling the choristers to get ready the tune in their head, and then when singing it out, combine it with the lyrics. Sounds abstract here, but it worked. However, personally, I feel that this is to build the self-confidence of each member, and before we can start on this, we must ensure that everyone has memorized and is familiar with the song in mind.
There was a break here, and the time recorded was 4pm, so it was quite amazing that she managed to complete so much in 1 hour. For the warmups, we learnt that we should breeze through the warmup, and move on to the next warmup after a few tries instead of repeating, so that we can keep the excitement/momentum going.

After the break, she wanted to teach a new song, Glory to God.
Firstly, she wrote out the solfege scale, got the choir to sing it ascending then descending. Afterwards, she removed some of the solfege, and left do-mi-so-la on the board.
To teach the new note la, she pointed to it, demo-ed, then got the choir to sing, Simiarly, she did the same thing when teaching intervals.
To furthur reinforce, she got the choir to sing (1-3-5-6-5-3-1)
She then taught the song by writing the solfege on the board, then drawing a pitch line above the solfege. So for example, the first line went 1-3-5-5-3-1-6-5, and the pitch line would be ascending, descending, then a sharp steep incline. After the choir memorized the line, she added the lyrics below the solfege. The choir managed to learn this line by 4.20pm, or 20 mins since the break started. Impressive.
She then taught the next line (^1--5-3-1-3-4-3-2-3) using the same method, basically, drawing the pitch lines then adding the words.
To end off the lesson, she got the choir to play the telephone game, where she gave a message to each row to pass down to the end. From my point of view, it appeared to me as a recap of the lesson, as she sent messages like claps, solfege signs and tunes.
As there was some time left, she taught the last line, which was 1-1-1-1-1-4-1 with the abovementioned method (use of silence in head) and ended the lesson by 4.45pm.
The next 15 mins was spent testing each individual, and I recorded some notes, and I will upload it during the next RE lesson.
Overall, I learnt loads during this lesson, and many of her ideas were applied during this week's lesson (14 May).
Isaac, Benedict, if you guys have anything to add, feel free to do so.

Wen Ye

RE Lesson 28 April

Hey guys,

Its Wen Ye posting again!

Its pretty sad that we wont be seeing the choir this Friday (30th Apr) as GOS is having a sports meet.
Therefore, we will only be seeing the choir on the 5th May, next week.

We're all busy during RE period, I've just completed the Lesson Plan for 5 May, Isaac is contacting recording studios and inquiring about their rates, and Benjamin and Benedict are planning the June Holiday Camp.

I've uploaded the Lesson Plan for 5 May!

Lesson Plan - 5 May
Things to note
1. Previous lesson was on 23 April, so it’s a two week break since they met us.
2. Interlink so that the choristers know why they are learning.
3. Group work works well (generates good response)
4. Add in fun activities in-between activities to stimulate and engage choristers.
5. Spread out the warm-ups, especially the fun ones.
6. Competition, Volunteering works well too

Warm-ups
1. Choir Sitting Position  Sit up straight, hands on lap.
2. Candle blowing  5, 7, 10 candles.
3. Snake Hissing – Huge Anaconda V.S. Smallest Rattlesnake.
4. Ma Meh Mi Moh Mu – Develop Tone!
Develop Tone (Tie in to Grace Orchard)
a. Close vocal cords (tuck neck)
b. Relax facial muscles
c. High cheekbones (open mouth)
d. Tongue on inner teeth
e. Ensure that pitch stays constant (use straight line pitch cards)
5. Tone Exercises  Ah/Eeh/Airh : 1-2-3-4-3-2-1(5) OR 1-2-3-4-3-4(2)-5(1)
6. Solfege Recap
- Do So Mi : Competition, have each group send one representative.
7. “Laughing is Contagious”  tie in with tone
8. Pitch Cards

Songs
1. Bugles’ Calling – Start on Canon
a. Start by demonstrating a two part canon (Wenye + Isaac)
b. Then get a volunteer to sing Do  Wen Ye then sings Mi
c. Divide into two groups, one row + teachers = two rows  one group sing Do, other Mi
d. Sing one line canon( Group 1: Bugles Calling ; once finish; Group 2 takes over.)
e. Then two lines canon.
f. NOTE: do not waste too much time on this activity.
-break-
2. Starjumps/Stretches
3. Clap Clap Jump
4. Grace Orchard School Song (Recap and Recap)
a. Breathing Techniques (breathing marks)
b. Recap on the more difficult words like “develop”
c. Phrasing
d. “Grace Orchard”  “Grace” louder (and more emphasis) than “Orchard”,
e. Develop a rhythmic flow for the song.
f. 2/3 way climax for most lines.

Fun Activity
1. Dog panting (tie in to stagger breathing)
2. Lips Loosening

5. Introduce National Day Song (Sing Singapore Medley)
a. Teach “Stand up for Singapore”

Thats pretty much what we're gonna do, I'm now working on the Powerpoint presentation.

Signing Off,
Wen Ye

NOTE: This post will be edited at the end of RE period

Lesson 3 (23 April)

This is admin Benjamin, I'm doing the post today. Just came back from GOS, after that hour long train ride from Lakeside to Paya Lebar but that's besides the point.

First, settle some admin and stats first. We clocked about 3hrs today, with Benedict and myself reaching at 2.20pm for setup and Wenye at 3.01pm for teaching. Isaac had some Earth Day event or something like that, so he couldn't make it for today's lessons.

Up next we'll have a chronological listing of today's events.

Before we formally started our lesson, a few girls from the morning session entered the class for a short session with the new conductor, Ms Chan. They were using the keyboard, so we couldn't start the lesson. There was a slight delay and we started the session only around 3.10pm.

