The Salisbury Symphony is offering one more music camp this summer. Violin Boot Camp is especially designed for players who have had at least two years of violin training.
Camp will meet August 5, 6, 7, 12, 13 and 14, from 4:30 p.m. until 5:30 p.m. at First United Church of Christ on Horah Street. The teacher is Marguerite Keller, a professional musician and teacher.
Registration is $30, and scholarships are available. If needed, instruments may be rented for $15 for the camp. The registration deadline is July 29.
Students will use scales and arpeggios to work on tone production, intonation and vibrato. This camp would also be helpful for those who wish to learn to play music from a chord chart, such as praise and worship, rock and roll and bluegrass groups.
In addition to the scales and arpeggios, a few tunes will be taught in order to apply the new skills, but the emphasis will be heavily on technique.
For more information, contact Susan Trivette, education director for the Salisbury-Rowan Symphony Society, at 704-637-4730 or strivett@catawba.edu.
The Monsanto Fund has announced the finalists for this year’s America’s Farmers Grow Rural Education grants, and the Rowan-Salisbury School System is in the running for a grant of up to $25,000.
From January through March, farmers across the country nominated their local public school districts for the grants. Once nominated, these districts were eligible to submit completed grant applications in April. The winning grant recipients will be announced in early August.
Last year, Grow Rural Education invested $55,000 in public school districts across North Carolina to improve math and science curriculum. Since 2012, North Carolina school districts have received $85,000 through the program.
South Rowan High School will host a community reception to welcome Kelly Withers as its new principal. The reception will be July 22 from 6 to 8 p.m. in the South Rowan High School Media Center.
Twenty-seven students participated in the two “Train Your Brain” sessions that were offered on the campus of North Hills Christian School this summer. Doris Plummer and Shanon Vickers, licensed therapists for this mediation, directed the sessions, which were open to students in the community in fourth grade and above.
Students can develop more than 20 skills using the Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment Program, such as the ability to recognize patterns, to identify elements that remain consistent, to refrain from impulsivity, and to eventually apply these concepts to other aspects of learning.
Many students have seen improvement that has carried over into the classroom as pathways created in the brain are allowing them to perform tasks with which they once struggled.
“We see a direct correlation between the number of modules of FIE a student completes and success in the classroom,” said Doris Plummer, FIE instructor.
Mediated learning helps students to develop the tools necessary for problem solving and for life application. It encourages developing strategies that will enhance learning in the classroom, even when the activity that is experienced does not look like class work.