What are you doing the evening of Tuesday, February 2nd? Come and support our high school students who are participating in Poetry Out Loud, a national poetry recitation contest! Perhaps you saw this in the weekly update, but we want to highlight it today on the blog as well.
For those of you with younger children, you know that SLOCA students begin memorizing and reciting early on, and continue throughout their grammar and middle school years. But memorization and recitation don’t end there! Did you know that so far this year, our high school students have memorized passages from Shakespeare, George Herbert OR John Donne, and William Blake OR William Wordsworth. They memorize at least 50 lines per term, so that’s 100 lines per year; but some memorize a lot more.
So as you work with your younger children at home helping them memorize and recite their poems, know that you are cultivating skills that will continue to blossom and serve them well in high school.
Here’s a little more about this event from our high school English teacher, Paul McCullough:
“Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom,” Robert Frost reminds us. Ever seeking to grow in both delight and wisdom, we at SLOCA give poetry a prominent place in our English curriculum. We invite you to join us on the evening of Tuesday, February 2nd at 7 PM in the MPR for SLOCA High School's first ever Poetry Out Loud event, a poetry recitation contest sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. Seven of our high school students will recite poems from memory, and one student will be selected to represent our school at the county level for a chance to recite at the state and national levels. When was the last time you were moved by a poem? So moved that you took it up into your memory and carried it with you like a talisman for years? Let's gather as a community on February 2nd, then, and encourage our students in their love for poetry as they bring these poems to life for us. Light refreshments will be served and much merriment will be had.
We hope you will join us in supporting and cheering on our hard-working sloCAHS students!
For more info about Poetry Out Loud, visit their website.
