Guest Lecture on Carnatic Music

The sound of the Sarangi - the melodious Veena, Carnatic music by far be the most calming style of music there ever is .Our senior from high school enlightened us on Carnatic Music. The word ‘Carnatic’ means pleasing to the ear. The 7 notes of Carnatic are said to be originated from Shiva's Damroo.The father of the style, Sage Purandaradasa, made the first 4 'Pillari Geetham'. The trinity or the trimoorthy of the style are Tyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri. There are some components. Pitch is called Shruti. Shruti is a central system and is the most important part or foundation for short. There is an exercise to obtain the perfect Shruti, Sa-Pa-Sa. The next component is Rhythm or Tala. The meaning of Tala is a sequence of beats made by hands. It has 2 sub-components, Laghu and Drutham. Laghu means beat and Drutham means turning of the hand. Then comes Ragas. Ragas with all 7 notes are called Sampoorna Ragas. Mohanam and Kalyani are 2 types of Ragas. There is something called the Navarasam. It consists of nine emotions which are: Peace, Love, Anger, Humor, Sorrow, Courage, Terror, Disgust and Surprise. Next comes the divine Harikambhoji. It is a Raga that lets you express your emotions. Next, we have a melodious Raga called Kalyani. It is mostly used in film songs. One of the famous Carnatic artists is M.S Subbulakshmi. We, on the behalf of whole grade 5, would like to thank our senior for taking time out from his busy schedule and doing this session.

Article written by: Vivaan Sundrani, Grade 5 Euclid

Manaswini

Aradhyula, Grade 5 Grace Hopper

Looking the IB way-PYP exhibition and learning fest.

On 18th February 2023, acorns of our school from grades 5 & 6 organised their PYP exhibition and learning fest. It represents the independent learning that is sparked by our interests on surrounding key issues that they want to inquire into, and ultimately take action to improve or create awareness about out around these issues.

It was called the PYP exhibition as they were tested on their knowledge before moving to MYP and it was called learning fest for grade 5 as we showed our learning journey through this exhibition. We work on this through an inquiry cycle which has 6 stages.When the teachers first announced this event all acorns had a view of it being weeks of tiring work but as a few days passed by, we started enjoying the work. We had to first think about 2 sustainable development goals close to our heart and we were sorted into groups that way.

Then, we split ourselves into small groups and worked on different aspects of this project. For example each group prepared a chart for each country and their status in achieving the sustainable development goal. Everyday an addition to charts were created by every group. We had to be a thinker and inquirer to research for information about our particular sustainable development goal . We had to be open minded to listen to the ideas of everyone in our group so that we could make an effective project. We also had to be principled with self management skills in order to finish our work without any delay. We had to be balanced and focus on both project and also other school works. Few weeks later, we started making models of our goal as we are risk takers. We had also faced a lot of issues in making the models as some broke and leaked .

All of us took some personal action as it is best to start with an issue locally.Since we were reflective we thought on how we could make it better. One and a half week before the learning fest when everything was almost ready, we being communicators started working on our speeches. A day before the event we set up the stalls and had a lot of fun hanging buntings and decorating the stalls as well. There were also some stalls put up by students of higher grades which was meticulously planned by them.

On 18th morning, all students of grade 5 and 6 were all geared up. First, there was a orientation session conducted by the MYP students in the multi purpose hall. Then came the big announcement where Shailaja mam told that grade 6 is transitioning to MYP. After the orientation, parents visited our stalls where we explained in detail about our project.

We felt very happy as we got praise from both the parents and teachers. We enjoyed this whole experience as We got a taste of how MYP was going to look like and personally I got benefitted by applying many learner profile and ATL skills in this journey. The learning fest and PYP exhibition was a grand success!

By Sampriti Mahadevan, Grade 5 Grace Hopper