PRIMARY school children across the area attempted to break a world record by singing in sign language.

For the second year running St John’s CE Primary School, Weymouth, decided to take part in ‘sign2sing’, a world record breaking attempt for the most people signing, in British Sign Language, the same song at the same time.

Headteacher Mrs Mason, said: “We all enjoyed taking part.

“It is a terrific initiative which teaches the children a new and valuable skill as well as raising awareness of deaf issues.

“We also used the challenge of learning to sign as our whole school Team Dorset Challenge of learning.”

SignHealth, which is behind the initiative, is a national charity dedicated to improving healthcare and achieving equal access for deaf people.

Mrs Mason added that the school hoped to raise some much needed funds to enable national charity SignHealth to continue their valuable work.

Youngsters at Wyke Regis Primary School and Bridport Primary School also took part in the event.

Bridport Primary headteacher Debbie Brown said: “It was absolutely brilliant.

“We had 370 children and 30 adults, taking the number to 400.

“Three children, Blake, Katie and Willow, in the school sign at home so they led everybody.

“All of the children were completely engrossed and they picked it up so quickly.”

Pupils learned the song over the past month in weekly sessions as well as the odd practice in class.

Youngsters in the reception class were also having a pyjama party on the same day and joined in the fun.

In 2011, 94,489 children took part in SignHealth's sign2sing event and smashed the Guinness World Record.

The charity lined up 130,000 schoolchildren and staff for the 2012 event.

It said that the event was huge and it is confident to have broken the record although it now needs to be verified by Guinness World Records.

Steve Powell, chief executive at SignHealth, said more than 900 schools were involved and the charity was delighted that so many local schools had signed up.