Events/Author Visits

I love to meet readers in real life. Events open to the public are noted.

March 2024

Write. Submit. Support at The Writing Barn — A six-month mentorship program beginning March 24 at 2 p.m. Central

For the first time ever, I’m leading Write. Submit. Support. for nonfiction writers this spring. It’s an intensive six-month mentorship that develops writers, their projects, and their self-confidence as they jump into the query trenches and build a lifelong writing practice. The goal is to empower writers, pre-published or published to embrace the many joys and challenges of leading a literary life and to help you complete and/or revise a full or partial working manuscript.

Learn more and register here.

April 2024

“STREAM Thinking: Applying Scientific Process to Student Writing” with Lindsay Metcalf, Rajani LaRocca, and Jen Malia (virtual). STEM Con & Beyond, April 5-7, 2024

STEM CON & Beyond 2024 is a three-day, online professional development conference where elementary & secondary teachers engage in live and pre-recorded training on a wide range of STEM topics. Sessions are aimed to meet teachers where they are (literally & figuratively) to help them implement rigorous, innovative, and standards-based STEM lessons.

Register here (Note: I get commissions for purchases made through link.)

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Now scheduling…author visits

The Common Core places ever-increasing demands on children to write informational/expository texts, opinion pieces, and narratives. Let me share my enthusiasm for writing “true stories.” Students learn how to hunt down ideas, conduct research, and craft captivating nonfiction.

Why should you host a school visit? A recent survey of 600 teachers, librarians and others who hosted author school visits showed the following benefits.:

1. Motivates students to read more (91%)
2. Inspires creativity and expression (75%)
3. Motivates students to write more (70%)

Read the full summary (and get the link to the full article) here.

 

2023-2024 Programs

Option 1: For schools, libraries, homeschool groups, clubs, after-school programs: “Engineering an Airplane,” a hands-on, STEM-based program where students become airplane engineers. (approx. 45 min. – 1 hour, for a single classroom (approx. 30 students), includes Q&A)

Using the nonfiction picture book, WOOD, WIRE, WINGS: Emma Lilian Todd Invents an Airplane, students discuss and model the NGSS Engineering Design Process to design, build, and test paper airplanes, recording their work in their engineer’s notebook.

Option 2:  For school groups “Engineering a Story” writers workshop, based upon the nonfiction picture book, WOOD, WIRE, WINGS: Emma Lilian Todd Invents an Airplane. (approx. 1 hour, large assembly or single classroom)

This highly interactive writers workshop helps students understand the close links between the creative processes of invention/engineering and writing. Using our writers’ toolbox we tweak and test our nonfiction writing transforming it from “so-so” into something that soars.

No matter which option you choose, your students will come away realizing that inventors and authors never get things right the first time. And that’s ok. If they believe in themselves and stay true to their dreams, their creations will eventually take flight.

2022-2023 rates:

• Virtual option: One-hour, virtual session via Skype, Zoom, Meet or other platform – $300
• Six-hour full day of school visit, including up to three assemblies, plus book signing and small classroom sessions – $2,000 a day plus travel expenses.

If this doesn’t meet your needs, let’s discuss. Email me at creatingcurioukids [at] gmail [dot] com.

Need ideas for funding an author visit? A list of resources can be found here.

For more details and options, please download my brochure here. Or email me at creatingcuriouskids [at] gmail [dot] com.

Find more amazing authors providing school visits at Kim Norman’s Cool School Visits.