Arinagour Primary School

Composers and Singers

Image courtesy of the school

  • CLASS We are all of the 7 children in this school
  • SCHOOL Arinagour Primary, Isle Of Coll, Argyll, Scotland
  • HONOURS  Gold Flag Award 2016 – 2018 for putting P.E. and school sport at the heart of planning, practice and ethos: The SPORTSCOTLAND School Sport Award for innovation and achievement in delivering school sport 2018
  • MINERVA SCIENTIFICA PROJECT Echoes bhon Cridhe, September 2018

Scientific Connections

Ben Jones from the RSPB Nature Reserve on Coll came to our school and we talked about corncrakes and we learned the I.O. – where farmers leave spaces in their fields shaped in an I or an O for the corncrakes to live.  We found out that the corncrakes live for 2 years

Learning about the corncrake was special

I loved looking at the fossils – Thankyou so much – Frances, Herbie, Ben and Sabine!

The best thing was learning the science and what so many women scientists did

I loved learning about the Lungfish

Compositions


Title:   Corncrake Coll
Scientist: RSPB – Ornithology

Composed by:  Arinagour Primary School with Frances M Lynch
Written in:  September 2018
For: mixed voices and guitar
Performed by: the composers, Frances M Lynch, Herbie Clarke (guitar) and local speakers
First Performed:  29th September, 2018, An Cridhe, Isle of Coll as part of  Echoes bhon Cridhe

Frances talked to ecologist Dr Nicola Downing about the RSPB Nature Reserve on Coll. She keeps up to date with conservation based science and delivers species and habitat advice to the fantastic staff that manage the RSPB’s network of nature reserves in South West Scotland, including on Coll.

She wasn’t able to visit the Island when Frances & Herbie were there – but suggested we investigate the Corncrake with the help of local reserve manager Ben Jones.

We made a soundscape song using pictures to make up patterns of the sound of things that are good for the birds and not so good. You will see our scores for the verses below and you can find the full text of the song on Soundcloud

The song begins with recordings of local people chanting the dates and numbers of corncrakes found on the Island in total since 1992.

Then Frances sings like a corncrake before we perform Senwa dedende (a song from Ghana about going to eat!) and our Corncrake Coll Verses with lots of sounds and words.

See if you can follow our scores as you listen!

Verse 1 – Corncrake Habitats


Verse 2 – This is what corncrakes eat


Verse 3 – Good for Wildlife


Verse 4 – Bad for the Corncrakes

Corncrake Coll   – PLEASE DON’T LET IT DIE OUT!

Crex Crex By Johann Friedrich Naumann

Education

Most of us play ukulele,  two of us play fiddle, and three of us play drums and recorder too.

For the project I liked best learning the sign language.

Singing and Signing

Occupations

We have at least two scientists among our group, most of us would like to sing and play instruments when we grow up too.

I thought about being a scientist because the project was interesting

Musical Highlights

We do a Christmas Concert, Summer Concert and Burns Supper every year for the Islanders!

An Cridhe where we sang our music

Did You Know?

We did lots of unusual things for this project – here are some of our comments!

We did lots of funny actions and Frances singing was a surprise

We found out that Herbie was in the Harry Potter films!

Frances elephant noise is special!

Recipe for Roast Corn-Crake by Isabella Beeton 1836-1865 (Beeton, Isabella (1861) The Book of Household Management)

An Inspiring Woman

Music:
Frances singing

Science:
Mary Somerville and her fossils
Nora Miller and the Lungfish

Links