Winterlude - Long Ago Stories

LONG AGO STORIES, stories that teach a lesson, myths, tall tales, folk tales, and fairy tales have all been passed down for ages, by word of mouth, from grandparents to parents to children, since before time began. Stories always have a part in Winterlude, and reading, writing, and telling stories is a component of every grade at Oak Lane, but our immersion in the world of Long Ago Stories has been unique. Walk into any classroom, and you’ll find piles of story books made up of stories from long ago, and universal tales that have been told to children as the wisdom of the ages is passed down. We were fortunate that renowned Native American storyteller, Dovey Thomason, was available for a captivating assembly that inspired many conversations and imitations of her dramatic style.

Winterlude culminates in the Winter Concert, a celebration in the performing arts of each year’s theme. Over the years, Marlis has often created a concert around a story, and that seemed like a natural for this year, but instead of looking for an existing story, we decided to create (or at least adapt) our own. Since we only had two weeks to create this story, plus a week to rehearse it, we started with an existing book, The Spyglass.

Just before Thanksgiving, the faculty introduced this story in a reader’s theater style performance, and then boiled it down to its essence: a place has fallen on hard times; someone shows up with a spyglass that will show the possibility of how things could change and gives that spyglass to another who will inspire people to make that change. We liked the wisdom of this story, about having a vision of making the world a better place, and then going out and working to make it so. The teachers set some basic guidelines for their class’ part of the story. The Kindergarten and 1st grade would create a part of the story where the spyglass inspires people to clean up a polluted place. Sherry’s 4th/5th grade class would set the mood for the beginning, and the celebration at the end. The 2nd/3rd Graders imagine the spyglass helping to settle an argument over whether the people should plant a garden or build a playground, and the preschoolers bring the flowers.

Each class imagined and discussed, drew pictures, read stories, and came up with ideas for their part of the story. By the beginning of last week, ideas were presented to Marlis, the 6th graders and I, and we got to work on the task of taking what the younger students had decided for their parts of the story, stitching them together into a coherent story, and then creating a concert around those ideas. When it became clear to the 6th graders that the setting of the original story (a king in a run down castle) had been abandoned for a more contemporary setting, the 6th graders had to come up with a new setting, and a new main character after they decided that it would be a better lesson in this story if it was a more ordinary person who could change the world.

After several discussions about who would have this spyglass in a world more like ours, they decided that it would be a kid. That was nothing compared to the challenge the Kindergarten and 1st Grade presented when they wanted a talking chipmunk in their part of the story! Then there was nothing left to do but write, rewrite, read aloud, figure out what else was missing, revise, revise and revise some more. In almost every class, discussions led to a list of ideas, and then that list got boiled down to two ideas, with the class evenly split between the two. The lessons of the stories were remembered, and in each class, a new idea was born, the combination of the two ideas: a forest in the city, a playground in the garden, and so on.

Once again, Winterlude gave the Oak Lane community a chance to learn together across grades, and to share a common purpose for these three weeks, and to strengthen skills of collaboration, problem solving, listening, and imagining.

-- Martha Platt, 6th Grade Teacher & Winterlude Committee Chair --

WINTERLUDE Themes Through the Years:
2008 STORIES
2007 BREAD
2006 RHYTHM
2005 DWELLINGS
2004 PHILADELPHIA
2003 FLIGHT
2002 TREES
2001 BRIDGES
2000 HOLIDAYS
1999 TIME
1998 COMMUNITY