Singing the Dream @ Grace Orchard School: February Orientation/Observation 05/02/2010

Hi readers,

This is Benwong posting. Have fun reading the post ahead.

Before that, Wenye, Benedict and myself attended this meeting. Isaac was at merit CCA trail. We clocked 2.5 hours in this visit (2.30pm to 5pm)

We set out for Grace Orchard School (GOS) at around 1pm today, skipped lunch and took a train ride all the way to Raffles Place before going up to Lakeside Station. Train ride took us about an hour or so, and we arrived at the station around 2.05pm to grab a quick bite before walking to GOS.

Took a walk through the HDB and found the school thanks to the wonderful guidance of Wenye.

We met Miss Kwan in the meeting room at GOS (we felt like VIPs) and basically we went through our group's objectives and ideas for this project. The response was okay, and we basically had our direction pointed out and the group objectives clarified. Our current purpose is to help along with the school choir, and if possible, organise internal activities for the choir (suggested were GOS School Song, Choir Camp etc) for the exposure and for the confidence boost.

We went on to observe the choir in action, and it was a group of 15 to 16 people, age range 10 to 15 years. Mostly girls in the choir, but a few boys in the midst as well.

We noticed that the students were interested in learning. Really enthusiastic and open. The teaching methods were also observed, and we picked up a few ideas on how we should go about teaching the students in the future. Of course, we joined the students in their Choir practice, and they were practising for Chinese New Year, the song called "He Xin Nian".

We spent most of the rainy afternoon in the room practising the same song many times over, and we heard the voices of he students. As a whole, they sounded pleasant even though it was not in unison. We'll have to work on this if we're going to make them perform.

So we more or less spent the day there observing and participating, and it was basically an orientation and familiarisation session with the school choir and practices.

For the month of February, we'll be continuing the observation of Choir sessions and craft out lesson plans for the students there. Next week is Chinese New Year celebrations, so we will not be going down for RES-L.

Before I end this post, I'll upload the remainder of the photos we took today.