Music
Music Count Us In
On Thursday, November 5, schools all around Australia took part in a wonderful, unifying event known as Music Count Us In. This event has run for 10 years and has grown, in the amount of schools participating, from its inception. This year, for the first time ever, schools in New Zealand also registered to take part.
At 12.30 last Thursday, students were able to connect to a live streamed viewing of a school in Cairns singing the song that was written for this year’s event “You Won’t Bring Us Down”.
Next came a performance from the Deaf school, using AUSLAN. This is the part our students trained for, over 5 sessions (in the case of students in Years 3-6). Younger students also joined in, but in a variety of ways suitable to their age and developmental ability.
Senior students went to great efforts to learn the entire song using AUSLAN. This process led to spontaneous discussions about how deaf toddlers might learn to communicate and how fortunate we are to have all of our senses operating well.
The final performance of the song was a modified version of the original, performed by 4 schools in Western Australia, on Yamatji country. This included singing in Language and students playing didjeridoo.
We, in the Music department, feel that participating in this very special event led to a great deal of valuable learning beyond the Music classroom and we thank our students for their respectful attitude to this experience of learning someone else’s language, as well as having the opportunity to “step into someone else’s shoes”.
Students from 1C and 2C enjoying Music Count Us In