Last friday myself and the other foreign english teacher from the UK were asked to judge the english festival singing contest. Classes were cancelled friday afternoon and we were brought to the broadcast room. In the other school I was never allowed in here so this was a first.

Basically like a TV studio there is a desk with a curtain and we face a camera. Instead of a large camera facing us its a small security camera type one hidden in a glass ball. There is a control room outside where students can manage the picture feed to the classrooms

First we were asked to read a poem each which students were going to illustrate back in their classrooms. For the next lesson was the singing contest.

Students from each grade would come in and perform their song in karaoke style. While some were nervous and had bad pronounciation others were really good.

One girl singing the Celine Dion's Titanic song was strong with a lot of confidence hitting the high notes. Surprisingly she was a first grade student.

Later a group of second graders did Abba's Dancing Queen. The singing was quite bad but then during the chorus some boys would run in front of the camera doing crazy dance moves

The best performer from third grade was a boy singing the Maroon 5 song 'This Love'. Again he had a lot of confidence and was able to sing quite well.

We had to choose a winner so from each grade we chose Celine Dion for Grade 1, Abba for Grade 2 (only because it was a large group or they'd all get upset), and Maroon 5 for Grade 3.

Then we were told we had to choose a single winner not one for each grade. The other foreign teacher who has been here longer said the Maroon 5 boy always comes runner up and since he is going to graduate and goto high school now we thought we should choose him

But the other teachers wanted to give it to the girl in first grade who sang the Celine Dion song. She ended up being the overall winner but I'm not sure what she got.

It was a fun afternoon off but the following week I had to do a double friday class to make up for it which I didnt know so had to improvise something on the spot.