Grade 4 pupils from Hawthorne Public School had an opportunity to attend a concert and visit backstage at the National Arts Centre as part of pilot music education program.
For Bordy McPhee, school doesn’t just mean arithmetic and adjectives.
The Grade 4 student at Hawthorne Public School is now participating in a music workshop where he learns from two musicians how to play a recorder and put music and movement together with his peers.
He says he had so much fun in the workshop.
“I like playing the recorder because we’ve learned a lot of new notes and songs,” said Bordy. “Everybody enjoys it.”
The five-week long workshop is a pilot program launched by the National Art Centre for two Grade 4 classes at Hawthorne Public School in Ottawa.
Forty-five students in the two Grade 4 classes all participated in the intensive workshop.
They started learning Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and students engaged in conversation about how the seasons have touched their lives wherever they come from, says Genevieve Cimon, associate director of music education at the NAC.
“Hawthorne School is selected for this pilot project because it has one of the highest student body populations of new Canadian children with over 50 languages spoken,” said Cimon.
Elizabeth Simpson, an NAC French horn player and teaching musician, is working with dance choreographer and teaching artist Renata Soutter for this project. They have been giving students recorder lessons.
Simpson says it’s a rewarding experience.
“They couldn’t read music,” she said. “
Some of them read music quite well now.
They couldn’t play anything on the recorder, but they all play the recorder now.”
The two musicians have been working with the kids for four weeks so far. They give a 100-minute long training session once a week.
The students, after one-on-one training with Simpson and Soutter for the first three weeks, were brought together last week to work as a team but each student plays different roles.
Bordy, for example, plays the role of “winter.”
Hawthorne Public School has been implementing music art in some other courses, said Amanda Valente, teacher of one Grade 4 class at Hawthorne.
She said lots of readings for the students right now are on Vivaldi, or on the particular seasons.
Even in the gym, they’re doing movements to mimic the four seasons.
“They’re having this opportunity to explore the music arts in our language arts, not just in the music period.” Valente said.
Cimon says Hawthorne lacks resources in terms of instruments and most of the children and their parents would not be able to afford private music lessons.
The NAC wants to reach more new Canadian children and help them have their voices of country
of origin heard here in Canada. It encourages students to compose and relate to music by drawing from their own unique cultural background and artistic experience.
The students are also invited to visit the NAC where they attend the NAC Orchestra’s student matinees and meet NAC Orchestra musicians backstage.
The grand finale will be on Feb. 25 when the children play in a concert with the NAC Orchestra Rideau Lakes Brass Quintet at Hawthorne.
The program will follow these students to grades 5 and 6. It is also planning to include more schools that have a high percentage of new Canadians during the next two years.