Farewell

This is my final post on the Wilky Way as I am moving to a new school in September. Wilkinson is an amazing school and I look forward to reading about many wonderful events there as I continue to follow the blog.
Happy holidays everyone!

The final Telling Bee

Recently, Wilkinson held an evening event for the Telling Bee. All the storytellers who told at the daytime Bee were invited back to work their magic one last time.
Once again, we started the Bee in the gym, this time with an audience largely made up of parents and grandparents. Storyteller Dan Yashinsky happily was able to join us also to experience the students efforts.



Here are some of the highlights from the evening:

Ailie told her story of snapped elastic and missing underwear; this time including a nice tribute to her Dad (the subject of the story) who was in the audience. A large round of applause followed this amusing and confidently told tale.

Ruby was up next, reminding us all of the perils of going to Starbucks when it is icy outside...

Matthew retold the folktale "Silly and Sillier", a story about some extremely silly individuals. Matthew gave each of the characters their own voice and once again showed a real flair for storytelling.

Fatima told her story about the worst day of her life. It brought a tear to more than a few eyes to hear such an innocent story about what must have been a very fearful event for all concerned at the time.

Our final act for the gym, Logan, once again managed to charm the audience with his recount of a tornado. Following his story, Logan decided he needed to take charge of events and did so alarmingly well. I am beginning to wonder why I spent so long preparing myself to speak to the audience!

Following this stunning start to our event, everyone moved upstairs to listen to around another 60 storytellers in a more relaxed classroom setting. I wandered up and down the halls listening to small parts of many stories. Judging by the proud faces I saw in the audience, these students did an exceptional job once again telling their stories.

All too soon, groups started to finish and families started to leave for home. Hopefully everyone involved in the evening was able to take away some happy memories.

The Telling Bee book is now nearing completion (in part, that is why it took so long for me to post this response to our event!). It has taken many months to prepare but it is going to be well worth the effort in the end if the latest draft is anything to go by!

The Tale of Despereaux

A book talk by Sienna.
'The Tale of Desperaux' is a book about a tiny mouse with huge ears.He lives in a castle where a young princess lives with her mother and father.In this book, a rat,a maid,a princess and a mouse have an amazing adventure. One day I was sick and I read the whole book all in that day,(thats how good it is).This is my favorite book ever!

The Giving Tree

A book talk by Emily.
'The Giving Tree' is personally one of the best books I have read by Shel SilverStein. It is a book about friendship. But not the kind of friendship you and your best friend would share, the couple is a boy and a tree. If you want to find out more then open the book and start reading!

A school full of stories

The Bee is really buzzing!
The Wilkinson Telling Bee daytime event took place on Wednesday April 15th. Our Telling Bee started with 11 confident student storytellers in the gym both in the morning and after lunch. The whole school was captivated by the stories and little sound was heard until the resounding round of applause following each of the storytellers. A special congratulations goes to Sophia, Ailie, Matthew, Imaan, Zainab, Jodie, Fatima, Helen, Logan, Mughees and Ruby for their performance in front of the whole school. Following their amazing performance, about another 107 storytelling students from Kindergarten to grade 6 told their wonderful stories to audiences set up in every room on the second floor. Many students and adults in the audience were inspired to join in and tell their own stories.

Afterward, students, staff and parents were really buzzing about the Bee. Many students told me that they were going to share the stories they had heard with their families at home.Here are some of the things the students had to say afterwards;
Andrew in grade 6, "Personally I liked hearing stories of other kids who have had very exciting times in their lives and very different from many others of the kids."
Sienna also in grade 6, "I think that it was fun to hear peoples stories and to know things about their family or other friends."
Niki in grade 2 had this to say, "I liked telling the stories."
Olina in grade 6 told me (in a quite animated fashion), "I thought hearing peoples stories was awesome! Yeah!" Way to go Olina!

There were also some very thoughtful comments from some of the parents who have donated a lot of their own time to helping the students involved in the Bee. April, who's daughter is in grade 4 said afterwards, "I travelled into 3 classrooms and heard stories 3 times in a row. It didn't matter if the kids were in grade 6 or whether they were in grade 1, they changed their story each time and it actually changed the flavour of what the story was and that's exactly what happens with folk tales."
Another parent Susan, with 2 children in the school, told me, "I loved how hearing one child telling stories encouraged other children to tell stories."
This is what our Bee is all about - sharing a little bit of who we are and where we come from in order to further enrich our school community. Every time a story is shared, our Bee is a success.

Tell me a story

Do you ever wonder how a story gets started? Something I have noticed over the last few weeks is that for every story told, it reminds someone else of a story about their own families and their own lives.
There is something magical for me about listening to one student only to see the rest of the group start to see links with their own life experiences and get excited about listening and talking.

Here are some of the comments I have heard from parents about the progress of the Telling Bee:
Sophie from grade 1 told her Dad,"she really liked hearing stories from the different people in the school who she didn't know before. She also said she wished her little sister could be a part of it too because she think she would also like the stories."
Sophie's dad Phil had this to say,"Speaking as Dad, I can tell she is excited about it and she couldn't wait to show us the work she had done to prepare for her story last week."

Another of our parent's, Laura, also got in touch to tell me about her family's feeling about the Bee, "The positive impact of stories…
The telling bee initiative has positively impacted my family. Anthony and Sam are recalling and sharing stories with great enthusiasm. The story telling exercise has made long winter car rides to cold hockey arenas entertaining, amusing and most delightful. Sam loves to re-tell me, over and over, about the day he was born and I missed my nail appointment because he arrived early.
So many wonderful, heart-warming stories. So grateful that both my children are engaged in this amazing process. Thank you Ms. Found."

This event is about our whole school community and it is great to hear that it is having such an impact on the families involved.

A very quick Silver Birch Contest!

The first student to answer this question will win a prize:
In the book "Eye of the Crow" what initials were on the back of the glass eye?

To answer the question, click on the comments link under this post and post your answer!
I will be posting another contest inside the library next week.