When the lesson started, we forgot one fundamental thing, that is, to make sure that the students are actually sitting upright and with both soles on the ground. There wasn't much of an introduction, and we dove straight into warm ups. We started out with finger-candle blowing. First it was 5 counts, then 2 sets of 10, then 1 finger blow ten counts. Things started out alright, just that towards the end the students decided to become snakes and hiss at their fingers instead of blowing, so we "might-as-welled" moved on to the snakes/hissing warm up. This warm up was skewed to be more of a breathing control, teaching the students how much air they should release while making the sound. We tried 10 seconds, but some of our choristers couldn't hold it there, so we went to 7 seconds, and without much delay we moved on to the next activity.

Note that at this point of time we forgot to do dog panting, despite a cue to Wenye to initiate the activity. That aside, we moved on to the ma me mi mo mu warm ups, which was somewhat, to me, not fully taken advantage of. We stayed at one note for this warm up, before we moved up one note higher. That is, we only did two notes, which wasn't exactly a good thing because they are not warming up their vocal range. Last week, we moved relatively high up the scale and we could stretch the students a little, and I was a little disappointed on how fast we moved away from this warm up. Next lesson, we should work on stretching the students a little. Last week's lesson showed that they could go pretty high on the scales.

Then we had star jumps within the confined space, which i thought was not a good idea because the choristers were less than half an arm length away from each other, and there was a bit of knocking on the chairs and on each other. Not good. Jumping on the spot and other games would have been better.

After this we did solfege, and it is quite heartening to see that the choristers remembered all the hand signs, which was a good thing because it indicates that they are paying attention to us and absorbing whatever we say. We made them sing the note with the piano, which generated relatively good response from the choristers. Moving on, we also tried without the piano, which wasn't very successful because they only had an impression of doh in their minds.

Next we did the "hello, how are you" warm up. We tried getting volunteers to do, but apart from some of our choristers the response was not very good, so we decided to do by group, that is, front bench and back bench. We started out by asking the front bench to ask the back bench for a reply, then we reversed roles. Then we made each pair demonstrate, and the volume of each pair wasn't very impressive. We should work on their confidence, in view of this.

After that we moved in to laughing is contagious, but at this point in time i noticed many of our choristers we drinking a lot of water, so i gathered we made them do quite a bit at the start so we asked them to take a sip of water. Then the choristers understood it as a break, so they started insisting on going to the toilet. The sit-at-your-place water break became the normal break we had, so there was a disruption in our plans.

After the break we moved away from laughing is contagious for a while. We started the post-break with the loosening of lips, then we inserting dog panting here. We got some of the choristers to demonstrate laughing is contagious to us after that, and then we had two or three rounds of the song before moving into GOS school song.

First was the run-through of the lyrics. How to read and enunciate etc, and I recapped on the meanings of the difficult words in the song, but it turned out that none of them recalled it, so it was kinda awkward in that situation. We quickly moved on to both volume and vocal range, and this time we tried the parabolas happy curve and sad curve and the exponential curve and the downwards version of it, etc. The choristers grabbed this concept well, maybe we could exploit this.

After that we went through GOS again, very in depth, with breathing, enunciation, loudness all incorporated in today's session. We split the song into 3-line segments, and went through the song. Response here was extremely poor, but we can't blame them because they have been working in the same song for the past month, and indeed it is getting a bit dry. Nevertheless, we're working towards our goal of a recording that seems a bit difficult now, but it's a task worth undertaking.

Finally we went on to Bugles' Calling, but it was really late in the lesson and our dear teacher failed to understand the cues that time was up until 4.55pm, after the bell had rung. Within the course of five minutes we complicated Bugles' Calling a lot, and it was not very good for the students.

Either way, the students were super restless and touchy today. Ms Phoon says that it could be due to the girls from the morning session appearing before the session, making them a bit sensitive. It was quite a problem for us, because today's productivity was at an all time low, and we failed to do anything properly.

Moving away from the lesson, the new conductor, Ms Chan, gave us some advice that I thought made sense to me. She said we need not focus on being too perfectionist with the students, and should instead get them to grasp the concept before we go for perfection. In other words, as long as the students get the idea that so is higher than me and doh, and can illustrate this concept properly, we can then fine tune that to perfection.

I can't remember anything now, and whatever i noted down in teaching minutes has been used up, so I'll end the post here. Might be edits, might not, we'll see if I recall anything I missed out.
[EDIT: Hey this is Wen Ye posting - I do agree that this lesson was not very productive, and I missed certain cues on our planned lesson, particularly because I had missed the previous lesson and I had little sense of continuity. Given that I will be taking the next lesson, I will definitely improve on this lesson to do better. To ensure that choristers are engaged, some of the less-important warmups will be spread throughout the lesson - (esp the more engaging ones.).]

Benjamin

Edited by Wen Ye

Lesson Plan for 23th April

Hey Guys,
This is Wen Ye posting our lesson plan for 23th April, 2 days from now!
We will be teaching the choir infront of their choir conductor, hope we are able to get some tips after/during the lesson!

Here goes,

Things to note


1. Previous lesson was on 16 April

2. Interlink so that the choristers know why they are learning.

3. Group work works well (generates good response)

4. Add in fun activities in-between activities to stimulate and engage choristers.

5. Competition, Volunteering works well too.

Warm-ups

1. Dog panting (tie in to stagger breathing)

2. Candle blowing and breathing techniques

The following warm ups will be used in-between the practice to engage choristers.

3. Ma Meh Mi Moh Mu

- Ensure that pitch stays constant (use straight line pitch cards)

4. Solfege Recap

- Do So Mi : Competition, have each group send one representative.

5. “Hello, how are you?” “I’m fine, thank you.” (Tie in with Solfege)

6. “Laughing is Contagious”

7. Lips loosening: Brrr (with the lips, drink water before doing this activity)

- Use in between activities.

