St. Colman's P.S.

I’m ill so I’m not singing! We start with some relaxed breathing exercise and listen to the sounds of the classroom. I send them on a walk around the school to ‘collect’ all of the sounds they hear. They come back and tell the sounds they found.

I ask them to draw the sounds. Not the objects that made them. Not the word of the sound’s name. No, a shape that looking something like the way the sound sounds. We don’t really know where we are headed yet – we’re reaching to develop the vocabulary. I’m trying not to feed them and am pleased that some students are making astute observations about the characteristics of certain sounds and producing drawings to match.

We make a Soundscape performance – I conduct. Everyone performs a certain sound and together they make up the soundscape of the school. Some interesting vocal mimicry here.

I notice waves of attention and rapture and distraction and boredom as we move through the session.

These are my sample of images could represent sounds. They are very close to some kinds of imagery we commonly use to represent and I realised afterwards that perhaps this lead the students on a bit of a literal tangent.