Presentations for Educators

It’s Boring: Boys and Reading

Many boys don’t like to read. Why? In a first grade class most students are excited about letters and words and eager to learn this code. By fourth and fifth grade, however, many boys have decided they don’t like reading. John will explore some of the reasons boys get turned off from reading and offer specific suggestions to address the genuine interests of boys and engage them in reading.

Revision: Seeing Your Story Again

Of all the aspects of teaching writing, revision is the most difficult. For many of us, revision wasn’t taught well when we were students. Today’s youngsters live in a world of fast changes. Getting them to go back and revise their writing is a major challenge. In this workshop, John will share simple and effective tips for getting students to revise. He will read selections of his work to show the necessity of revision and conduct exercises to demonstrate ways to improve writing.

What Makes a Good Young Adult Novel?

Students today have so many more choices in YA novels than in the past that it can be a challenge for teachers to choose among them. We will discuss what makes a compelling Young Adult novel and the process a writer goes through of working with an agent, an editor, a senior editor, and an art director to make the best YA novel possible. We will also discuss which books appeal to which students and how to find books that address the genuine interests of students.

Seeing Ourselves as Writers

Many teachers are students who loved to read and write, yet in their professional life have little opportunity to write for reflection and enjoyment. In this workshop, we will examine how writing was taught to us and how different the expectations are now for how we teach writing. We will explore aspects of writing such as expectations of perfection, generating ideas, creating a draft, and making a story better in revision. This is an excellent opportunity to challenge our notions or who is a writer and in doing so gain new insights into how writing can be taught.

Informational Text: New and Improved Nonfiction

Under the Common Core, there is a strong emphasis on nonfiction, which we are now calling informational text to not imply a hierarchy with fiction. This is a major switch for fiction lovers and many of us have a bias about nonfiction that we are not even aware of. In this workshop we will discuss the creativity and originality of some recent informational text and the connections it has with many of the elements of storytelling . We will expand our definitions of fiction, informational text, and reading and see how they can all work together to benefit students and teachers.

Creating a Picture Book

On first glance, picture books seem remarkably simple. Behind this simplicity, however, are days, months, and years of work. In this presentation, John will explore the steps of picture book creation from first draft, through revisions, editing, publishing, to finished book. John will show examples and discuss how the writer, illustrator, editor, art director, editorial director, publicist, lawyer, and sales staff work together to make a book and get it into your hands. Questions are welcomed and encouraged.