Fifteen hundred schoolchildren fill the Paraninfo at the UAL Educational Concerts

Fifteen hundred schoolchildren from across the province passed through the Paraninfo of the University of Almería this Tuesday. They came to attend the Educational Concerts, an activity now in its 25th year that fills the campus with music, stories and dance. The schoolchildren arrive at the Paraninfo and cross the hall among storybook characters. Once seated, the show begins: works based on children's stories, choreographies in which the children themselves take part and a programme that is not fixed in advance. Those leading it are around a hundred students from the Early Childhood Education and Primary Education degrees and the double degree that combines both. The first session included the Kinder Garden, Maestro Padilla, Villapequesueños and Mar de Alborán nursery schools, together with the CEIP Arco Iris and Torrequebrada, both in Aguadulce, the Francisco de Goya and the La Milagrosa and Portocarrero schools. The second added the CEIP Padre Manjón, in Benahadux; Ferrer Guardia, in La Cañada; Luis Siret, Europa – José Ramos Santander and Torremar, in Retamar, and the CPR Valle del Andarax, in Instinción, as well as students from the UAL Professional Qualification course. In total, 16 centres.

The aim of the activity is twofold. The schoolchildren enjoy a show designed for them and the future teachers see live how what they work on in class is applied. Juan Rafael Muñoz, professor and head of the Didactics of Musical Expression Area of the Department of Education, explains that the idea is "that they observe, that they experience and that they identify everything we have done in class by applying it with girls and boys live and in person". Muñoz notes that the programme changes as it goes along depending on how the audience responds: "The programme is not fixed and the only thing they know is what the first song is; I decide the rest as we go, like in a school". Each session is different, he detailed, because the children and their reactions are too. The event is in such demand that, according to the professor, schools start asking for a place in May of the previous academic year and the May sessions are already full. Over the whole academic year, with the May date, the number of participants will double compared with the 1,500 of this Tuesday.