2021 Magazine

167 2021 | Edition No. 24 | The Preparatory learners are privileged to be taught by an array of specialist music teachers, who being musicians themselves, are passionate about their instrument and pro- moting the love and growth of music within our school. Early every morning you’ll be able to hear the strains of our various Marimba bands floating along the corridors in contrast to the sound of the violin, flute and xylophone ema - nating from the orchestra room. Often we sing along, or just have a spring in our step on the way to class. Our individual music learners are encouraged to participate in examinations and eisteddfods and we have had yet an- other year of outstanding results. The entries into the Trinity Theory and Practical examina- tions received a total of twenty-one distinctions out of twen- ty-six entries. The transition from face-to-face to online examinations and eisteddfods was daunting at first, but the Department real - ised that many more learners wish to participate on an on- line platform, and we took advantage of their growth in con- fidence to help them to achieve these outstanding results. We celebrated World Music Day with an Assembly concert and we acknowledged our young musicians further through our annual Junior and Senior Preparatory concert present- ed online. These, as well as our weekly recorded Assembly perfor- mances, help to build the confidence of our learners and we are grateful that our advanced technological skills enable us to share these performances with our parents too. Under the leadership of Ms Zeeman, our Junior and Senior Preparatory Orchestras have continued to thrive, incorpo- rating more traditional orchestral instruments with the sup- port of percussion instruments. We welcomed Ms Sampi to our Class Music team, and we watched in awe as our Grade One and Two learners started to master the recorder. We hope to have many of these learners progressing to other wind instruments such as the flute, clarinet and saxophone. Music is integral to many Project Based Learning collab- orations and our learners are realising that Music, Math- ematics, Science and even Fashion and Design go hand in hand. One of the catch-phrases from The Creative Arts Educa- tion Conference, ‘A singing school is a successful school’ rings true at the Preparatory Faculty as our learners en- joy expressing themselves through song and we encour- age them to keep on enriching their educational journey through music. Roché Buckle