8. Starjumps, Stretches

- Use in between activities.

Fun Activity – Vocal Range

Bring along pitch cards/PowerPoint (Pitch Cards.ppt). Ask choristers to sing and modify their pitches according to the lines on the pitch cards. Optional.

Do note that only the pitch increase, and reinforce the fact that a higher pitch does not equate a louder volume.

-Break-

Songs

1. Bugles’ Calling (Recap)

a. Use solfege to demonstrate the notes  Point to ladder on screen.

b. Phrasing (Bugles’ Calling, Calling, Calling  climax on second “ling”)

c. Start on two-part canon, divide into two groups, one row + teachers = two rows.

2. Grace Orchard School Song (Recap)

a. Breathing Techniques (breathing marks)

b. Recap on the more difficult words like “develop”

c. Phrasing

d. “Grace Orchard”  “Grace” louder (and more emphasis) than “Orchard”,

e. Develop a rhythmic flow for the song.

f. Start introducing climaxes.

g. 2/3 way climax for most lines.

3. Develop Tone (Tie in to Grace Orchard)

a. Close vocal cords (tuck neck)

b. Relax facial muscles

c. High cheekbones (open mouth)

d. Tongue on inner teeth

e. Tone Exercises Ah/Eeh/Airh : 1-2-3-4-3-2-1(5) OR 1-2-3-4-3-4(2)-5(1)

4. Introduce National Day Song (Sing Singapore Medley)(optional - time constraints)

a. Start with ‘Stand up for Singapore’ (just a teaser)

b. Choir should be excited to learn more songs next lesson

Lesson Goal: Settle all memorization works, recap on Solfege and develop “Grace Orchard” musically. Lastly, develop tone.

Hopefully, we will be able to accomplish all things planned.
 
Last week, Benjamin and Isaac took over as teachers as I had personal committments.
This Lesson, I will be teaching the choir, and hopefully they still remember me! =)
 
Signing off,
Wen Ye

2nd Lesson - 16th April

Benedict here, I'll be posting for this lesson.

This post will be rather... long, but I feel that it fulfils our "research requirements" - from the report part, anyway. Detailed data logs, you know...

As a random piece of trivia, this post is 2,062 words long (including this line).

We loaned a tablet PC from RI's Aesthetics dept. for its capability to let us annotate, and probably will be doing so for the upcoming weeks as well. It was signed out by Benjamin, but is currently relaxing in my room. I'll be bringing it back Monday recess.

Attendance - Wen Ye wasn't here today, other than that the rest of us were present. Benjamin and I arrived at Grace Orchard at about 2.20 to set up everything first. Isaac came at about 3.

Ah yes, I almost forgot to mention - Isaac and Benjamin took over Wen Ye's teaching job for today.

We began by reacquainting the students with our team members (refer to slide "we're back~ ! who's who?"). They were able to identify us each by name, which was good. Following which, we went on to warm-ups.

For this post, I'll be listing each activity as we carried it out - well, in chronological order. Since that's pretty much how I've taken notes. There were 14 activities today. I'll start off with the warm-ups section, followed by the main lesson. The format will be arranged as follows - main points and sub-points, followed by elaboration (much like that of movesets on the smogon.com forums, for those who know)

1) Breathing Exercises
- Snake Hissing
- Candle Blowing
- Dog Panting

Overall, these activites were well carried out. Our new teacher(s) did a very good job, despite being generally less well-prepared, I suppose? Our choristers actually remembered each warm-up from our previous lessons. Whether this was due to the warmups being frequently used, or to their own memory - it's quite hard to be sure at this point in time. The transition between each exercise was good, except that a few people had problems changing (hissing when they're supposed to be blowing candles?)

2) Ma Me Mi Mo Mu
- Varied pitch
- Volunteering
- Pitching problems
- Timing

Okay, this was our second warmup. We began by calling for volunteers, and there were actually students who took the initiative. Not bad at all. However, when we started to vary the pitch (from middle C to about A, then back down), they were unable to hit the same note five times in a row (as required by the warmup). Their pitch went off a couple of times, which we tried to correct. Weren't very successful.

3) Solfege
- Revision - Sol Doh Mi
- Improvements
- Competition/Confidence training
- Involvement

We began by revising what we did last week, with the hand　signs and all. Again, we called for volunteers, with a positive response. The choir had a rather big improvement, compared to last week - when they were just learning the ropes. After our teaching, we asked them - which sign is which sign? - and I suppose it turned out ok.

Then, we had that little competition thing. Call a representative from each bench to the front, and such. We got the people sitting down to join the representatives as well, as a form of getting them to be more used to the signs. This also boosted the representatives' confidence, as it involved going up in front of the class and doing things. We clapped even though they could have been much better - but this is also part of encouraging them to want to improve.

I feel that putting this right after #1 Breathing Exercises might work - we can teach them that #2 Ma Me Mi Mo Mu is actually the same note - this might help them to pitch better. Comments anyone?

4) Our little game
- Jump 10 times
- Jump & Clap

(16th April slides - time to loosen up!)

This was slotted in between Solfege and #5, Hello, How Are You. It was actually to let the students loosen up a bit, as Solfege was rather dry, with just us teaching and them following. No offense intended anywhere. So, we made the students jump 10 times, repeatedly - followed by the jumping and clapping activity. It helps the students to focus more, I think. The activity served its purpose in the end, so all's well.

5) Hello, How Are You?
- Line-by-line
- Volume decreasing
- Mixing of lines
- Question-and-response (benches)
- Singing "happily"

We did this song line by line. Which isn't saying much, as there are only two lines to this rather short "song"... Referenced to Solfege here as well. Then, we got them to face each other by benches, as last week. Then, we switched their roles (ie. first bench sang reply). After a while, they started mixing up their lines (blue bench sang yellow benchs' line). Well, they started to sing a little more 'sadly' as well - lack of enthusiasm, boredom perhaps. "We must sing happily!".

