On Wednesday, 9th February 2011, Brindishe Schools celebrated ‘National Sing-Up Day’.

Sing-Up! is an organisation which promotes singing around the country. They have a wonderful website with a huge bank of songs and backing tracks on every topic you can think of. Both Brindishe schools use the website regularly for whole-class singing sessions and our weekly singing assemblies. Sing-Up have an awards scheme too. Our schools are registered for the Gold Award and are working to collect lots of evidence to prove how dedicated we are to singing. National Sing-Up Day promotes singing across the country and over 800 events were held nationally.

We wanted to find a really big way to celebrate Sing-Up Day this year, so we decided to hold a ‘Singathon’. The singing began at Brindishe Green at 9.10 a.m. at a morning assembly. Throughout the morning, classes had a 10 minute slot to sing together in their classrooms. They could choose any song they liked. At the end of their ten minutes, they chose a song to share with the next class and walked, singing all the way, to the next class to sing with them. The singing gathered momentum all morning, with each class singing their heart out and enthusiastically passing the song to another group.

At 12.00 p.m., Birch Class from Year 3, representing Brindishe Green, walked and sang their way through Hither Green to meet the KS2 Choir, representing Brindishe Lee, at Manor Park. The two groups of children sang to one another on the street and so the singing passed from one school to the other!

The KS2 choir then walked back to Brindishe Lee, singing all the way and ‘pass the song’ started all over again! With just as much enthusiasm and high spirits, each class at Brindishe Lee had their ten minutes of singing and passed the song to the class beside them.

The singing culminated in a joint Skype link-up with both schools at 3.00 p.m. We had a video conference altogether in our school halls. We were thrilled to be joined by our Brindishe Schools (adult) Community Choir, who came along to support us. Brindishe Lee sang first and raised the roof with ‘Make Someone Happy’. They received a huge round of applause from the children at Brindishe Green, who then sang ‘Believe’. Both schools, and the Community Choir, joined together to sing ‘Sing London’, which all the children had learnt especially for Sing-Up Day.

It was truly a fantastic event! Every child in both schools took part and everyone had such a wonderful time. And it was a great opportunity for the children in both schools to work and learn and sing together and to really celebrate singing in our schools. We’re already looking forward to next year!

Gerlinde Achenbach and Éadaoin Kelly
Music Leaders in Brindishe Schools