Term 2, Marsden Road Public School - Week 4

Today's session had an outstanding turnout - a massive group filled with enthusiasm and eagerness!

The kids made wonderful astronaut helmets; crafting and designing them out of paper bags for the costumes that would be then used in the movie.

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They moved into another activity: playing the recorders and note reading. They learnt about note rests, how to follow the conductor and reading the music, focusing on the notes, instead of their instrument. 

After the musical activities, the kids moved into practising the movie script all together in preparation for filming. Reading the script out aloud a few times over really helped build up the confidence in the kids, in turn making them enjoy the project! They seemed to enjoy it hugely, and were really getting into expressing themselves to fit the story.

During the run throughs of the script, we went over some grammar skills again - exclamation marks, questions marks and full stops. The kids then practiced their roles; who would say the alien parts and who would be the astronauts. Finally after role allocations and teamwork, it came to the end of our session and we planned to get this show on the road in the next week; to start filming scenes, recordings and music!

Term 2, Marsden Road Public School - Week 3

An amazing session, filled with plenty of learning about space! They made alien masks for their movie in today's session, practised some recorder note reading, then began the first reading from the script for the short film. Copies of the script were made, and so the fun began!

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The kids learned about the vocabulary of space - such as the word astronaut, planet, dust, giant, gas, rings and much more! They also enjoyed the rather loud art of pronouncing exclamation marks & question marks.

They ended the session happy and remained engaged throughout. They absolutely loved making the alien masks, as it allowed them to be as creative as possible as well as something so out of this world (quite literally!)

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Term 2, Marsden Road Public School - Week 1

This weeks lesson was filled with recorder playing and note reading, colouring in stencils, reading books, having happy chats and eating delicious food (of course!) Kids truly let loose during the musical part of our lesson! Outstanding musical progress with playing the recorders and music reading. So much so, that the kids learnt to master the piece; Twinkle Twinkle, through their amazing new recorder skills, as well as their lovely singing voices.

Result of the amazing colouring in activity

Result of the amazing colouring in activity

We then began talking about the plans we had for the term and in particular the making of their Oscar winning movie clip. They began planning with excitement about what the theme of their movie could possibly be about, and came to the decision about SPACE! ; planets, astronauts and aliens (of course). The kids ere thrilled about the plans; To work on a different parts of the movie each week, wether it be the music, the story, recording process, costumes, filming and the most important decision: who will be aliens & who will be astronauts ?

Space sentences for the script!

Space sentences for the script!

Term 1, Hoxton Park - Week 4

This week's lesson was structured to perfection. The students faces lit up when they saw the wide selection of art materials provided. After demonstrating the art making process of rolling ink, they were able to stencil their own choice of words in Arabic and English. The kids were like a bunch of tiny Pablo Picassos, their craft was incredible. It was especially heart-warming to see them sharing resources and displaying confidence when expressing themselves.

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This week we got messy with ink + stencils!

They were able to express themselves how they like

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Term 1, Hoxton Park - Week 3

To ease the kids into the afternoon, we all engaged in reading, chatting and playing. They were a cheeky bunch, one had enough attitude to come up and 'bite' me.. with a puppet! Our chats consisted of profound, philosophical topics like zombies, boats, cars which left them feeling delighted. They were proud to show me their impressive Arabic skills. Following this, the music session proved to be a success, particularly with the younger age group whose voices filled the room with the lyrics to 'Five Little Monsters' and the Alphabet Song. They were able to take home their drawings as a memento of their thrilling day.

Term 3, Marsden Rd Public School - Week 5

It's a smaller group this week, because we're competing with the school disco! We have a special request for Twinkle Twinkle, and we sing and play it together again. Because it's a small group, we divide up the parts and play it on the Glockenspiel, which sounds like a twinkling star.

Term 3, Marsden Rd Public School - Week 4

This week we go over, rhythm, melody, counting, food and colours. We learn "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" bit by bit, before singing it together. The kids choose different instruments to accompany the song, and we play it together like a big band. They sound beautiful! 

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Term 3, Marsden Rd Public School - Week 3

This week we warmed up by singing a counting scale up to ten. (1, 121, 12321, 1234321 etc) We rehashed what we learned in the previous week, playing rhythms together and repeating rhythmic patterns, moving onto the repetition of melodic patterns. We take turns of leading, and the kids show a lot of understanding and creativity. We use the Boomwhackers (colourful tuned tubes) to play melodies as a group and in the process we learn colours. 

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Term 3, Marsden Rd Public School - Week 2

This week we explored beats and rhythm! We discovered that there is rhythm to everything, the way we breathe, walk and talk. We clapped the rhythm of our favourite foods (NOO-DLES! WA-TER-ME-LON!) and learned to repeat rhythmic patterns, using our body and percussion instruments. We used a loop pedal to record our own beat, but once we discovered the microphone there was out there was no turning back! The kids took turns in sharing songs both in English and their first languages. It felt like a big party.

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Term 3, Marsden Rd Public School - Week 1

In the first week at Marsden Rd we all said HELLO to each other for the first time. It was wonderful. We listened to the melody in each others names, and learnt to draw that melody using a graphical notation technique of listening while drawing a line on paper that changes as yourespond to pitch. This way of listening very useful when learning to get to know each other and how everyone has their unique way of communicating. 

We also spent some time listening to our surroundings in silence. Then we all made a list of what we could hear. Someone in the room said 'Meow!' when we all had our eyes closed, which made everyone laugh! 

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