6) Laughing is Contagious
- Memory
- Tempo Increase
- Pitch Variation

Well, perhaps it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that our choir was able to remember all the lyrics of this - we, after all, have done it quite a few times. Still, this is something worth mentioning...

We changed the tempo, making them sing faster and faster. They were able to keep in time, for most of it... until we reached a certain point, then it was observable that most of them could not keep up with the pace. I think we'll have to work on this and try to increase their maximum speed.

Ah, and the pitch variation. Since this warmup of sorts actually has a 5-note range, which is rather large compared to our other warmups, we might try to get our students to sing higher. As in, in different keys - this may also help them with the concept that solfege is actually relative pitch.

7) [New!] Volume Control
- Imitation
- Volunteering
- Encouragement

Here, we (extensively) made use of the tablet's annotation capabilities. Drawing curves and everything (reference: pitch cards) we *tried* to get the choir to vary their volumes. This wasn't really very successful, but it's acceptable as it's just out first try. Improvements can be made on this in future lessons.

Like the previous activities, we called for volunteers again. This is a good way to bring out some of the quieter students in our class, I suppose. It's also good that we had different volunteers most of the time. Encouragement is needed to push our students further...

8) Break Time

Nothing much to be said here, everyone went to fill their water bottles and the like. The classroom was unusually empty today, though.

9) Recap - Volume Control
- De/crescendo
- If you did it before...?

We found it useful to do a recap on what we taught before the break. Softer then louder, louder then softer - we used the tablet again to draw those curves again. When a few members weren't able to follow, Benjamin encouraged them by saying, "Let's try again. If you did it before..." - which I suppose, was good. After a while they caught up.

10) Grace Orchard: Volume Control
- Volunteering
- Application

Much like the previous activities, we called for volunteers. What is rather strange is that it's different students volunteering each time - it would be expected that the same few students would dominate the class. However, it's not that this is a bad thing...

We applied the volume control thing here again, writing lyrics and then writing the de/cresc signs above them. I think this went quite well, the students were able to follow us. Meaning, teaching pace was OK.

11) Pitching Activity
- Repeated curves

This is perhaps where we have room for improvement - like Ms. Phoon mentioned, if we first used the curve-thingies to teach the students volume control, they'd get confused if we re-used them for pitch. Perhaps we can look into using different colors for annotation (isn't really much of an issue, as we have the tablet with us).

Other than that... the students generally understood after a while.

12) Bugles' Calling
- Revision of words
- Volunteering (again)
- Solfege application
- "We'll do the first line."

We begun revising the words. Bugles' Calling is relatively new compared to things like Laughing Is Contagious, but the students were still able to remember the lyrics. That's a good sign, isn't it? The volunteering thing was repeated, and I think it has produced quite good results. Since it's pretty much different people volunteering anyway.

Applied solfege to this song, since it's rather simple and covers only 3 different notes. The choir followed us rather well here as well. Following which, we tried to get them to sing line-by-line, but resulted in them singing the whole thing. Singing the whole thing well. This is a big improvement from last week.

15) Grace Orchard
- Marking de/cresc, difficult words
- Repeat words 5 times, defined
- Revision of most difficult line
- Blacking out lyrics
- Volume control, emphasis

Our final activity, the school song. We started off by marking out the changes in volume throughout the song, using the de/cresc signs we used in the Volume Control section. Then, we revised the 'difficult words' - humility, integrity, and another one which I can't recall. We said them five times each (slowly) to help the students with their timing, I suppose... then we defined them, hopefully to give the students a greater impression of the words. We then revised the most difficult line to sing (a person of integrity, ---). They did this very well.

Next, we started to black out lyrics using the tablet's annotation thingy. They could still sing the song fluently, with no detectable pauses or confusion. This was really good. We wound up blanking out the whole song, but they were still able to sing it. Whether this was due to our teachers singing along and guiding them, or their own memory - this, we should be testing next lesson.

14) Rounding Up

We briefly ran through the whole lesson again, going through everything. This served as more of a refresher course for the earlier part of the lesson, which the students may have forgotten already. Saying our goodbyes, we dismissed them at about 5, in time for their assembly.

Now that the data log is done, let's move on to implications/learning points.

Generally, the students' performance today was very good. They're willing to learn and everything, so I think that we won't really have that much of a problem teaching them. Perhaps, what would have taken them a month to learn before would take only three weeks now?

Another point I'd like to note is our lesson order - we could move Grace Orchard's volume control part to the end with the whole song itself. Teaching them the volume for just two words, Grace and Orchard, might actually disrupt the flow of the lesson. If we took that and put it at the end, then it'd flow from our recap on volume control to Pitch Variation.

Ah yes, and volunteering. We noted that many of them were actually eager to volunteer today. This is a good sign, as they're actually building up their self-confidence through this as well. We might have to actually call on the quieter students as well, as they may not be as enthusiastic (for the lack of a better word) as compared to the other students.

And as mentioned above, the thing about using two different symbols for pitch/volume variation. Perhaps, different coloring might work. We'll have to experiment with that, though. I feel it'll help the students grasp things better - "oh, the teacher's using blue now, that indicates pitch!" - and will also make our lives simpler.

It would seem that their memories are actually quite good, as they've exhibited multiple times this lesson. As mentioned previously, this might help us achieve our goals faster - the faster we teach them the songs, the more we can do revision and stuff.

Well, that's all for this lesson - sorry for the *rather* long read.

