Forensic team impresses in Peters Township
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Sophia, left, and Alana Landis read from Tammy: A Coming of Age Story About a Girl Who is Part T-Rex” during the forensic team’s showcase at McMurray Elementary School.
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Alaina Kulikowski
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Billy McGrath
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Kaitlyn Strine
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Nickjay Saini
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Wyatt Skillings
Beyond her being a fifth-grader, Olivia Koucoumaris learned that she was now a “chrysalis.”
That was her prompt, the theme she was assigned for an impromptu speech during the McMurray Elementary School Forensic Teams’ recent showcase. Twenty minutes later, she stood in front of classmates, family members and other observers to deliver what she had composed.
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Olivia Koucoumaris
“Hello. My name is Olivia, and I’m cramped,” she asserted. “If I could get out, I would. But I’m too scared. What if I get stuck? What if it hurts? I don’t know what to do.”
She was among the 14 McMurray students who participated in the showcase, held in advance of the mid-February Southwestern Pennsylvania Forensic League finals in South Fayette Township.
Two other fifth-graders at the Peters Township school, twins Sophia and Alana Landis, ended up winning first place in the tournament following their showcase reading of Julia Weiss’ intriguingly titled book “Tammy: A Coming of Age Story About a Girl Who is Part T-Rex.”
Rebecca Bowman, the team’s coach, explained what the girls were doing in conjunction with the Multiple Reading category of middle-school forensics.
“The students look at each other as the characters, and look at the audience only when the narrator is speaking,” she said. “So sometimes judges have to be specially trained, because they all want eye contact. In multiple reading, you’re not supposed to have eye contact with the judges unless you’re the narrator.
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Samhitha Santebennur
Those in attendance at the showcase received similar lessons about all the relevant categories, including what students like Olivia can expect at a tournament.
“In the beginning of the day, impromptu competitors choose a prompt, and that’s the first time they know what story they’re going to tell,” Bowman said. “They have to make up a story in 20 minutes and present it.”
A close relative, she noted, is the Extemporaneous category.
“The students are given five topics a month in current events. They must prepare at least three of them, and the day of the competition, they draw three prompts from a bowl and pick which one of those three they want to do. So they don’t know what they’re going to be talking about until that morning.”
During the showcase, sixth-grader Kaylee Gryboski selected “impeachment” and spoke about the U.S. presidents who faced such accusations of wrongdoing and potential removal from office.
The other forensics categories, as described by Bowman:
• Prose. “The difference between prose and drama is that in prose, there is a narrator, and in drama, it’s all dialogue.”
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Juliana Taylor
Readers of prose at the showcase were Billy McGrath, “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore”; Nickjay Saini, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”; and Wyatt Skillings, “Harold and the Purple Crayon.”
• Drama. “It’s all conversation. There are no narrators.”
Doing dramatic readings were Juliana Taylor, “Crenshaw” by Katherine Applegate, and Alaina Kulikowski, “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank.
• Declamation, “a preparatory event for high school forensics. In high school, you do oration, where you write your own speech. In middle school, you do declamation, which is where you read the speech of someone else.”
During the showcase, Samhitha Santebennur read Amelia Earhart’s “A Woman’s Place in Science” speech, and Kaitlyn Strine repeated the words of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist who at age 17 was the youngest Nobel Prize laureate in history.
By Harry Funk
Staff writer
hfunk@thealmanac.net
By Harry Funk/Staff writer/hfunk@thealmanac.net
Jackson Baldassare, Theo Petrey and Eli Hemmington
The showcase also featured a multiple reading of an excerpt from “The Dark Secret,” a book in Tui T. Sutherland’s “Wings of Fire” fantasy novel series, by students Jackson Baldassare, Theo Petrey and Eli Hemmington.
As for Olivia’s impromptu speech, she expanded on her prompt to describe a transformation from caterpillar to butterfly, concluding with the observation:
“Something that might not be the prettiest color might turn out to be the prettiest thing, like the Ugly Duckling. I knew that today was going to be the best day ever.”
And regarding the forensics team as a whole, Bowman told the showcase audience to be impressed.
“I want to make sure you understand what an incredible group of kids this is,” she said, “and the wonderful life skills that they will take away from their experience here this year.”