My First School Visit

I was invited to speak to 6th graders at Valley High School in Fayette County on Friday!

Of course, I went. I'm not even published and they wanted me to come, I was excited.



The language arts teacher worked with the kids that week with the draft of my middle grade story Lucy. She read some of the chapters to them, summarized others, and the children read and summarized some of the chapters. They even took some of my paragraphs and talked about description and figurative language.

I had 3 half hour visits with 3 different classes. The second session was full. Another class came in and joined us.




After the initial nervousness, I was fine.

I told a little about myself and then read the next to last chapter of my story.
Then I was open for questions. . . many questions.

They had questions about my story, in addition to questions in general about me and about writing, such as. . . what inspires you to write, how do you get your ideas, how many other books have you written, do you ever get bored with writing, do you get ideas from other books, have you spoke at schools before, etc. They even suggested a sequel to the story. One boy gave me a two thumbs up! They really made me feel at ease and welcome.

I had a show and tell. I brought items to show that would have been used by the characters during that time period (It's a historical fiction that takes place during the early 1900s)

That part was fun. We passed some of the items around. I had them guess what they were, how much they thought it weighed, why they thought it was called that, etc. The children really got involved. Many hands went up for questions and comments. The teacher finally had to say "OK, only one more question."

All in all, I had a wonderful time and I think they had a good time, too. Out of all the children, I only saw about 2 kids who appeared like they would have liked to have been somewhere else.

They took pictures to be put in the local paper and at the end of my sessions the teacher gave me a gift. As you can see, I've already gotten into it.




Now I've got the fever. I want to be published and I want more school visits. It's fun!