RE Meeting 14 April 2010 ; Lesson Plan 16 April 2010

Hello everyone,

this is Wen Ye posting again!

Basically, for this lesson, we completed the lesson plan for 16th April's lesson, and there aren't much changes.
We added a new activity: Pitching Cards
We'll go more in-depth later.

16/4/10 Lesson Plan
Things to note
1. Previous lesson was on 9 March
2. Interlink so that the choristers know why they are learning.
3. Group work works well (generates good response)
4. Add in fun activities in-between activities to stimulate and engage choristers.
Warm-ups
1. “Hello, how are you?” “I’m fine, thank you.” (Tie in with Solfege)
2. Ma Meh Mi Moh Mu
3. “Laughing is Contagious”
4. Dog panting (tie in to stagger breathing)
5. Candle blowing and breathing techniques
The following warm ups will be used in-between the practice to engage choristers.
6. Lips loosening: Brrr (with the lips, drink water before doing this activity)
7. Starjumps, Stretches
Teach Solfege
1. Do – Hands clenched
2. Mi – Hands parallel to ground
3. So – Hands perpendicular to ground
4. I sing Do, you sing Mi (tie in to Canon)
5. Which is higher? Do, Mi or So?
6. Draw solfege ladder.
Fun Activity – Vocal Range
Bring along pitch cards/PowerPoint (Pitch Cards.ppt). Ask choristers to sing and modify their pitches according to the lines on the pitch cards. Optional.
Do note that only the pitch increase, and reinforce the fact that a higher pitch does not equate a louder volume.
-Break-
Songs
1. Bugles’ Calling
a. Use solfege to demonstrate the notes  Point to ladder on screen.
b. Phrasing (Bugles’ Calling, Calling, Calling  climax on second “ling”)
2. Grace Orchard School Song
a. Breathing Techniques (breathing marks)
b. Recap on the more difficult words like “develop”
c. Phrasing
d. “Grace Orchard”  “Grace” louder (and more emphasis) than “Orchard”,
e. Develop a rhythmic flow for the song.
f. Start introducing climaxes.
g. 2/3 way climax for most lines.
Lesson Goal: Settle all memorization works, recap on Solfege and develop “Grace Orchard” musically.

For the pitching cards, some examplse would be

As can be seen, choristers will sing a note and then vary their pitch based on the direction of the lines, when the lines go upwards, the pitch increase, and vice-versa. This way, choristers will be able to explore their vocal ranges and also have some fun. =D

That pretty much concludes our lesson plan for Friday.
Isaac and Benjamin will be taking the lesson this Friday, as I have personal matters to attend to.
Isaac, remember to drink lots of water and good luck for your lesson on Friday!

Signing off,
Wen Ye

Friday 9 April Choir Practice @ GOS.

Hey guys,

This is Wen Ye writing.
I checked this blog today, and noticied there wasn't any new post on yesterday's choir practice, so I thought I should just write this post.

Benjamin, Benedict and Me arrived at GOS at around 2.30pm to set up the powerpoint slides and prepare for the lesson. Isaac arrived at around 2.45pm.

[start edit]

The projector system was very friendly. It was direct input so there was not much trouble during setup. More importantly, I think the system supports audio, so it'll come in very handy when we teach songs that they've never heard before. By the way, we heard from Ms Phoon that the students missed us when we were absent during Cross Country, which is a good thing, because it means that they want us to be around and they are happy that we're around :)

We made some changes to the powerpoint to reorder our teaching content, but we were fully prepared when the students came in.

[end edit]

Ms Phoon started the practice by measuring everyone's sizes for the choir t-shirt.
Once we got the choir members to settle down, I started the lesson with warm-ups.
We started with the breathing exercises, Dog Panting and Candle Blowing.
We proceeded on to Laughing is Contagious and Ma Me Mi Mo Mu.
We then taught them the solfege for Do Mi So. Basically, we showed them the solfege signs for the 3 notes, and I got a bit confused too, as I was busy looking out for any members who was not doing it correctly.
Before we continued, we rounded up the warmups with Hello, how are you, this time with solfege.

After the lesson, Ms Phoon pointed out that we should gradually introduced the solfege, so instead of making them do Solfege and Singing and Actions, we should introduce them gradually.
Then, we let them listen to the three intervals, Do-Mi (Major 3rd), Do-So (Perfect 5th) and Mi-So (Minor 3rd).
We then proceeded to have them listen to me singing Do, and we tried to have them to figure out what Mi/So was. Although the choir managed to figure the note, I suspect that if we were to try it in another Key, they might not get the note correctly, as the older choir members seemed to have sort of 'memorized' the upper note, rather than figuring it out, and the younger members just listening to the older ones and followed.
Now that we were finished with solfege, we let the choir members have a 5 minutes break while we discussed on whether we should modify our lesson a bit. (We didn't)

After the break, we started on the two songs, Bugles Calling and Grace Orchard.
For Bugles Calling, we basically wanted them to do the Solfege together with the song, but similarly with Hello, how are you, we introduced the solfege elements too quickly, and the choir members were unable to cope. Also, we also introduced phrasing marks, and crescendo signs, and this really confused them alot. As we have some leftover time this lesson, we will spend more time introducing new things to the members instead during the next lesson. Overall, we could hear a gradual crescendo during each line of Bugles Calling, and this is pretty good. Also, the choir members managed to breath at the right time too.

Finally, we did the Grace Orchard song, and we managed to fix the problems with the first two lines ( Grace being softer than Orchard) by teaching them about the decrescendo sign, and they got softer when needed, adding a sense of rhythm to the song. We also taught them how to pronounce the more difficult words like 'develop' and 'integrity' and 'humility'. Overall, quite good singing, and we will tackle tone issues and rhythm issues during the next few lessons.

