Many visiting authors simply share their writing process with students during their visit. Your school will have the unique opportunity to “create” an author’s visit where learning continues throughout the day, requiring participants to apply, analyze and synthesize information, reflecting a true day of learning! Some of your choices include:

• Assemblies where students learn about the songwriting process, which is unique as it involves melody and lyrics.

• Workshops that engage students in the science behind the author/songwriter’s popular songs.

• Opportunities where students become lyricists applying previously learned content.

• Teacher workshops that provide participants with opportunities to enrich various titles and science themes.

Assemblies and Workshops

Assemblies

How Were These Songbooks Created?

Most schools begin their Author’s Day Visit with two assemblies that take the students through the writing process I went through in order to get my songbooks published. Areas featured are: prewriting, drafting, copyright of music and text features, publisher, revising, illustration choices and visualizing. The audiences are composed of K-2 and 3-5 grade classes. Each of these presentations is approximately 45 to 50 minutes in length.

Classroom teachers can choose from 2-3 of the following hands-on activities. These sessions are limited to no more than 25 students and last approximately 30 minutes.

• Dramatize the song with puppetry and props
• Using the sense of touch to distinguish between a meat- eater and plant-eater tooth in a cloth bag
• Estimating and trace children’s’ footprints within a T-Rex footprint
• Create a setting through paper sculpture, place paper dinosaur footprints and act out scene

• Dramatize the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty
• Rotate through stations where students experiment with the force of gravity
• Create innovations on the text with accompanying illustrations looking at the “_all” word family

• Dramatize the songbook with costume and props
• Hand movements to enhance lyrics
• Make observations of butterfly and moth specimens

• I will present myself in a frog costume, and use a puppet to illustrate the life cycle of a frog
• Children are introduced to the finger spelling of the rhyming pairs in the song book (for example Frog-log, leg-egg, swim-rim)

• Dramatize the songbook with costume and props
• Hand movements are explored to enhance lyrics
• Make observations of real snakeskin

Classroom teachers can choose from 2-3 of the following hands-on activities. These sessions are limited to no more than 25 students and last approximately 30 minutes.


This grade-level workshop focuses on my songbook, What Hatches from an Egg? It has three components beginning with a firsthand account, or story, titled, If You Care, You’ll Leave Them There. Spring and early summer mark the arrival of new, young wildlife, and “Spring Babies” are quite abundant. Although it may be hard to resist the temptation to take them out of the wild, it is a temptation best avoided. As a previous Wildlife Rehabilitator, I will guide students towards the more appropriate choice.



After a brief discussion, the students sing along with the songbook What Hatches from an Egg? Opportunities to make predictions using picture and textual clues make this title age appropriate.



The final activity begins by having students seriate (based on size) authentic ostrich, emu, chicken, and robin eggs. Comparing/contrasting continues with the ostrich and emu. This is followed-up by a hands-on activity and requires students to use their sense of touch. They are presented with images of six living things that hatch from eggs. Individual children will be called upon to reach into cloth eggs and predict which plastic animals each egg contains. The target audience would be K-2nd graders, and this session lasts approximately 45 to 60 minutes.

Classroom teachers can choose from 2-3 of the following hands-on activities. These sessions are limited to no more than 25 students and last approximately 30 minutes.


This grade-level workshop focuses on my songbook, B-B-B-Bats. Its purpose is to expand the book’s content: skeletal structures, origins of the song/book, micro-bats, mega-bats, insectivores, fruit eating bats and pollination. A real bat skeleton, a bat house, a little brown bat, and a 6-foot bat costume representing a Mega Bat is fitted onto one of the students. A change of attitude towards this frequently misunderstood mammal is another focus of the workshop. The target audience would be 2nd or 3rd graders, and this session lasts approximately 45 to 60 minutes.




This grade-level workshop begins with my songbook, Bear Facts. Its purpose is to guide students to become lyricists, applying previously learned content knowledge. A web and song sheets used review: adaptations, nouns, adjectives, syllables/beat, and cause and effect. If you are looking for a unique way for students to demonstrate what they’ve learned about how animals adapt to their environment, this is it! The target audience would be 2nd through 4th graders, and this session lasts approximately 45 to 60 minutes.


This grade-level workshop begins with my songbook, Busy Bees. The students will be introduced to the queen and worker bees, and identify character traits for each. The session shifts to another genre, poetry, using Paul Fleischman’s Newberry Medal winner, Joyful Noise, Poems for Two Voices. The students do choral reading while taking on the roles of queen or worker bees using Fleischman’s unique structure. A third genre, an internet article on King George III of England and the American colonists is shared. Students are asked to create a T-chart and synthesize their notes into a “poem for two voices.” The target audience would be 4th or 5th graders, and this session lasts 60 to 90 minutes.




This grade-level workshop focuses on my songbook, Munch, Munch, Munch. Its purpose is to illustrate the migration of the Monarch butterfly and takes the students on a journey to the Transvolcanic mountain belt in Mexico where the Monarchs winter. I will share my magical firsthand experience through a slideshow. A follow-up activity is also offered resulting in a persuasive piece of writing. Students are asked to consider whether they would support ecotourism over indigenous people of a region making a living off the land. They are presented with both sides of the issue and encouraged to present their opinion based on the facts. The target audience would be 3rd or 5th graders, and this session lasts approximately 45 to 60 minutes.




This grade-level workshop focuses on my songbook, Dig A Dinosaur. The students will learn all about the topic from my firsthand experiences while on a paleo-dig in Montana and visit to the Museum of the Rockies prep labs via a slideshow. A follow-up activity will invite students to use constructivism in order to discover the relationship between circumference and diameter when recreating a balloon model of a dinosaur egg. The target audience would be 4th or 5th graders, and this session lasts approximately 45 to 60 minutes.

Author Day Brochure
Photo Consent Form
Schedules and Fees
Visiting Author Day Format