May is a busy time of year at school. On Tuesday, May 13 and Wednesday May 14, I attended the Forest of Reading Festival at Harbourfront. It's an event that my students look forward to attending year after year. For the first time this year, I had groups of students watch the Digital Ceremonies for the Blue Spruce Award in the library. I know that the experience isn't the same - seeing the authors live on stage and being surrounded by hundreds of other children in a stadium-like atmosphere is different than sitting in your school library watching a screen - but the neat thing was that when the winner was announced, regardless of the location, there was cheering. The students clapped and made "a joyful noise".
The Red Maple one still had applause, but it was a bit more subdued than the exclamations that emerged from the Grade 3-6 audience members, or even the ones watching from the comfort of the school library.
Please forgive the quality of these video. This is a short clip of the announcement of the 2025 Silver Birch Express Winner at Harbourfront.
In this short video, they are still yelling with glee. (I can see the back of two of my boys, in grey shirts. One is holding up his copy of the book, that he bought with his own money.)
The great part was after the screaming subsided, it was replaced with chanting. "Lost and Found", the name of the winning book, was repeated over and over again by the enthusiastic crowd.
It gives me goosebumps to hear the voices all raised together, celebrating the author's win.
The lineups to get the authors' signatures were long but the students were eager (and willing to wait)!
We don't want the learning environment to be noisy all the time, but this was a perfect and appropriate time for getting loud.
Noise can be useful at other times as well. In my STEM classes with the Grade 1-2s, we are looking at the science of sound. The students made a "sound detection machine" using sugar and balloons stretched over cups, to visualize the vibrations made by the sound waves.
I will print photos of them using traditional instruments, so they can annotate them with the sound waves emerging. Then, the students are going to make their own musical instruments.
On Friday evening, a piano tuner came in to the school to tune the pianos. He showed me the insides of the piano and gave me a brief explanation of how the piano actually makes sound.
This coming week might not be as loud but it will still be busy, with Quiz Bowl on Tuesday, my final Media AQ class on Thursday, and Track and Field Day sometime this coming week.
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