26 Jul 2013
Singing Across the Hay Plains
Children of all ages, and some mums and dads, from across the Hay Plains tuned into Choir over IDL for the first time ever on Tuesday 16th July. Samantha Newnham, the choir teacher, introduced choir for this first time to Hay SOTA, through REACT, with the children learning fun chants and getting started on the 2013 song for the Music. Count Us In initiative, "Keep On". Choir over IDL takes collaboration, patience and lots of coordination, between assigning students parts to sing and learn, pressing the right buttons for the music to play, whilst coordinating the document cameras, using garage band on the iPad for warm up activities and ensuring students turn on their audio sing. The result of all of this hard work is high participation across the school and lots of enthusiasm from the children to sing together in a closer-to-the-classroom experience. Many students, including stage 3 boys, were asking their supervisors if choir was on air every afternoon! The choir also has a course on Moodle where free songs and lyrics are uploaded for students to access and practice the songs during their school days. The Hay SOTA choir will perform for the Music Count Us In national music initiative in October and other events at the end of the year. We are excited to have the ability to offer extra-curricula activities that are second nature in mainstream classrooms.
