KAPA‘A — Casey Nakamura was one of four Kapa‘a Middle School eighth-grade students who visited Kapa‘a Elementary School to share their respective storytelling talents, Monday morning. “This was supposed to be just for a couple of classes, but after talking
KAPA‘A — Casey Nakamura was one of four Kapa‘a Middle School eighth-grade students who visited Kapa‘a Elementary School to share their respective storytelling talents, Monday morning.
“This was supposed to be just for a couple of classes, but after talking with Richard Edgeworth, the Kapa‘a Elementary School vice principal, we have three assemblies for the school’s kindergarten, first grade and other classes,” said Jaime Sato, the Kapa‘a Middle School students’ teacher.
Sato said she was student teaching at Kapa‘a Middle School this semester and the storytelling is a result of her final unit on fairy tales.
“They selected a fairy tale to present to the class using hand gestures, eye contact, expressive facial expressions, and other facets they learned after viewing tapes of professional storytellers,” Sato said. “These four students are among the best of the 28 students in the class. They’re also Honors students.”
Kelcie Lima, another of the quartet, said she was telling the saga of the “Three Billy Goat Gruffs” because she could do the different voices and expressive movements.
Sequoia Leech-Kritchman used sound effects in her presentation of “Beauty and the Beast,” while Shania Weiss turned the wolf in “The Three Little Pigs” into a cutie “wolfie,” all the differing incorporations drawing reaction from the elementary school audience. Nakamura relayed the saga of “The White Cat.”
“They actually laughed,” Lima said, her rendition of billy goat voices lighting up the faces of first-grade students who filled the front section of the cafeteria.
Sato said the elementary school students were not laughing at the storytellers, but with them as they were hooked by the different techniques utilized by the middle school storytellers.
During the unit, Sato said the students had the option of writing their own fairy tales, taking a familiar fairy tale and giving it a local twist, or writing up a myth.
For the presentation, each of the four students opted to take a traditional fairy tale, the faces of their young audience building up in anticipation of listening to the interpretation presented by the middle school students.
Lima said she’ll be doing a presentation for the Read to Me International event coming up later this year.
