Monday, Feb. 10

 

Lincoln students hone storytelling
and writing skill under master

[FEB. 10, 2003]  "I pay tribute to this great man -- Abraham Lincoln, I'm your No. 1 fan!" So proclaimed a Washington-Monroe third-grader, presenting his poem before classmates at Postville Courthouse Friday afternoon.

Students at Washington-Monroe have profited from a week's worth of storytelling and poetry-writing, thanks to a visit from author-in-residence Brian "Fox" Ellis of Peoria. Throughout the week "Fox" worked with students in all grades at the school, including special needs children, according to Principal Rebecca Cecil. Ellis told tales about Abraham Lincoln, shared his own and others' poetry, and encouraged such reading-related skills as using the library and listening carefully.

"He's neat," judged one third-grader. "He tells stories and they're funny."

Another student said she likes to write and has written stories before but not poems. Now she will write poems too, she prophesied.

 


[Photos by Lynn Spellman]

All the third- and fourth-graders wrote and delivered poems. Most of the poetry follows a "catalog" format, using a series of phrases or clauses to describe Lincoln through his attributes. A third-grader wrote in part:

Black shoes,

Big head,

Sixteenth president,

Really strong.

From another third-grader:

Big, tall black hat;

Taught himself to read. . . .

Was a great lawyer. . .

Saved his friends that were stuck in a snag,

And freed the poor slaves.

 

Some of the fourth-grade poems feature a narrower topic -- Lincoln's assassination or his stovepipe hat, for example. Apparently one of the stories students learned during the week is that Lincoln sometimes stuffed his mail into his hat.

The students understand rhyme and some chose to use it:

You are funny.

That's why your face is on money.

---

As tall as the sky,

But he was still a great guy.

---

He always wore black all the time,

And he was smarter than Albert Einstein.

---

He was a railsplitter and that's no joke,

Although when he was a child his parents were almost broke.

Ellis both encouraged and exemplified dramatic delivery. "You wrote these poems, so you know them," he told the students. "So look at us; turn up the drama." And then the ultimate encouragement: "Pretend Abe Lincoln is in the audience."

In reading Walt Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain!" to the fourth-graders Ellis demonstrated how to turn up the drama, holding eye contact, speaking forcefully, enunciating carefully, varying pitch and speed, using gestures and facial expressions to reinforce meaning. Prior to the reading he helped students work out the analogy that if Lincoln is Whitman's captain, the ship must be the United States.

 

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"Isn't he a fabulous speaker!" exclaimed Shirley Bartelmay, leader of volunteers at Postville Courthouse State Historic Site. "He has lots of charisma to him."

Besides reading poems, Ellis told stories about Abraham Lincoln. One tale involved Lincoln's comparing a heckler to a riverboat steam organ so large that the engine stopped running when the organ was played. The same applies to the heckler, said Lincoln: "When he opens his mouth, his brain stops running." After telling the story and getting his laugh, Ellis let the students know they could find the information in the Congressional Record.

In college Ellis majored in education with an emphasis on storytelling in the classroom. He has put his training and love of learning to use as a teacher, counselor and mentor in settings including day-care centers, summer camps and public and parochial schools. Ecology is a special interest, and he has acted as "riverlorian" for the Spirit of Peoria paddle-wheel boat.

"We are all storytellers," Ellis says on his website www.foxtalesint.com. "When we come home from a rough or good day and tell our family about our experience, we are enacting the ancient art of the story weaver. It is how we wrap our lives and bind them with others."

At a Washington-Monroe parents' meeting Thursday night Ellis talked about basic storytelling and sharing the day's events with children. He asked parents to encourage their youngsters to be readers and writers, not just TV watchers and video game players.

 

Ellis has published four books, many magazine articles and four cassettes, with another to come out soon. He is a member of the National Storytelling Association and has appeared at conferences and storytelling festivals in the United States and abroad. He presents about 15 storyteller-in-residence programs a year.

The Washington-Monroe program was funded by an Illinois Reading Council grant. Third-grade teachers Gail Zimmer and Deb Turner, fourth-grade teachers Bev Wunderlin and Leslie Singleton, and Title 1 teacher Mary Clark wrote the grant application. Ellis presented a similar program at the school last year.

He says the goal of his business, Fox Tales International, is "to use storytelling to educate and inspire listeners towards a deeper appreciation of their selves, their family and friends, their heritage, and their relationship to the earth." The quotation appears on his website.

Students' understanding of their Abraham Lincoln heritage comes out in the lines of their poems: "He was a great speller, teller of tall tales." "He gave the town its name." "Abe was a great defender of his nation."

[Lynn Spellman]


Child Passenger Safety Week

[FEB. 10, 2003]  TORONTO -- Feb. 9-15 is National Child Passenger Safety Week in the United States. In addition to being the leading cause of death in teens across the United States, car crashes are also the leading cause of death in children under age 15.

According to a June 18, 2002, press release from the National Academies' Transportation Research Board, about 800 school-age children are killed every year in motor vehicle crashes during normal school travel hours -- weekday mornings and afternoons during school months. This accounts for about 14 percent of the 5,600 child deaths that occur on the nation's roadways. Of these 800 deaths, only about 2 percent are related to school buses, while 74 percent occur in private passenger vehicles and 22 percent are the result of pedestrian or bicycle accidents. More than half of all deaths of children between ages 5 and 18 occur during normal school travel hours when a teen-ager is driving.

"Some parents look forward to their teen acting as chauffeur for younger brothers and sisters, but we are concerned that teen drivers are not be ready for the job," says Gary Direnfeld, executive director of the I Promise Program, a teen safe-driving initiative.

Direnfeld conducted an e-mail survey of passenger safety experts, asking their opinion on teens chauffeuring younger children. Their responses provided for this advice:

1. Don't do it. Do not rely on teen drivers to transport younger children. Young children often do not value the authority of a teen driver and may be more prone to acting up and distracting the driver.

 

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2. If you must rely on teen drivers to transport younger children, have the teens learn from a qualified child passenger safety technician how to install infant carriers, car and booster seats. Contact your local police service or hospital to locate an expert in your area.

3. Have your infant carrier, car and booster seat inspected to assure it meets all current safety standards.

4. Parents, teen drivers and all other passengers must wear their own seat belt at all times, allowing only as many passengers as functional seat belts.

Direnfeld reminds parents that safe driving starts with them. He says that kids learn to drive long before they get behind the wheel of a car themselves by watching their parents. He encourages all parents of teen drivers to enter into a mutual safe-driving pact, suggesting programs like his I Promise Program, to help them do so.

Parents interested in reading his child passenger report can view it at www.ipromiseprogram.com.

For local events, click here to read "Reduce the risk of injuries while traveling."

[Gary Direnfeld, I Promise Program Inc.]

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