Overall, this concluded our entire lesson, and if I think of anything more, I'll edit it in.

Next lesson will be taken by Isaac, and I have to attend to personal commitments next Friday.
I will be coaching Isaac next Wednesday, so that he will be well prepared.

Isaac: remember to drink lots of water, so you dont lose your voice. like me.

[start edit (again)]

Feedback was generally good this week, and Ms Phoon thought that we were very prepared, which we were, and I'm glad our efforts went appreciated. Overall the powerpoint worked well for us, and we're probably going to reuse it for the next few lessons. Saves us the time of writing on the board. One thing however, the powerpoint isnt as friendly as the board because my laptop isn't a tablet pc, so when we want to do annotations, it's rather difficult, and I was struggling with the annotations. I'm currently thinking of a way. One of them is to roll up the screen and write on the whiteboard with the projection, but we couldn't do it that day because we weren't allowed to clean the board. I've checked the glare of the projector, isn't so bad. We might test it out next week, if the students get distracted, then we'll not roll up the screen again.

Also, Ms Phoon pointed out that we can afford to go slower at some points, like the teaching of the solfege. Wenye already mentioned briefly in his post, I'll add on here. Basically, we're supposed to drill in the idea that if you don't do it well, we'll keep on repeating the same thing over and over again. Which might work, although I'm worried about the fact that our students may have shorter attention spans. Of course, we need to try this out, if the response isnt good we'll adapt again.

As for something new this week, we had a form of loosening up when we were teaching the school song, as in, they jumped up and down so that they'll sound more enthusiastic when they sung the song later. It worked, because they really sounded much more energetic after the moving and loosening up. I have half a mind to implement this in warm ups and every once in a while during the course of the lesson so they'll be alert and energetic throughout the lesson.

Finally, next week we'll also need to work on memory of school song, this week we did not have the time. I also noticed some of them said "love" as "ove" and "hope" as "ope" in the school song, I might correct it next week, or get Isaac to look out for that. We might go for a little editing of the lesson content, but that will be discussed on Wednesday, during RE.

That's all.

[End edit]

[Edited by Benjamin]

RE Meeting 7th April

Hey readers,

This is admin Benjamin posting again. I’m at RE now, and all of us are hard at work. Full attendance clocked.

We’re now working on our individual portfolio, and also our literature review. Our portfolio is supposed to be submitted today anyway.

Right so there are plans to edit the lesson plan in the previous post. According to Wenye, we’ll be scraping rhythm, and teaching solfege instead. Rationale? Not sure. Wenye please edit here.

Wen Ye EDIT: It is important that the choir members know how the sounds they produce are related to each other. For example, in the next lesson, we will be asking them to point out which note is higher, so that they can begin to understand the relationship between notes. Also, getting them to recognize intervals will also lay the foundation for students to be able to do a song in canon, and subsequently a two-part song. Personally, rhythm can be imitated, and as we have chosen songs which are not difficult to remember and have simple rhythms, so that we can tackle the rhythm part of the song later. From past lessons, we have realized that the choir members can sing in unison, but some are unable to accurately sing the right note. Thus, we hope that by gradually introducing solfege, choir members will be able to visualize the sounds they are singing. =)

Our objectives of the day is to complete our literature review, and at the same time submit our portfolio. We are quite on task, so everything should be alright.

We’ll be heading down to Grace Orchard this Friday, and we’ll be much prepared to meet them after more than a month of break.

That’s all for today.

Benjamin

Group Meeting on 24/3

(written by Wen Ye)
Basically, we needed to focus ourselves and get back on track after 2 weeks of not meeting up to work on this project.
I decided to post on what we plan to do Next Friday Next Next Friday, the lesson plan, and after the session, we'll compare and see what we managed to do well. Sounds great? =D

(EDIT: We won't be going for practice on 2nd April as it is Good Friday, so it means we we only be going for practice on 9th April, which really stinks, as we haven't seen the choir members for more than a month since 5th March. Therefore, the lesson we are preparing is also to help the choir to get back on track towards our target.)


Something important we learnt from previous lesson was that we had to interlink, so choristers know why they are learning. Also, group activities generates good response when used well.


Warm Ups
1. Hello How Are You? (Tie in with Solfege)
2. Mah Meh Mi Moh Mu
3. Laughing is Contagious
4. Dog Panting -> Tie in to Stagger Breathing
5. Candle Blowing -> Breathing Techniques
6. Lips Loosening (Brrrr... Drink Water before doing!)
Teach Solfege
1. Do - Hands Clenched
2. Mi - Hands Parallel to Ground
3. So - Hands Perpendicular to Ground
4. I Sing Do ; You Sing Mi -> Canon
5. Which is Higher? Do, Mi or So?
Teach Phrasing
1. Sing a Line without breaking (Tie in to Candle Blowing)
2. Use hands to show an arc to demonstrate climax (2/3 Way)
Songs
1. Bugles Calling
Use solfege to demonstrate the notes.
Phrasing (Bugles Calling, Calling, Calling -> Climax on 2nd 'ling')
2. Grace Orchard
Breathing Techniques
Phrasing
Memorization work should be settled by this lesson.

Volunteer Workshop 18/3

(author - benedict)

This entry will be about our trip to Grace Orchard School during the March holidays to participate in the workshop they had organized for student volunteers.

Scheduled to start at 2.00pm, the workshop started late at 2.30 as the presenters were not ready to begin yet.

Full attendance, Benjamin & I reaching GOS at 13.30, Isaac at 14.00, and Wen Ye the latest at 14.49.

There was a lot to be learnt from the various presentations which could be used in our lessons themselves, most of which will be addressed later in this entry. In summary, the workshop was mainly comprised of Powerpoint presentations by various speakers, the most prominent one being Ms. Esther Kwan herself. There were a few activities for the participants here and there, though.

