How to Host an Author or Illustrator at Your School

• Read their books before the visit.
• Talk about what makes this book different from other books you’ve read … and what makes this book special.
• Talk about how the book makes you feel … and techniques the author and/or illustrator has used to achieve this.
• Talk about the shape and placement of the words on the page.
• Talk about what the illustrations bring to the story.
• Do activities inspired by the book.
• Write and illustrate your own text innovation.
• Experiment with the style and medium that you think the illustrator may have used.
• Create a book or a banner, to showcase student work.
• Have your camera ready to take photos of your amazing kids with these very appreciative visitors.

Poetry Guinea Pigs

This week I have been in Gladstone, Calliope and Tannum Sands, for the biennial Curtis Coast Literary Carnivale. There will be more posts to come about this, but for Poetry Friday, I share poems and pics from my workshop groups, where we were writing… POETRY! (Of course! :P)

 

This group snuck in so quietly I truly honestly didn’t hear them arrive. (They were as quiet as guinea pigs!) To get them warmed up, we started with the Guinea Pig Chant. We then looked at different shape poems, before writing a guinea pig poem collaboratively on the big screen. It’s the first time I’ve used the technology in this way in a session before – and I’ll definitely be doing it again!