Wednesday 4 January 2012

Aboriginal Storytelling

Yesterday was our first day back to school after the winter break. We were lucky enough to start the year off with a very special guest, Mr. Bandura, who works for our school district as an Aboriginal cultural worker. He is one of several workers who present workshops to classes about different parts of Aboriginal culture. We are so lucky to have these terrific presenters available to us, especially since studying Aboriginal cultures is such a big part of our Social Studies curriculum in Grade 4.

Mr. Bandura explained how Aboriginal cultures traditionally told stories to pass on information from generation to generation. One important thing we learned is that stories are traditionally told orally without the use of books. We were impressed to learn that a master storyteller might know as many as 250 stories from memory!

Mr. Bandura also makes traditional drums, so he taught us about how drums are made and how they can be used in storytelling. He used one of his deer-hide drums as he told us a legend about how the stars were created. It was a beautiful story.

At the end of presentation everyone got to try playing the drum which had very deep sound.

Hych'ka siem, Mr. Bandura!
(As you can see we also learned how to say "thank you"!)





10 comments:

  1. Dear Ms. Birdsall's class, WOW! Thank you so much for all the wonderful comments you left us. It was so nice to have so many visitors. We will try to comment on your blog too.

    From Division 16

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  2. Wow I didn't know that you took pictures Ms.Birdsall. Anyways it looks great! -Michelle- :)

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  3. Dear Div. 16,

    We are glad that you liked the comments we wrote on your individual blogs. We were very impressed with the quality of your writing. Way to go! Thanks for visiting our blog too. :-)

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  4. hi Ms Birdsall! I loved the performance that Mr Bandura did. It was nice of him to do that performance. I liked playing the drum. I learned some new things during the performance like there are different kinds of aboriginal people. It's cool when aboriginal people didn't have books and had to tell stories. My favorite part was when Mr Bandura played the drum and told a story about how an old man made stars appear. It was awesome.-pawan-:)

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  5. I really liked the pictures and playing the drum was cool.During the performance I learned that it used to be dark until Mr.Bandura told the story aboutthe guy who made stars.I loved the performance.Jayda

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  6. I really liked it when Mr Bandura came to our classroom and when we played his drum which is made of caribou fat. It was really fun to play with his drum. I hope we have more guest speakers.~Jasmine~

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  7. Ms. Birdsall, I heard that there is another story teller come in to our classroom while I was at home. I wished I could hear the story too.(Alexandra)

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  8. Cool pictures






    from olivia. div.9

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  9. Hi Ms Birdsall! I can't believe that it's made out of caribou hides!



    Pawan

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  10. I really like all the pictures you take!!!! I reallylove the picture you take when Mr. Bandura plays the drum.

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