Last week was my favorite day of the entire school year! It’s when we host our annual author visit. This year we had the pleasure of having Sarah Weeks come to visit our school. We’ve been prepping for her visit since January. When we returned from winter break, we found a big package on our WNOR desk. When we opened it, inside there were tons of Sarah Weeks’ books. We were very excited. Ever sense that day, we’ve been reading her books and getting ready for her visit. We’ve interwoven her books into the curriculum where it fit, and we were so excited for her to get to North!
So, we finally got our day with Sarah. She had actually been in Indiana for weeks. We were one of 13 schools she was visiting, and we were near the end of her schedule. We had a jammed packed schedule, but what a wonderful day that we had. One of the elements I thought Sarah did so well was the ability to tailor the program to the audience. She “tweaked” each presentation so that the content was relevant to the audience. That’s one of the reasons that I heard great things from every group of teachers that saw her.
With the older kids she was focused on the story arch. What shape should a story be and how do you create a story that will be interesting. She then took one of her stories and showed how it had a great story arch! It was really neat. With the younger, she focused more on what an author does and how she was just like them.
Throughout the day, Sarah got a chance to share with our staff pitch-in – which was a lot of fun. As well as every free minute she had, she was signing books. We sold a ton of books, not to mention the library copies that all needed her signature.
It was a great day! It was worth all the excitement leading up to the big day! Now we just wait to see who is coming next year!
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