Let's begin.

First, Ms. Kwan started us off with icebreakers. She had 18 slides, each differently colored, with letters and numbers (e.g. Red slide with 14C written on it). Her first activity was for the participants to name the order of colors the slides appeared in. After that, she asked us to name the order of the letters.

Ms. Kwan had said that the slides contained much information about the school, but the only thing we could see was that the 18 letters spelled out "Grace Orchard School". She carried on with her presentation without elaborating more on this activity.

Following which, Ms. Kwan spoke a bit about the school's information, such as the amount of students/teachers, et cetera. Much of this had been covered previously in her RES-L presentation back in RI, though.

Next, she went through some developmental disabilities that the students in GOS may possess. She went through a rather long list of disablities and medical conditions, which weren't really relevant to our student group as they didn't possess those symptoms.

More relevant to our choir was the next few presentations by different speakers about Mild Intellectual Disability (MID), Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), and Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

The speaker for MID covered a section on IQ. She mentioned that the average IQ of the general population was 70 - 130, the "Mensa-type" people >130 (yay), and the people with MID at 55 - 70. She mentioned that these students would have learning difficulties, such as short attention spans, and such.

(actually, I can't remember much of the specifics she gave, so I'll jump straight to the implications and all)

Basically, the group of children that we're working with in our Choir fall into the MID category. Some of them learn faster than others, but that would be natural anyway. So, we would have to vary our lesson outlines and the like to fit in with their learning capacities.

For example, one of the speakers mentioned that these children would learn best through visual aids. These could come in the form of handouts, utilizing the whiteboard, etc. We should be using these things more often in our lessons so that the children can follow us better.

Also, a major issue would be the routines factor. People with autism tend to need a fixed routine to learn well. As such, our lessons will have to have a fixed order which we stick to every week. This was discussed previously in the meeting we had with Ms. Kwan & Ms. Phoon. If there are new elements we would like to bring into our lessons, we'll have to ease the children into them slowly.

To end off, there were a few things I took note of during the presentation(s) - basically things that we could use in our lessons to teach better.

One of the teaching methods was like this:

Revision of Background Knowledge > Discussion > Modelling > Memorizing > Supporting > Independent Practice

... which we will basically be using to teach them new things. Ideally, "Independent Practice" would mean that they can practice what they've learnt on their own, without us beside them to guide them.

Also, a few things that I'd like to mention - points to take note of when we're actually teaching them. These should be common knowledge by now, but there's no harm in repeating it again, right?

Firstly, we have to attract their attention. As our children have rather short attention spans, if we want to teach them anything then we'll have to get them to listen to us first.

Next, we'll have to speak clearly & pause between sentences. From what the speakers have said, the children aren't really into sensory stimuli - they won't understand if you talk like a bullet train. So, enunciate your words clearly and speak slower.

Then, we'll have to monitor their understanding of what we've just taught. Simply put, see if they know what we're talking about - and whether they can put it into practice. After that we repeat the instructions many times, as these children learn better through repetition (correct me if I'm wrong).

That's about it for the workshop - all the learning points.

Lastly, there's also the handout on Volunteer Guidelines that I feel we should all refer to once in awhile to remind ourselves.

Okay, end entry.

Lesson #01 | 5 March

Hi readers!

This is Admin Benjamin posting again. I've changed the blogskin as you've noticed, hope it loads and looks well. At list this enables me to post pictures.

Well, some first lesson we had on Friday. This post is gonna be about it.

First, some admin, attendance.

Benjamin and Benedict arrived @2.50pm
Isaac @3.15pm
Wenye @3.20pm

(group leader was late. ssh)

Now we'll run through what we did on Friday.

Ms Phoon kindly started the kids off, but we were supposed to do everything right from the start, so the beginning she said something like "we have four new teachers today, ..." and off we went to do our teaching and coaching. For convenience sake, Wenye chaired most of the session, so he's the one doing most of the activities down there. Isaac and eye were doing lots of eyepowering and giving moral support, Benedict was playing the piano.

First of all we did warm ups. Pretty obvious.
We got them to blow their burning fingers out, and got them to act like snakes. ("SNAKES IN THE JUNGLE!" - shawn)
Then we did the "hello how are you. i'm fine thank you" warm up as well.

Then the fail came along. On our lesson plan there were japanese characters that represented ma mi mu me mo, which is actually the warm up we did usually, but wenye didn't understand jap, so he was like huh?
Then after that Ms Phoon pointed out that it was ma me mi mo mu rather than ma mi mu me mo, so it was kinda awkward then. We messed up the students as well. Wenye couldn't remember the words, made the students forget theirs, and we were a bit messed up during this warm-up.

Then we moved on to "laughing is contagious", another warm up. we broke them up into groups, and made them sing it within the groups. Quite successful, given that they were all competing to be better than the other group. Good strategy noted.

We had a short break.
...

