In the Classroom: School Visit Magic
Doing school visits is one of my favorite parts of being a science writer for kids because it gives me an opportunity to connect directly with my readers. Kids are so honest. They say what they think. Kids are so curious. They have a million questions. And they’re always making connections. Surprising, thoughtful connections. […]
It’s School Visit Season
Each year I spend most of April and May traveling to schools to talk about they joys and challenges of nonfiction writing. I love speaking with students because they are both enthusiastic and honest. Their feedback helps me understand what I’m doing right and what I could do better in future books. Most of all, they […]
A Great School Visit
Recently, I spent a fantastic day with the third graders at Marguerite Small School in West Yarmouth, MA. Why was it so great? Because of the hard work of this woman—school librarian Kim Keith—and her colleagues, especially Shannon Carlson, who took most of the pictures below. The students read several of my books in advance […]
School Visit Success
There are so many reasons I love my job. I love researching. I love writing. And this week, especially, I love school visits. On Thursday and Friday, I was honored to learn and share with the fantastic grade 3-5 students at Thompson School in Arlington, MA. We compared our writing processes and discussed the challenges we faced as […]
A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words
Just imagine how many words it would take to explain everything we see in this solar system diagram: –the names of the planets, –the sizes of the planets,–the colors of the planets,–the distance each planet is from the sun, –the distance each planet is from the other planets. It’s amazing that just one quick glance […]
Radical Revision!
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I think taking a break between drafts is a critically important part of my writing process. I’ve written about it here and here. I discuss this important step every time I present the school visit program Creating Nonfiction: Researching, Writing, and Revising. I’ve given […]
Showing Students that Their Opinions Matter
I spent last week visiting three schools in Upstate New York, and I was blown away with all the terrific nonfiction reading and writing projects they’ve been doing this year. Their classroom teachers and teacher-librarians Camelia Moses and Ann Morosini are full of great ideas. To get ready for my visit, first graders at Carthage Elementary made […]
A School Visit Milestone
Recently I hit a major milestone—the one-hundredth time I presented the program Bringing Science to Life as part of a school visit. Wow! This popular presentation serves a multi-grade audience and during the first 8 minutes, second graders perform a fun readers theater that I adapted from one of my books to an audience of […]
Exploring Text Structures
Last Friday, I shared some great text feature work that the fourth graders at Kennedy School in Billerica, MA were doing. But the truth is those students have been busy, busy, busy immersing themselves in nonfiction projects. After reading my book No Monkeys, No Chocolate, the students made book maps to get a stronger sense […]
Text Feature posters!
This week I visited Kennedy School in Billerica, MA. Once again, I was blown away by how much fun the students were having with nonfiction writing. For one fourth grade project, students read my book Dolphins and used the book’s text features as inspiration for creating their own text feature posters with information about an […]