Wow! The students in 8V and 8W sure have taken ownership of their writing! It's a powerful thing writing with a purpose for a specific audience - that being the readers of Van Walleghem's Newsletter!
I would like to congratulate Caitlin and Hezron for being selected to be published in our March edition.
The students were to write a news article about an event at our school, or within our community.
Raise Your Voice
By: Caitlin Marques
“Amazing and outstanding, lovely sound led by a lovely teacher,” said the audience members attending
Van Walleghem’s performance at Pembina Trails sings. Van Walleghem’s choirs gathered together this past
month to raise their voices, creating beautiful music for everyone to hear! Led by Ms. Ciavarelli, the choirs
rose to the occasion and exceeded all expectations! Even for non-music lovers, there’s no denying the magic
that happened on that stage!
This melodic event, known as Pembina Trails Sings, took place on Wednesday, February 10 from
1:00pm-2:15pm at Westward United Church. An abundance of schools got together to take part in this
mellifluous afternoon. Two of Van Walleghem’s spectacular choirs took part in this event, including the
grade 3&4 choir and VW’s grade 6 to 8 pop choir!
Each choir had a set ready to perform. From a wide variety of song selection including “Carry me
Away” as well as classics like “This Old Man”, and even songs in different languages like the song “Canta
Conmigo” were performed. The choirs from Van Walleghem were accompanied by the lovely and extremely
talented pianist, Ms.Plosz. She really helped to bring out the full sound of the choir and helped to make sure
that the choirs’ harmonies were on key during their performance.
After the choirs’ rehearsed set, the adjudicator, Dr. Catherine Robins, came up to the stage and not
only suggested ways for the choirs to improve their technique, but also gave feedback on each performance
and song. Some notes Ms. Robins gave included stretching out and suspending the words, holding the
beautiful moments of the piece and making them last longer.
This week a fellow choir member and the choirs’ amazing, dedicated director, Mme. Ciavarelli were
asked what they thought about their performance at Pembina Trails Sings.
“I really liked how at the end of the performance a person adjudicates you and then tells you some
tips you can get better with,” says one of the fellow 6-8 choir members,“ I think our choir did extremely
awesome; we all sang in good harmony!” Megan H, later on tells us that this was her second and final year
attending Pembina Trails Sings as a Van Walleghem student; however, she looks forward to hopefully
attending Pembina Trails Sings at other high schools in the future!
Overall the performances were said to be a big success! Each choir put everything into their
performance and should be applauded for everything that they’ve accomplished. These exemplary students
showcased how hard work, practicing week after week, can lead up to something undeniably spectacular! It’s
astonishing that children of such young ages are able to create something so touching and everlasting!
The Voyage to Festival Du Voyageur!
By Hezron Y. (8W)
On February 16 Grade 8V and 8W had a cultural celebration/ goodbye party for an international
student in 8V who was at our school for 2 months, before returning back to Korea. We went snowshoeing,
tobogganing and made La tire, which was amazingly fun and super easy to make because they were made from
snow and maple syrup. Also, it was extremely delicious, very original and quite different than what I usually
eat.
On February 19, 2016 was our school's Festival du Voyageur, Grades K-6 did activities such as dancing,
dressed up as a voyageurs, got traditional food and ate it and played voyageur music. In the afternoon, all
the pumped up kids and the teachers went to the school's gym for an assembly for a spectacular
performance about Festival du Voyageur with a real voyager named Tibert, The Voyageur. He showed how a
voyageur's life style was like what their job was, how they spent time in their life. My opinion on the Festival
du Voyageur is that it was a pleasant and fantastic experience for the kids and young adults in Van
Wallegham.
Henry from 8V says: “I would give it a 10.0 because it was a good idea to do Festival du Voyageur in
our school, a performance, and cultural celebration goodbye party, in one week and in that one week, was
spectacular experience for all children and it was super fun and exciting.”
Adonai from 6M says:” I would rate it a 8.0 because I feel like they should add more outdoor activities
because voyageurs were usually outdoors, so why not have outdoor activities! All in all, everything part of the
Festival du Voyageur was excellent and amazing!”
And my thoughts are that I would rate it a 9.5 because the one thing I liked that was the assembly.
Last year, they would of talk about Festival du Voyageur, but this year we had a performance. I wished that
the 7’s and 8’s would have participated in the school’s Festival du Voyageur afternoon activities, not only our
cultural celebration party and the assembly.
In conclusion, I think that this was an important event to the Van Wallegham students because it's
good to know about a part of Manitoba’s culture.
