An author visit offers a terrific opportunity to give your school’s writing and reading program a real shot in the arm. But unless the kids feel involved and properly prepared for the visit, much of your effort and expense will be wasted.
Early in my career, I visited schools where students only knew that “an author” was coming. They had little awareness of my books, and so they weren’t excited about the visit. I had to work twice as hard to inspire them during my presentations. The bad news? The students didn’t benefit nearly as much as they could have from the event.
The good news? That situation is preventable with just a bit of advance work. Here’s how to prepare your students for an author visit:
1. Read the author’s books
This is the single most important thing you can do to ready your students for the visit. A read-aloud in the classroom or library is an excellent place to start, preferably beginning several months before your author visits. Once kids have been exposed to the author’s books, they may be motivated to check them out from the library and read them on their own. The more you can encourage this, the more successful the visit will be.
2. Engage kids with activities
Many authors’ websites offer a list of suggested activities to prepare students. These might include drawing the book’s characters, writing jokes, doing science-related tie-ins, and a wide variety of other things. And if the author can’t supply a list of activities, you can sometimes find a relevant exercise on TeachersPayTeachers.com or similar websites of teaching resources.
As an example, my own website, BruceHale.com, offers a fun exploration of simile and metaphor based on my Chet Gecko Mysteries, a shark mask-making activity based on my Clark the Shark books, and much more.
3. Explore the author’s website
This is a helpful way for kids to get to know the person behind the books. They may find points of connection with the author — “they’re a fellow cat lover!” — or enjoy the author’s videos or discover things that make them curious. Curiosity is good! The better your students get to know their visiting author, the more connection they’ll feel. And the more they’ll learn and be inspired.
4. Help elicit questions for the author
Some students have a hard time coming up with questions for Q&A time at an author visit. (Indeed, most kindergarteners aren’t even clear on what a question is!) Taking time in advance to help kids think of questions will pay dividends by making them more engaged with the event.
5. Devise creative activities
Author visits are all about inspiring creativity, so the more you can engage students in creative activities beforehand, the more excited they’ll be. Have them make posters to hang in the hallways, do drawings of their favorite characters, or come up with suggestions for new books in the author’s series.
One school I visited held a door designing competition, where each classroom chose a theme based on one of my books to decorate their door. The kids and teachers worked on this together, and it ended up being a real highlight.
6. Offer students the chance to buy books
One of the greatest benefits of an author visit is that it sparks the desire to read. If you can put books in your students’ hands on the day of the visit, you can take advantage of that spark and get them reading for pleasure. Plus, the author can autograph the books while they’re at the school.
If you plan to offer this option, be sure to begin familiarizing students with the author’s books at least three months in advance if possible. Why? Book orders from publishers often require a minimum of two weeks for shipping. Sending pre-order forms home to parents and collecting them will take 2-3 weeks before that. And of course, students would need to be familiar with the books before they have any desire to order them or even participate in pre-visit activities. Bottom line: the sooner you start, the more success you’ll have.
7. Stage a themed day
Draw a theme from your visiting author’s books (or their life) and create a dress-up day out of it. Students love Pajama Day and similar events. Tying a theme day to an author visit helps increase students’ enthusiasm. For example, because I used to live in Hawaii and some of my books are set there, some schools have staged a Beach Day, where everyone dons Hawaiian shirts. Also, because I love wearing hats, other schools have staged Hat Day to coincide with my visit.
8. Hold a contest for Lunch With The Author
If the author is willing, you can offer a lunch with selected students. These can either be chosen by individual teachers, or you could hold a schoolwide contest to choose the lucky “lunch bunch.” I’ve seen writing contests, joke contests, reading contests and drawing contests as methods for selecting students. Whichever one you pick, it motivates students to write, draw, or read — all positive outcomes.
Ready to bring this to your school?
