Kids love to write, right?
Okay, maybe not always.
But they will when you bring me to your
school for fun, exciting writing workshops.
This exciting new series of workshops
allows teachers at any grade level to pick a workshop topic for
their students to work on during the Artist in Residence
Program.
I’ll come to your school for a day of
presentations and then return for a few more days of workshops
with individual classrooms or grade levels. Students (and
teachers) will have fun as they develop their writing skills.
Because the writing process is so time
consuming, I’ve designed these workshops as hour-long
lessons that can be used at many grade levels and applied to
any writing curriculum. By working on shorter, more focused
topics, I can visit more classes during a school residency and
be sure to target the skills that classroom teachers are
interested in.
Workshop Descriptions:
Idea Generation: We discuss where ideas come from, how the
students generate ideas, and then use drawing as a springboard
to creating characters and plots in an interesting situation.
Students work with partners to create a drawing which become
the middle of their story. They think back and create a story
explaining how the characters got in the situation they are in.
The students spend some time creating a rough draft of a story
to accompany their picture, focusing on the first sentence,
creating an interesting hook to grab readers' attention.
Illustrating: Visual
storytelling is an important link in constructing cohesive
stories. We’ll discuss how writing and illustrating are
linked and how illustrations help tell the story. Students
create thumbnail sketches to accompany a very short story. We
discuss point of view, chronological sequencing, focusing
visual attention.
Editing/Revising: This focuses on word choice, not grammatical
rules like punctuation. We revise a very short story together
as a group, discussing what is wrong with the story and how it
could be improved, then students work in pairs to revise a
story that I supply them with. They then get to share stories
and see the wildly different way that people chose to revise
the same story. We focus on choosing strong, specific language,
use of similes and metaphors, and sentence fluency.
Plot Development: Students discuss how different characters in the same
setting could strongly affect how a story will unfold. We work
together to generate a series of possible characters, settings,
and events, then the students choose a character, a setting,
and an event and create a story plan that could be used to
create a finished story.
The Fine Print:
Workshop Fees:
First day of residency: Regular Author
Visit Fees apply: $825 - $950.
Each additional day: $400 per day - up to
4 workshops per day.
Travel/lodging fees apply to schools more
than an hour away. Blah, blah, blah. Are you still reading?
Good for you!
Contact me for more details.
