Archive for the ‘school visits’ Category

I spent a great day with students and teachers at Washington School. I had sessions with first graders through fifth graders and the emphasis shifted over the course of the day from more Wolfsnail to more Growing Patterns. The students had wonderful questions; there were a bunch of young scientists in the library that day. Thank you, Louise Potin, elementary librarian at Washington School, for the invitation and the tremendous time.

The American Library Association’s 2011 Notable Children’s Books list is now final and I’m thrilled to say Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature is on it. Thanks, committee. I am so glad that librarians and teachers are embracing my book.

I’m looking forward to seeing teachers and librarians this spring at the National Science Teachers Association Annual Conference in San Francisco and the Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival. I’m also adding dates for school visits.

Please get in touch soon if you’d like me to come to your school during the spring semester. I love visiting schools in days after state testing when students are really hungry for creativity and color … and someone who is NOT a teacher.

Check out my website for more information.

I spent last weekend in Cincinnati for a mixture of work and pleasure. I signed books and talked with readers at Books by the Banks, a festival organized by librarians and others interested in promoting literacy in the Cincinnati area.

I woke up with a very scratchy throat on Saturday and proceeded to lose my voice over the course of the day. I had help from my table mate, author Julie K. Rubini, who greeted all-comers to our table, and from my Aunt Mary, who explained the Fibonacci sequence and helped kids and adults use the Private Eye magnifying loupes to examine a pinecone and a nautilus shell.

I have many relatives living in Cincinnati and several came to see me at Books by the Banks.

Here I am with my Dad’s brother John and my cousin, Chrissy.

Here I am with my mother’s cousin Paul, my mother’s brother, Terry, and my great Aunt Ann.

Here I am with my cousin, Karen, who teaches kindergartners. She used to teach older students and was delighted with the math content of Growing Patterns.

Here I am with Margaret Ryan, one of my mother’s high school classmates.

Earlier on Friday, I read Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature to several groups of third graders at Pleasant Ridge Montessori.

After we read the book, we made our own growing pattern, starting with 5 and 5.

On Friday evening, the Books by the Banks organizers hosted a very nice reception for authors at The Mercantile Library in downtown Cincinnati.

Here I am pictured with Sharon Draper, author of many books for young readers, including the most recent Out of My Mind. She and I crossed paths earlier this year at the Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival in Hattiesburg, MS.

I enjoyed being in this reading room. The wooden tables reminded me of the library at Corpus Christi College in Oxford, where I studied politics and philosophy.

I have been going more than usual and now I need to take a breath and tell you all about it. (Quickly, too, because I am heading back out on the road tomorrow.) I’ll catch up chronologically.

I presented Growing Patterns at a Wells Church fellowship supper. It was wonderful to be among such good friends and to share Fibonacci numbers with our neighborhood kids.

A bonus for me (and I hope for the audience) was that I read from my newest manuscript. Reading it out as a work-in-progress really helps me. I need to hear how it’s working (or not). Mostly I feel like it is, which is really satisfying.

Chattahoochee Valley Writers’ Conference

I presented two workshops at the Chattahoochee Valley Writers’ Conference: “Photos+Stories=Winning Nonfiction” and “Earn $$ Before You are Published.” I had 90 minutes with each group of writers, which was very nice. I was able to use about a third of the time to hear from them about their projects and share some advice.

The Columbus Public Library was a very nice venue and the technology worked flawlessly (except one glitch of mine, which was fixed by one of the participants in my workshop. Thank you, David Johnson. I hope he publishes his project.)

The night before my presentations I enjoyed a reading and talk by Jessica Handler, the author of Invisible Sisters. I loved the excerpts she read to us and I found what she had to say about writing memoir very interesting.

McWillie Elementary School Visit

Chastain Middle School Visit by Jewell Parker Rhodes

As a teaching artist, I am excited about the new school year. I am scheduling traditional author visits, but I am also scheduling a few longer residencies. Tuesday, I will join other Jackson-area artists and arts organizations in meeting with elementary school faculty and principals committed to integrating the arts into everyday academic instruction. This group is the Ask for More Arts Collaborative, a program of Parents for Public Schools of Jackson. I will offer my services through the AFMA JumpstART program.