Okay then we started out with "laughing is contagious" again, and added the breathing sign (which is the only one that is not on the keyboard apart from ^, > and <...) Then we also did the Grace Orchard School Song for quite some time, and kicked off their "memorisation" of the lyrics by erasing the words that they were most familiar with on the board. There was a break somewhere in between, but i think that memory got squeeze out of me on the MRT. After the break we did about another 15minutes of Grace Orchard School Song, then we moved on to Bugles calling, and even tried a canon, which obviously failed again (cos even I was unable to do it ><) After Bugles Calling we did beats. The crotchets and the other ones that I do not know the names of. Menin? Can't remember. Primary school music left my memory quite some time ago. The students have this impression that 1 beat always means 1 clap, so when we put the 3 beats thingum with the dot on the board they clap three times, like there were 3 crotchets, instead of one clap and 2 pauses. Yeah and we ended the lesson there. They were dismissed, and we all waited in the canteen to meet Ms Phoon and Ms Kwan after school ended, and meanwhile realised that Barney is very closely related to our school song. Yep so after that we went to that cool meeting room for our meeting, and they said we were good! :D We thought of bringing in new warm ups, but we were told to keep the basics of breathing, pitching and scales within the warm ups and to slowly introduce the new warms up so as to not mess the students and ourselves up. Ms Phoon says we can bring powerpoint for all lesson, so that we can use the interactive whiteboard, and so that she can use it too. Suggestion was given for us to take less breaks, because they just had recess before that. There is also the loosening of lips by doing the brrrrrrr thing with your lips. It helps, according to Ms Kwan. Yeah then there's lots of weird things and terminology on my foolscap pad written by wenye that I completely have no idea about. I'll just list the statements down. -teach phrasing and stagger breathing -dog-panting *solfege* -canon <- i sing doh, you sing mi -do solfege in warm ups -tie in and interlink yup. That should conclude our first lesson. Before I go, there's one more thing to note: lesson plans and all our stuff must be sent to Ms Phoon and Ms Kwan by the Wednesday before the Friday so that they can give suggestions. And now, some photos,

(EDIT: Some of the Photos have been removed so that the student's faces are not featured.)

That's all.

Thanks for reading :D

Benjamin

L.O. #3 26/02 ♥

Attendance for today : Me & Wen Ye.

Oh by the way, this is Benedict writing the post again T.T

Isaac & Benjamin were forced to go for the C div match support, can't be helped.

Left RI at 1.45, arrived at ~3pm. Left at 5.15.

1st, a summary of the day's happenings, then going more into the detailed stuff.

A few of the choir members were absent today. Namely, Phyllis & Noelle. For those of you who can't remember, Phyllis is the one who was spamming "I love you!" throughout our last observation. Noelle is the rather noisy one; Mrs. Tan (the older teacher) is always sitting next to.

Today's Choir lesson was observation again. Though, we did our own little bit of teaching as well.

We revised Grace Orchard's school song, and learn something new called "Bugles' Calling".

Short song, three lines. Quite suitable I guess for our choir.

Ms. Phoon tried to get the choir to do a canon, but wasn't very successful.

Discussed our Proposal with her after the choir lessons - and left GOS before they started singing the National Anthem.

Okay, now for the fully detailed stuff. I'll try to write as much as possible so Isaac & Benjamin will catch up on what they've missed.

Our warmups today were very short. We did the "candle-blowing" thing, from 5 to 10, with varying speeds. After that, we did "Laughing is Contagious" a few times, from E5 up till D6 (that's the D above high C). Also did the "ma mi mu me mo" exercise.

Oh, and the "Hello, how are you?" warm-up too.

We did something new today, our first "teaching" element. I suppose this kick-starts our actual teaching stuff. Simple warm-up, we moved our hands up and down and followed it with our voices. Also, we did a "copying" warm-up.

Meaning, Ms. Phoon would clap a rhythm, or sing a tune - and the children would imitate her. It seems to be quite effective in teaching them some stuff. For instance, Ms. Phoon would clap the rhythm of a part of the Grace Orchard song. The kids wouldn't realize it, but I observed that she was using it to lead them into the later part of the lesson (singing).

Anyway, we moved on to the Grace Orchard song after that. Ms. Phoon drilled the lyrics into them first; by the use of some memory exercises. Since the choir is comprised of kids, this would seem to work well.

She (or someone else) had written the lyrics to the school song on the whiteboard. Ms. Phoon then erased a few words (for example, "a happy place, a joyful place" became "a _____ place, a ______ place". The kids then had to fill in the blanks. Most of them were quite successful.

A key point to note here is something about the school song. It's quite simple, just 1 melody line and that's all. We're going to have to do something about it - writing a harmony or bass line, or something. I guess it'll be either Wen Ye's or my job - I think I can get my sister help me write it, she used to do MEP in secondary school =/

Next, we did "Bugles' Calling".

Can't really remember the lyrics... the tune was quite simple, but our choir was a little slow at grasping it at first.

Ms. Phoon told us that we'd probably need at least one month to teach them such a simple song. I know the song only has 3 lines, but well... I'm sure we all know the condition our choir is in.

We'll really need to put in a lot of effort into planning our lessons...

Well, next Friday we have been forced to take up the roles of teachers.

Wen Ye & Isaac, you guys better do your job. =/

Since I'm expecting the choir would have ~full attendance next week, then I think we can start them on rhythm classes already. Anyway, if we're doing purely rhythm then we have no need for warmups. Please take note that they have short attention spans... so we'll need to vary our activities as such.

Well, I've got nothing much to say - Wen Ye, if you can think of anything then please tell me and I'll add on to this post. kthxbai ~

Edit 1: Oh ya, forgot to add this point. Today the guy who was kept saying "Phyllis shut up!" last week (Shawn, was his name? can't remember) was singing Michael Jackson's Billy Jean throughout the three breaks that we had =.=

Well, apparently his father bought a MJ DVD and he listened to it. Apparently he's trying to imitate the moonwalk etc now... Ms. Phoon told him to sing something else, like the Jackson 5's "We are the children" (can't remember the title =.=!)

I think we'll infer from his actions and Phyllis' "I love you!"s last week that our children are rather impressionable. So, two things I'd like to point out.

1 - We can actually use this to our advantage. Repeating something that they (may be able to) relate with may help them learn a lot better. Put it this way, they will remember stuff much better, no? =.=

2 - We'd better watch our language. Lol. You wouldn't like our choir to be like "**** **** ****" etc during our practices would you? =.= it'd be rather... erm... not ideal.

*reserves space for any edits if I have to*