Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

SMITHFIELD

Isle of Wight County Schools tried something a little different during its annual teachers convocation this year. Instead of having each of the division’s nine schools perform a skit, as had been done in previous school years, this time each school was challenged to a battle of lip syncing — putting an educational spin on the police and first responder lip-sync challenge that has gone viral on social media over the past several months.

The theme for the convocation this year was “growing our unique gifts and talents.” To that end, Carrsville Elementary School kicked off the battle by lip-syncing to “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” by the Charlie Daniels Band — highlighting the school’s new integrated arts curriculum in which all students will be given 20 minutes of violin instruction each day.

Lynn Briggs, the division’s director of community and media relations, said that each school was able to pick its own song and that the videos were created using whatever resources each school could come up with.

“Our team had so much fun planning and performing our lip-sync challenge,” said Carrsville Principal Clint Walters. “It pushed many of our team members to step out of their comfort zone, but in seeing the fruits of their labor, we found that we grew even closer as a team.”

Next up was Smithfield Middle School with “Freedom” by Pharrell Williams and Windsor High School with “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” from the soundtrack to the 1987 movie “Dirty Dancing.” Later, Smithfield High School showed their video featuring “I’ve Got the Power” by Snap, and Georgie D. Tyler Middle School showed a medley of several songs, including “Happy,” also by Pharrell Williams. The medley was intended to represent the beginning, middle and end of the school year.

Windsor Elementary School followed with “Hall of Fame” by The Script. The final two lip-sync videos were Westside Elementary with “I Can’t Stop this Feeling” by Justin Timberlake and Carrollton Elementary with a medley of songs to debut in 1993 when the school first opened. These included “La Macarena” by Los Del Rio and “Hero” by Mariah Carey.

After all the videos had been shown, Smithfield High School was declared this year’s spirit challenge winner and awarded a coconut trophy.