As many other schools across North America have done, East Central students broke out into song and dance to the Black Eyed Peas hit “I’ve got a Feeling.”
As a twist, however, they changed the title from “I’ve got a Feeling” to “We gotta keep reading,” drawing attention to the importance of literacy.
“East Central School got together with other schools all across Canada to do a celebration of literacy,” East Central teacher Shelly Rusheleau.
“Sunday is Literacy Day across Canada, and we decided we would do this to mark the event and promote literacy. The kids just love reading and this was to kind of rave about reading,” she added.
Students from Grades 1 to 8 participated in the flashmob. East Central staff were inspired to host the event after getting the idea from a school in the U.S.
“They had changed the lyrics to a song by the Black Eyed Peas, so the words originally were 'I’ve got a feeling' and now it became 'Gotta keep reading,'” Rusheleau said. “It seemed like a good fit. We just decided on some of the actions --choreography -- practised a little bit together, and that was the result.”
Rusheleau said the children were really excited about the event.
“We didn’t get much work done this morning. I think that sums it up,” she said. “We’ve had a good couple of weeks practising off and on, and the kids are very excited about being here and to see cameras and have interviews.”
The children gradually joined into the mob as it transpired.
“We weren’t the first school to ever try this, so we took some ideas from what we’ve seen and then we just made it our own,” Rusheleau said. “We added a few little things.”
A technical difficulty had to be sorted out before the flashmob could occur, just a minor hiccup according to Rusheleau.
“We had done a test run yesterday, and just because of the difficulties with cables sometimes, we didn’t have exactly what we needed or the connection wasn’t quite right between the phone and the cords,” she said.
“So we just dashed over to P.A. Music, and he was good enough to give us another cable, and then he also came just to be our backup in case we had more trouble,” she added.
Grade 5 student Gage Grassick, who said she loves to read, estimated that she had started practising for the event at the beginning of the month.
“I think it’s really awesome that (we) get to celebrate literacy,” she said, noting that she appreciated the song choice.
alex.dipietro@paherald.sk.ca
