A Visit from Tibooburra Public School

In the first few weeks of opening, Big Sky Stories hosted Tibooburra Public School as part of their excursion to Broken Hill. Together we spent the morning looking at ‘The Boy and the Elephant’ by Freya Blackwood. This wordless book was shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia 2022 book week awards.

This book explores how the world we live in impacts on our wellbeing and considers our response to environmental destruction. To help us ‘read’ this wordless book we used drama and arts strategies. By identifying places that are precious to us, we were able to connect to the character and build our own story even before we opened the pages. Drama helped us to embody the characters and consider how we might respond to the problems they faced.

It was wonderful to see the students working together and after some initial apprehension fully engaging in the activities. We look forward to seeing them again in the future.