Awliscombe CofE Primary School
Composers and Singers
All images on this page courtesy of the school. This page also includes quotes from the children gathered from data collected after the project.
- CLASS Kingfishers
- SCHOOL Awliscombe CofE Primary, Awliscombe, Honiton, Exeter, United Kingdom
- HONOURS Our choir won an award in 2019 for BBC Radio Devon Star for Christmas. We took part in a symphony orchestra event in Exeter. Some of us have passed grade 1 piano.
- MINERVA SCIENTIFICA PROJECT Mary Anning Megasongs – Sidmouth Festival 2021-22
Scientific Connections
In our classroom we have been learning about:
- Mr Pollard the physiologist came in for a session where we learnt about the heart
- We did art and science work at the Sidmouth Science Festival including ‘If I Were A Tree’
- We did hexagons at the Sidmouth Science Festival
Jack helped us make clay patterns on squares and put them all together to create Doli!
On the project we learnt:
- How skeletons fossilize
- Scientists look at poo to see dinosaurs’ diet
- There are lots of female palaeontologists that we didn’t know about
- We couldn’t live without scientists
- Dinosaur names: ichthyosaur, plesiosaur, pterosaur!
Compositions
Title: Mary Anning and Doli the Dolichodeirus
Scientist: MARY ANNING
Composed by: Kingfishers Class, Awliscombe CofE Primary School
Written in: May 2022
Arranged by: Frances M Lynch & Herbie Clarke
Film by: Jack Sewell
For: Voices, piano and electronics
Performed by: the composers
First Performed: online
We liked doing the clay art
Was Mary Anning smarter than Charles D. (Darwin)? We think so. We wrote about the mysterious Doli the Dolichodeirus in this brilliant MEGASONG for Mary Anning. We worked with an electric voice theatre team to write a song which would reflect her extraordinary work while exploring how fossils are made. The final film is created from drawings and a model of the Plesiosaur by the children, was made by Jack Sewell.
- We sang about how heavy Doli was and her appearance, also how she died
- We liked the repetitive build up at the end!
- We liked the fact that Frances added the special effects
- We learnt that belemites are fish, that a microscope is a machine that zooms something in, that dissect means to take something apart, and that erode means to wear away
Our final artwork, ‘Doli the Dolichodeirus’
Education
Some of us have passed grades in piano and one of us won a guitar trophy. Over half of us play a musical instrument and some of us sing in the choir. Our teachers are Ms Lea and Ms Morris and they help us learn music with the Charanga music scheme.
Occupations
Over half of us want to be either a scientist, singer or composer. Some of us want to be marine biologists, chemists, physicians, mathematicians, archaeologists and even physiotherapists! Some of us even think we can be scientists AND musicians.
Musical Highlights
It was really special when our school choir won the BBC Radio Devon Star for Christmas competition in 2019. We were judged best in the ‘small schools’ category. It was the first time we entered, and we performed a medley of Christmas songs including O Come All Ye Faithful. Being part of a radio show with a real band, live sound checks, cameras and microphones was a surreal and exciting experience. There was an article about us in the Midweek Herald!
Did You Know?
- The voice warm up where we had to warm up our voices, that was funny
- It was funny that some of us had such high pitched voices
- When we clapped Frances put on a clapping background when we were loud enough, that was strange
- We didn’t know that we could compose a song!
An Inspiring Woman
- Isabella Gordon because she was a marine biologist and she studied crustaceans which is crabs and lobsters
- Mary Anning because she found the first complete ichthyosaur and discovered the world before us
- Williamina Fleming discovered the horsehead nebula
- Agnes McDowall, a gardener and plant collector