Mitchell Ele­men­tary Oral Inter­pre­ta­tion Fes­ti­val
Thurs­day, March 1, 2012

What: Oral Inter­pre­ta­tion Fes­ti­val — stu­dents per­form poetry, prose, song lyrics or book excerpts.

Who: All Mitchell Ele­men­tary stu­dents (K-6) are invited to par­tic­i­pate.

When: Thurs­day March 1, 2012. Evening per­for­mances will be for fam­ily and friends in the gym. K-3 will per­form from 6–7 pm and grades 4–6 will per­form for 7:15 — 8:15 pm.  Dur­ing the day the per­for­mances will be for judges and class­mates dur­ing “spe­cials”.  4th grade 8:15 — 9:10 | 5th grade 9:10 — 9:55 | 6th grade 10:00 — 10:45 | 3rd grade 10:55 — 11:40 | 2nd grade 1:15 — 2:00 | 1st grade 2:05 — 2:50

Why: It is FUN! Stu­dents get to explore dif­fer­ent types of lit­er­a­ture and are taught good pub­lic speak­ing skills.
How:   Online Reg­is­tra­tion is now Closed.

 

Prac­tices will be held after school (3:00–3:30) on Tues­days and dur­ing lunch recess on Thurs­days start­ing Jan­u­ary 31 and par­tic­i­pants will be required to attend at least one prac­tice per week. Prac­tice at home will also be nec­es­sary. Pieces must be mem­o­rized by Feb­ru­ary 23 in order to per­form on March 1.

 

Select a piece to per­form (30 sec­onds to 3 min­utes in length). Con­sider poems, song lyrics, book or play excerpts, or orig­i­nal work. Look in books. Search online. Write your own! Com­bine short pieces. Get creative!

Addi­tional Information

Oral Inter­pre­ta­tion Judging

All Par­tic­i­pants are stars, and will receive recog­ni­tion!
Judges will watch the morn­ing Oral Inter­pre­ta­tion per­for­mances. They will fill out eval­u­a­tion forms, which will be given to the per­form­ers. These eval­u­a­tion forms are meant to pro­vide valu­able feed­back to the per­form­ers. We want them to be the best they can be. How­ever, there will be no rank­ing and no prizes based on per­for­mance will be handed out.

Info for Parents

Please rehearse with your child at home. Work on:

1. Selec­tion mem­o­riza­tion (you might even put the text near the child’s eat­ing place);
2. Vol­ume;
3. Word clar­ity (no rush­ing or slur­ring! — slow it down!!!)
4. Proper “key word” empha­sis, so the read­ing makes full sense; and
5. Non­ver­bals, such as ges­tures, facial expres­sion and eye con­tact with the audi­ence. Phys­i­cal non­ver­bals are not the main thing — use of voice is, but some appro­pri­ate non­ver­bals do add ele­ments of clar­ity and fun!

 

In Oral Inter­pre­taion, “props” are not needed, but some not-overdone cos­tume touches (for exam­ple a cer­tain cap or shirt) are okay if desired. The point is to “deliver” the piece so the audi­ence “gets it” — and so the child increases his/her sen­si­tiv­ity to lan­guage, lit­er­a­ture and the thrill of being up there on the stage, per­form­ing. Be proud, as we are, of your child’s participation!

For information contact Oral Interpretation Chair:
  Kim Fickes