Julia Dowdney gives the Music Project a New Look!
Written by Liz Greenhalgh
In April we received a visit again from our friends Annie Browne and her husband David. They brought along their friend Paulina who enjoyed a shorter visit looking at our projects and Julia a very experienced music teacher from England.
Julia, who teaches the saxophone, piano and flute provided support and guidance that was invaluable to the music project and because of her careful pre-visit planning and her excellent expertise, she has greatly helped to over haul and re-direct the way in which the recorder is taught at the school in Garcin. As a result of her creativity, we can now manage to take more of the very keen pupils from the school, which is a great step forward, since in the past it has been very difficult to include everybody, despite the desire to do so.
Julia kindly brought a number of very useful resources with her and we would like to thank Dream Education, who donated a poster, which helps to teach the children the different notes, using hand signing and David Moses from Tinkerbox Music, who very kindly donated the Recorder Boppers teaching book and CD, which is a great, very easy to use, fun resource and we saw that the children really benefited from using it.
During their week, an extra 40 children were able to experience the music project for the first time. The activities were held in our brand new music room and lead by Julia. Here the children had a fantastic time learning how to hold the recorder correctly and how to play the notes, which was done with the help of the new teaching material. The children also enjoyed dancing along to the music and received small gifts to take home. They did so well that at the end of the week, we had 3 groups perform a small concert at Ziurel, which was a special time for the children and for some their first visit to FAST. They were all given a recorder to take home to continue practicing until we see them again with our new teaching schedule.
Annie, who is a very keen and appreciated supporter of FAST and our Music Project helped Julia during this time with any supporting tasks that she needed doing to ensure the teaching session ran smoothly. She also took the time to improve her own recorder skills, and Annie is keen to continue to do this in England and use what she has learned to teach the children herself when she visits again in the near future.
Annie and Julia were stranded at FAST for a second week, due to the volcanic ash cloud, but they were willing to put there time to good use and Julia helped Liz to consolidate the learning and application of the new material as well as helping to make useful resources to use with the children and with Annie, they thoroughly cleaned the room and arranged everything to make it a well resourced room. Annie was also a great support to Daniel, with regards to a number of administration tasks that needed to be taken over and completed.
Annie and Julia also initiated the idea of a Friday afternoon music club at the school, which began last week and saw 14 children attending and either learning recorder for the first time or reviewing what they had learnt during their week with Julia and Annie. They also really enjoyed craft activities and games before returning home with big smiles on the faces!
We very much enjoyed having Annie and David with us again and meeting new friends Paulina and Julia. The teaching sessions and guidance that Julia gave was fantastic and has definitely been a great influence in the how the music project now looks and works with the children. We thank them for their (extended!) visit and look forward to seeing how the children continue to develop their skills and seeing everybody again in the future!