In collaboration with teachers and a librarian friend, I have designed two projects that combine writing and photography. They are: The Fibonacci Folding Book Project and [Your School] on the Map. Regular blog readers will have followed the development of these projects. Julie Owen, librarian at St. Therese Catholic School, helped develop the Fibonacci Folding Book Project. It is a companion to Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature.

Second grade teachers at Davis Magnet School, most notably Beth West, helped develop Davis on the Map, or [Your School] on the Map. You may click on the “Davis on the Map” category to the right to read about this project. Both of these projects feature the study of the work of a master artist, the opportunity for students to create original artwork, and an exploration of the program’s theme (Community: A Sense of Place.) Each meets curriculum objectives in the visual arts and several academic areas.

Today I attended a book party for the St. Therese Catholic School fourth, fifth, and sixth graders who made Fibonacci Folding Books. Click here to read about the pilot project we did earlier this spring with St. Therese third graders.

Librarian Julie Owen stacked all the books on her display steps. The impact upon entering the library was impressive.

In addition to listening to the authors read their work, we enjoyed fresh fruit on skewers, speared in Fibonacci patterns. (This was Julie’s idea and it was the perfect finale for a fabulous project.)

Here is a small sample of the wonderful packet of letters I got this week from students at the Martin Luther King Jr. Laboratory School in Evanston, Ill., a school I attended for a few months of second grade. Read about my visit and see photos here.

I also got a nice note from a teacher. The arrival of the packet gave me a good reason to update the feedback page of my website.

I participated in a Mississippi Day Celebration at Sumrall Elementary School today.

A morning rainstorm forced the teachers to move the planned outdoor activities into the gymnatorium. That’s where I performed, too, in front of a very large audience — first, of kindergartners through second graders, and second, of third and fourth graders. The whole school (a very impressive 3-year-old facility) was decorated to celebrate Mississippi. As I did some set up in an adjoining classroom, I heard parts of an inspirational speech by a high school football coach. He had followed several beauty queens. I was feeling like I had some tough acts to follow — until I saw the guy who was up after me.

I appreciate the invitation from Kristi Williamson and the enthusiastic reception from the students and faculty at Sumrall Elementary School.

I spent an hour this morning taking photographs on St. Therese’s school grounds with third graders. We had 13 students with 5 cameras to share and two adults with a camera each. The kids ran for the grassy area with wildflowers. One of the students said: “I found a 4.” It took me a minute to realize that she meant a flower with four petals. Another said: “I found a five!” I had read Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature the previous day.

We were very excited to find this spiderwort, which is featured in Growing Patterns. It was this time last year that I was taking the final photographs for the book.

I visited third graders at St. Therese Elementary School in Jackson today to begin a project I cooked up with librarian Julie Owen. (See her post here.) She and I are field testing a project we will be featuring during our workshop at the International Reading Association Conference in Chicago next month. The workshop is called “Seeing is Believing: Photography in Nonfiction.” Each student will take a digital photograph in the schoolyard. Then, each will write a Fib poem inspired by the photograph. The final step is making an accordion book (with folds based on the Fibonacci sequence).

Today, I began by reading Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature. I loved hearing the smattering of “wow”s and “that’s cool”s. I got asked, as I often do, how long it took me to make the book. After I answered two years (which was from idea to publication), I backtracked and explained that it wasn’t two years of solid work on nothing but that. I also got asked: “What does this book mean to you?” Wow. Answer: While writing and photo-illustrating and getting one book published felt like climbing a very big mountain and made me very proud, I was worried about whether I could do it again. Would I find the right idea? With this book, I feel like I’ve answered that question with a big fat affirmative. And, it’s math. Cool.

Here we are trying out our newly-made paper frames. The third graders will practice with their frames when they go outside for recess and at home after school. Tomorrow, we got out with digital cameras. The third graders have already written haiku and cinquains. I can’t wait to see their photographs, poems, and Fib books.