Awesome Authors, Part 2 of 2

In Part 1, I shared 12 ways students might learn more about their favorite authors. Here are a few more ways we can encourage students to use their reading, writing, speaking and listening abilities, research skills, and critical thinking to make author studies come alive.

Writing Connections

• Dear Author: What could be more motivating to students than getting a return letter from an author? Locate contact information for different authors on book jackets or online. Invite children to write (in letter or email form) to one or more of these authors. Although some children's authors make it a point to send a card or personal response, not all are able to write back. (Ensure children's privacy by having them use only their first names and the school address.)
• Spread the News: Ask students to contribute brief articles about their favorite authors to your classroom newsletter or class website. Involve students in publishing their own personal classroom Author News to share with your school community.

Working Together

• Panel Discussion: Have intermediate-grade students work in small groups to research an author or illustrator. Encourage them to share their findings with classmates. Through this type of collaborative work, students can enhance their conversational abilities and foster the development of speaking and listening skills.
• Celebrity News: Professional conferences and author bookstore signings are a wonderful way to meet children's authors. The next time you attend a conference or author signing at a bookstore, get the autograph of a children's author and maybe even a photograph to show your children. Your story of meeting a "real live author" and showing the autograph and picture to the class may motivate readers to seek out more of the author's works.
• Teacher Team: Collaborate with your grade-level team to study the work of different writers, or ask each teacher to become an "expert" on a given author and share information with the group. Consider visiting a colleague's class to share your expertise about an author. Assembling a set of an author's books and exploring them with colleagues is another option.

Technology Time

• Writer Wordle: Show children how to use Wordle to demonstrate what they have learned about an author. Remind them that typing the author's name several times ensures that it will have the largest point size in the Wordle document. Urge them to enter the titles of books the author has written along with the names of writing awards and other key phrases to inform classmates about the author.
• Author WebQuests: Locate WebQuests about children's favorite authors. Be sure to check each link to be sure that the content is appropriate for your children. If you have older students, you might work with the technology teacher to show students how to create their own author WebQuests to share with class members.
• Scribe Skype: If an author is not available to visit your class in person, consider the option of Skyping him or her. Consult your favorite school publisher to learn about the availability and terms of children's authors who Skype. You might wish to coordinate with your school librarian to arrange a Skyped visit.
• Winning Websites: Explore Internet resources that will help students gain knowledge about the works of popular children's writers. It's a rare writer who does not maintain a website, and finding information is only an Internet search away. Many writer websites feature multimedia resources, interviews, and book guides, and sometimes there are even games related to the author's work that are sure to delight children. Share these with students and their families. These two websites will get you started: Tomie dePaolo and Kevin Henkes.
• Writer Interviews: TIME for Kids and Scholastic Author Tube feature interesting and motivating print and video interviews with children's authors. Reading Rockets features informative and interesting author video interviews.

School Community

• Staff Selections: Give students a glimpse into the school staff's favorite authors. Arrange to take pictures of each staff member reading a book by their favorite author. Invite them to write a brief anecdote about when they discovered this writer or tell which one of the author's books they like best and why. Then invite each class to do the same; post children's pictures and their anecdotes on the classroom door.
• Priceless Puzzles: Have students form small groups based on their interest in an author. Distribute poster board and have each group craft puzzle pieces that provide information about that author. Instruct them to use writing and drawing to tell about the author's work and life. When they are finished, have the group place their puzzle pieces in a manila envelope labeled with the author's name. Groups can exchange their puzzles and gain knowledge about the author as they put them together. After the puzzles have circulated, the original groups can glue the pieces on poster board for display in the school commons area or library.
• PA Power: With the staff, select an author to highlight during morning announcements. Ask the announcer to read a few facts about the author each day of the week. On Friday, each class can enjoy a trivia contest based on the facts shared during the week. Or, students can summarize their learning about the featured author in their writer's notebooks. At the end of the year, children can celebrate with an "Awesome Authors" quiz show based on any current popular game-show format.

References

Boushey, G., & Moser, J. (2006). Daily 5. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.
Boushey, G., & Moser, J. (2009). The CAFE book. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.
Kevin Henkes. (n.d.). Available from http://www.kevinhenkes.com/
Reading Rockets. (2013). Video Interviews with Top Children's Book Authors and Illustrators. Available from http://www.readingrockets.org/books/interviews/
Scholastic Author Tube. (2013). Available from http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/lesson-plan/author-video-index
TIME for Kids. (2013). Author Interviews. Available from http://www.timeforkids.com/search/site/author%20interviews
Tomie dePaolo. (n.d.) Available from http://www.tomie.com/