Or­toire RC Pri­ma­ry School put on a scin­til­lat­ing per­for­mance to cap­ture the pri­ma­ry school di­vi­sion of the 2012 bpTT Ma­yaro Schools Choral Speak­ing Com­pe­ti­tion held at the Ma­yaro Re­source Cen­tre last week.

Guid­ed by teacher Fay Alon­zo, it was the third straight vic­to­ry for Or­toire RC, which was giv­en the ho­n­our of tak­ing the tro­phy for keeps. Or­toire RC scored 364 points, with Mafek­ing Gov­ern­ment plac­ing sec­ond with 283 points and St Thomas (Ma­yaro) RC, third, with 273 points.

An elat­ed Or­toire stu­dent Syd­ney Mar­celline said af­ter the vic­to­ry: "I have com­pet­ed in all three years that we won and every year feels bet­ter. The com­pe­ti­tion helps us with vo­cab­u­lary and pro­nun­ci­a­tion. Al­so, for me and my friends in stan­dard five, we are more con­fi­dent about writ­ing our SEA ex­ams next year."

Ma­yaro Sec­ondary de­fend­ed its ti­tle in the sec­ondary schools di­vi­sion by staving off a spir­it­ed chal­lenge from debu­tants Man­zanil­la High School. The school was al­so al­lowed to keep the tro­phy, hav­ing per­formed suc­cess­ful­ly in every year of the com­pe­ti­tion.

This is the fifth edi­tion of the bpTT Ma­yaro Schools Choral Speak­ing Com­pe­ti­tion, which is or­gan­ised by the Ma­yaro Lit­er­a­cy Im­prove­ment Com­mit­tee (MLIC) and spon­sored by en­er­gy com­pa­ny BP Trinidad and To­ba­go. "This is yet an­oth­er com­po­nent of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween bpTT and the MLIC as we al­so work to­geth­er to pro­vide adult lit­er­a­cy train­ing in Ma­yaro through the AL­TA pro­gramme. This choral speak­ing com­pe­ti­tion is an ex­cit­ing way of im­prov­ing lit­er­a­cy, vo­cab­u­lary and mem­o­ry skills, while giv­ing the stu­dents greater self-con­fi­dence," Ron­da Fran­cis, Cor­po­rate Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty man­ag­er, bpTT said.

Pro­gramme co-or­di­na­tor Ar­val­on Wil­son-Smith said: "Our mis­sion is to raise lit­er­a­cy lev­els across the south-east­ern com­mu­ni­ty and this project is one of the mech­a­nisms that will help us achieve that goal. It is al­so a great plat­form to in­tro­duce the stu­dents to stand-out lo­cal pieces and this year we sought to cap­ture the essence our 50 years of In­de­pen­dence. Choral speak­ing has di­rect lit­er­a­cy ben­e­fits, while giv­ing the stu­dents in­di­vid­ual self-be­lief. Over the past five years, our col­lab­o­ra­tion with bpTT has pos­i­tive­ly im­pact­ed the lives of young peo­ple across the Ma­yaro com­mu­ni­ty."

The com­pe­ti­tion com­pris­es per­for­mances by pre-schools, pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools. The pre-school per­for­mances are not judged, while the high­er di­vi­sions per­form set pieces. For this year's com­pe­ti­tion, the pri­ma­ry schools per­formed Our Na­tion's Dawn­ing by G Carl­ton Samp­son, while the sec­ondary schools per­formed God Bless Our Na­tion by Ma­jorie Pad­more.

Head judge Jeanette John­son praised the ef­forts of the stu­dents, "This year saw all round ex­cel­lent per­for­mances and there was great use of tone, fa­cial ex­pres­sions and emo­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion. As judges, we are pleased with the de­vel­op­ment of the par­tic­i­pants even though sep­a­rat­ing the schools is be­com­ing a more dif­fi­cult task."