CHILDREN at Oakwood Avenue Primary School have been standing shoulder to shoulder to show their support for Manchester though music.

The pupils recorded a version of one of their favourite songs, Lean on Me, this afternoon and it has already been shared more than 150 times on Facebook.

The school decided to sing their support for victims of the attack at Manchester Arena.

Teacher Amanda Gale said: “We wanted to do something to mark it. We really believe in helping people and cheering them up.

“We love singing and want to show our support for the people of Manchester.

“We have been speaking to the children about it because they were all coming into school talking about the news. It’s a big life event and we have a lot of children with friends who were at the concert.

“Three members of staff were also there last night. It felt personal as well as showing our support.

“The pupils are obviously quite shocked. We spoke with them about how rare it is for something like this to happen.

“Their main focus was ‘what can we do to help?’ We talked about the positive stories – about taxi drivers helping people get home and residents opening their houses to people who had been at the attack.

“We decided to just show Manchester that even though we are in Warrington we are thinking about them and we are here to support them.”

Amanda, who is from Oldham, said the news hit her hard because the attack is in her home town.

She added: “There was a sombre feeling in school this morning but singing really lifted our spirits.

“Even if we can put a smile on one person’s face it’s worth it.

“Our head teacher is very supportive of us and happy for the children to do things like this to show Oakwood’s support for the community.”