Fire in Flame allows the colourful voices to be heard and provides a platform for our boys to shine through words. Let’s share the creative minds and enjoy reading!
Ms Jenny Ho
Hurray! Fire in Flame Volume IV has finally been published. This year, we have two editions – Fire in Flame "Senior" and Fire in Flame "Junior". Both editions are collections of Ying Wa young writers’ masterpieces in the school year 2015-2016. The collections cover a variety of genres, including poetry, stories, letters, comics, and so on. You will definitely be stunned by the imagination and creativity of our boys.
Fire in Flame allows the colourful voices to be heard and provides a platform for our boys to shine through words. Let’s share the creative minds and enjoy reading! Ms Jenny Ho
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Are 11, 12 year-old boys good storytellers? Are they patient enough to answer endless questions put forth by their 6-year-old counterparts?
The answer to the above questions - yes, they are...well at least the ones I came across, are. It all began, when I was given the charge of conducting this year's Story Pilots Scheme at our school where our P5 and P6 student volunteers would read out stories to their P1 counterparts, starting 5th December '16 till 9th December '16. Each day one P1 class would visit the English Room at freetime to listen to their Story Pilot volunteers read out to them. The choosing of the Pilots was not easy as some of them were unsure about their storytelling skills and even more unsure about how to handle 6 years old during the session. But with some encouragement from the teachers and their peers' words of assurance they took up the "challenge". They were given the freedom of selecting the story books of their choice, keeping the age group in mind. After a couple of training and instruction sessions, the Story Pilots were ready for their job. And boy oh boy, what a week it was. All the 15 Story Pilot volunteers proved to be not only fantastic storytellers but also great managers. Although, there were teachers present during the sessions, the volunteers skillfully handled all the queries of the P1 students and also maintained the discipline at the same time. Needless to say, our young P1's got carried away at times but our Story Pilots saw to a smooth running of all the 5 sessions. I was super impressed by our senior boys - at times they seemed like thorough professionals who have been telling stories for ages. Both the Pilots and their listeners enjoyed this activity to the fullest - the twinkling eyes, the soft chuckles, the loud laughter and the endless claps said it all. They were beautifully captured in frames. For me, it was a totally new experience of its kind and it won't be untrue to say that I am already looking forward to next year's Story Pilots Scheme. Bravo to all our Story Pilots this year. Well done boys! Mrs Paul P.S. More photos of this scheme are available at our gallery. While our Junior Choral Speaking Team was crowned WINNER for the fourth time in four years just a few days ago, our Thematic Group Speaking Team responded to that with their third-time victory; our boys have won this category three times in a row! "Thematic Group Speaking" is a really challenging class in the Hong Kong Schools Speech Festival". Participants are required to perform on stage a 15-min programme with different text types, all under one theme. The script is never given, which means that the coach needs to decide the theme and find the pieces and weave them together cleaverly. Not to mention that the training is as hard as the script-writing! This year, my group performed under the theme "In the Times of War", featuring a young Time Traveller going through different spaces and times, all ended up in a war-time. The act combines poetry, prose, drama, monologues...etc in order to convey the anti-war theme. The adjudicator was moved by the boys' professionalism as well as the depth of the script. Now they can go back to their studies peacefully! (In fact, these kids went out for the competition in the middle of their examination period!) I sincerely thank my groupmates, their parents, and Ms Idy Kwok for their whole-hearted commitment to this contest, and I congratulate my team for their deserving success! I am sure we have learnt well beyond the score given. It was such a memorable victory. Dr H C Lee No mountain too high! Led by Ms Ho and Ms Leung for the fourth time in just as many years, our Junior Choral Speaking Team (P.1-3) shone once again at the Speech Festival by securing a WINNER (scored 89) this afternoon. Our Junior Choral Speaking Team has extended the winning streak to four years. By interpreting Nash's verse "The Wendigo" as a battle between invading constructors and original residents of a village, these ever-enthusiastic junior boys turned themselves into scary Native Americans who frightened away the intruders with the tale of a legendary/imagined monster. The drama was on fire and the adjudicator was moved by our ingenious arrangements. How long can our team's golden journey last? Who knows? But as long as our boys continue to adore English speech and drama as a life-long adventure, winning or not is no longer important. Once again, many congratulations to our boys and teachers! Dr H C Lee Our P.4-6 Choral Speaking Group earned a Second Place at this year's Hong Kong Schools Speech Festival with Michael Flander's verse "The Hippopotamus Song". One of our performers, Anson Ng (6C), has the following reflection:
It was a very special memory for us this day (1 Dec). We were fully prepared as we had a lot of practices during mornings and afternoons. It was pretty special as we had added drama elements into it. From starting to memorize the stanzas to practising the drama was a tough but enjoyable process. The day finally came as we started to have more rehearsals than before. We even skipped some of our classes to do our last preparation. Everyone was extraordinarily serious to use our last chance to prepare. Time flew quickly and we arrived at the competition’s venue fully armoured. It was our turn to perform right after we had arrived. The two poems were “The Dragon’s Birthday Party” and “The Hippopotamus song” and we have chosen the second one. Students from other schools had also got their costumes as hippos and seekers. It was hilarious as everybody looked weird in it! The competition went smoothly as there were almost no mistakes in our performance and other schools performed brilliantly too. It was a pretty hard time while wanting for the results. Mrs Lam always says “Winning is not everything”. Although it was a pity that we were only one mark behind the champion, we still enjoyed the practices we had. Lastly, I want to thank all of our teachers, especially our coach Mr. Richard, for giving us such a wonderful memory. We wouldn’t forget this. Anson Ng 6C The third annual Spelling Bee Competition from 14th - 22nd November, 2016 was held in our Hall and the atmosphere was more “buzzing” than ever before! Each primary forms had their own inter-class competition. The senior Primary Six boys took the first plunge on the 14th November, followed by all the lower forms on the consecutive days. The Spelling Bee Competition was at its largest scale this year, as all students were encouraged to participate as long as they remember to bring their complimentary tickets to the door. The competitors were grouped according to their own class. All of the participants were very enthusiastic and encouraging to their teammates, as they all spelt at least one word for their class in 5 seconds. Around 150 “bees” from each class battled it out to become Spelling Bee Champion for their class, correctly spelling words such as “Mathematics” and “prestigious”. After a number of ants-in-pants and nail-biting moments, we finally had our Spelling Bee Champions and the Most Enthusiastic Bees Awards for the class with the largest number of participants. Unfortunately, due to unforeseeable circumstances, the competitions for P.3 and P.2 had to be postponed until the next term. However, the good news for them is that they will have more chances to brace and prepare for themselves for the battle! Here are some glimpses of the competition: Miss Agnes Hio
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