Visiting Author

Wow, what a fantastic session we had on Thursday with Juliette McIver. She was incredibly funny and entertaining and the children loved hearing her read several of her stories and singing along with her.

Juliette took the children through the writing process and it was great for the children to see the connections between what we do at school and the work of an author. Juliette shared how she likes to write her drafts on unlined paper as she likes to write all over the page, sometimes just generating lists of rhyming words, or doodling pictures related to the story. We laughed when Juliette showed us photos of her writing whilst doing yoga, working on the floor, or with her children climbing all over her. Just goes to show you can write anywhere at any time!

Juliette also uses maths - keeping a spreadsheet of the books she writes and the publishers she send her stories too and keeping track of the number of books she has had published or the stories that have been rejected. We loved her growth mindset and her positive attitude (I guess after 109 rejection letters over her career you have little choice!) Luckily, many of her stories have been published and today in class we enjoyed several of the Marmaduke Duck series - we loved the rhyme and the gorgeous pictures that the illustrator drew to match. A lot of her books are in our school library - Shiva was so inspired by her visit today, he went to the library in his lunchtime and borrowed two of her stories. The children might also like to keep an eye out for her books next time they visit the public libraries.

Another interesting connection was how Juliette gets feedback about her stories - she reads them to her own children to see whether they like them. It turns out that sometimes they don't! In Kohara we get feedback from sharing our writing with others. Often the other children have questions which tell us we need to add more detail to our writing. Editing and making changes to stories was also a really important part of the writing process and Juliette told us that sometimes even after the publishers say they like her stories, they still insist on her changing parts to improve them. Kohara kids do this too - sometimes we add describing words, fix our spelling using the writing charts, or add in missing words or parts of the stories.

I think after today, we could have a lot of future authors...