Adios, Newlands ...

As advised in the last newsletter, I will be taking leave from Newlands PS at the end of this term to take up a temporary Head Teacher position at Bombala High School in NSW until the end of 2021. I already visited my new school during my Long Service Leave last week (6.5 hour drive each way, thanks for asking), and got to know the amazing community in this cute little town in the Snowys. Even in the short time I was there, while I was having professional conversations about curriculum, learning and student wellbeing with my new colleagues, many times I thought "yes, and I learned that while at Newlands!" So a little piece of your school community will be coming with me to Bombala, and I will definitely be telling my new students all about you!

Please note that this is the reason I have put a "pause" on bringing back recorder for the 2/3 and 4/5/6 classes this year. I will speak to the incoming music teacher about this part of the program, so that they have room to get established and set up the program at their own pace.

F/1

Mrs Tombolato and Alena told me about the wonderful activities they did while I was away last week. I am definitely looking forward to hearing them singing Chivita Chivita all together for the upcoming Fiesta! The circle drumming activity I showed in the last newsletter continues to be a hit, and children are getting better at listening to others take their turn, come up with ideas for playing, and best of all, they are increasing their confidence when it is their turn. We also added a different instrument for movement activities - the flauta dulce, otherwise known as the recorder. The recorder I use for our warm up movements is the alto version, which is bigger than the one most students are used to, and has a deeper, mellow tone. Next week I will film some of the movement responses children made to this music - so many of them told me that it made them feel calm and relaxed. Interesting ...!

We are also doing more work on the marimbas. The most challenging part for the preps is to find the different letters on the different notes. Have a look at their progress so far:

2/3

How beautifully these students are singing Here Comes the Sun. We have a few ideas about how to make a virtual assembly performance of this before the end of term - I will keep you posted. I was surprised by how quickly these students picked up the Spanish words to Chivita Chivita, and Mrs Tombolato told me she was equally impressed. Not only that, but she loves the song so much, she is making an Italian version to use with her classes at her own school! To help the children understand the story behind the song better, they were given a task to come up with an action for the character in each verse. I think everyone is starting to understand just how crazy the song is!

4/5/6

It was wonderful to finally teach these students again yesterday, after not seeing them for such a long time. I was so happy to have Alena Schneider taking their music classes last week. I have learnt a lot about drum circles in workshops with Alena over the years, and she is a very talented musician. She very kindly brought in a set of African drums for the children to use in last week's lesson as a "one off". We packed a heap of activities into yesterday's lesson with me, including a Keith Terry body percussion warm up that the students used to come up with some creative interpretations in groups. Have a look at some of the examples below.

It is amazing to observe how quickly the classes are able to focus when we use these types of body percussion patterns (patrones). They are also really loving singing activities with Here Comes the Sun and Chivita, and it is very difficult to have to tell them we need to move to the next activity when they ask "Can we sing it again?!?" I think that families will be very impressed to hear just how well they can sing in Spanish.

Instrumental Music