Penn Partnership Schools Present "Strings for Schools" Student Concert

WHO:Strings for Schools and children from West Philadelphia Penn Partnership Elementary Schools  

WHAT:Community concert

WHEN:Thursday, May 19, 9:30 a.m.

WHERE: Lea School auditorium, 47th and Locust streets

Music instruction is all too often one of the first casualties of school budget cuts despite growing evidence that early music training improves children reasoning skills and creativity.  For two years, Strings for Schools, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing music education in the public schools, has been working with three Penn Partnership Schools in West Philadelphia to bring music back into the classrooms.

Under an agreement with the Philadelphia School Reform Commission, William C. Bryant, Henry C. Lea and Alexander Wilson Elementary schools have partnered with the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania to improve student achievement.  The collaboration between the three schools and Strings for Schools brought musicians directly into the classroom, in residencies designed to introduce students to music and performance and to relate music to other subjects.  

In their residency at Lea and Wilson, the James D Ensemble focused on American music, relating their studies of the Lewis and Clark expedition to the development of popular song that arose with westward expansion.

At Bryant, a Catch the Vibrations unit explored the relationship between music and the science of sound.  Using everyday objects, third graders made percussion and string instruments that helped to teach them about sound waves and the dynamics of sound and to prepare them for taking up an instrument in the fourth grade.