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