ON TUESDAY, April 19, members of the Bryn Hafren Comprehensive School Year 12 music class visited Gladstone Primary School.

The group was made up of eight Year 12 music students including Nicole Boyles, Lukas Wallis, Eleri Mees, Cerys Thomas, Lucy Bellinger, Kia Braund, Chloe Thurlbert and Holly Lashmar.

As part of the Year 12 music course it is a requirement for students to take part in teaching a community project which could consist of any number of musical tasks. In this case, the group taught a selection of Year 6 students from Gladstone Primary how to sing Stitches by Shawn Mendes.

After watching several lessons within Bryn Hafren, the students attempted to emulate their music teachers, Miss Bryony Doyle and Mr Lewis Green with Bryn Hafren Year 7 pupils. The results were excellent as noted by many of the teachers from Gladstone Primary School.

As the excitable Year 6 pupils entered the hall they were met by a group of equally excited Sixth Form students who together with their armoury of instruments were ready for the workshop to begin. The workshop started with the learning criteria and the Year 6 pupils quickly jumped on board with ideas being thrown around.

They were able to show their knowledge of musical techniques and after being introduced to a vocal toolbox the pupils flourished and the workshop was able to move along quickly. After a polished demonstration of their own, the Sixth Form students went about teaching Gladstone the song Stitches and after an extremely successful first run through more complex features and techniques were added to further improve the piece performed by this collection of budding stars.

Overall, the workshop was deemed a great success for both sets of students with the Year 12 class being invited back for further workshops in the future. Hopefully the children of Gladstone were able to directly benefit from this experience as they were taught key singing skills such as how to form and maintain a harmony, singing in call and response, singing in canon, as well as utilising accompaniments such as bongo drums.

The pupils voiced their opinions that in future they want to incorporate an even larger range of instruments into future performances and this is something that could be an exciting proposition for the next workshop.

Written by Lukas Wallis and Nicole Boyles - Year 12