A writer wears many hats. Here I am wearing antlers. Visiting Sudbury to present in schools, this time Coppercliff and then the next day Walden Public School, allows me a chance to browse Science North and report on the new Wild Life Rescue exhibit. I loved the Born to be Wild 3d Imax as well. After seeing it, kids will be happy to pledge to help save the environment. In the exhibit there are several posters suggesting different commitments the children can make to help save endangered species and all animals in general. The antlers are part of the exhibit.

In the schools, I talked about different novels depending on the age group. The response was phenomenal. Kids stopped me in the hall to thank me or tell me how wonderful an author I am.

In the photo, the whipped cream on the face is a demonstration on rewriting for plausibility.

Believe it or not.

Last week I had a great time with grade 5, 5/6 and 4/5 at Paul A Fisher School. Look at all my young writers hard at work, nose to the pencil. I love the sound of students writing.

The challenge this week was we divided the day in three to match the wonderful nutritional breaks. Stopping to eat twice a day, sheer brilliance I think. This made switching classes easier than what I normally do which is teach only two classes and leave mid third period to divide the time equally.

But there wasn’t a lot of time for my fun little exercises such as team menu writing for the apples I hand out. Or a lesson on putting the quotation marks in and changing paragraphs (not so much fun). Or even finishing a draft of a story.

Hmm, I guess I’ll have to rework my AIE lesson plans to allow for less time.

I only hope if I offer this three class day, the teachers don’t insist I fit two classes in each time segment.