Tag: school visits

Announcing a School Visit Special

January 29, 2018 / Katie L. Carroll

This offer for local schools has been extended to include the 2018/19 school year. If you’re not local and are willing to pay travel expenses, email me and hopefully we can set something up. My email is KatieLCarroll (at) yahoo (dot) com.

I’m offering a school visit special for the first time ever! If your school or organization purchases 30 or more of my books directly from me (at $10.00 each, either ELIXIR BOUND or PIRATE ISLAND), I’ll do a free writing workshop or assembly. Some of workshop topics include writing fantasy, revision, and generating ideas. I’m also open to working a specific writing topic to fit your needs.

This is for school’s I’d be able to visit without an overnight stay. So that means pretty much anywhere in Connecticut and extending out into parts of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and possibly New York. If you’re not sure, just contact me at KatieLCarroll (at) yahoo (dot) com, and I’ll do my best to work something out.

Check out my School Visit Brochure here or my Author Visits page for testimonials. And here is the free Pirate Island Curriculum Guide that includes reader questions, a writing prompt, a nature lesson and activity, and a history of Captain Kidd and activity.

This offer is good for what’s left of the 2017/18 school year, though if I get interest for the fall as well, I might be able to accommodate you. If you know any educators who might be interested in this, please feel free to share my info with them.

School Visits, a Book Launch, and Dr. Seuss’s Birthday!

March 2, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

What better day than Dr. Seuss’s birthday than to celebrate how I’ve been living a creative life? And though I haven’t been writing in the drafting-a-new-book sense (my favorite kind of writing), I’ve been immersing myself in the creative life in other ways.

The reign of school visits ended last week. In less than three weeks, I taught eight writing workshops to more than 200 students, ranging from grades 4 to 7. This particular workshop is about where story ideas come from and includes a guided writing/thought exercise where the kids come up with their own story ideas. They never cease to amaze me with their thoughtfulness and creativity. The workshop is about inspiring kids, but I always come out inspired by them!

After one session, a 6th-grade girl walked down the hallway with me and shared a poem she had written about herself. It was lyrical, had a great cadence, and optimistic, a beautiful portrayal of herself. After another, nearly the entire 4th-grade class lined up with their scraps of papers and waited in line for my autograph, totally making me feel like a celebrity. Connecting with young readers and writers is 20160302_132004 magical! Plus, talking with the librarians and teachers who teach these kids everyday is informative and inspiring.

Monday the Connecticut Humanities and the authors and illustrators of THE GREAT CONNECTICUT CAPER celebrated the hardcover and audio release of the book at a local library. It’s always fun to catch up with my Caper collaborators. I haven’t listened to the whole audio version yet, but what I did listen to was brilliantly narrated (listen to the Caper audiobook here).

Of course, I’ve been reading a lot. In particular, I’ve been stepping out of my comfort zone of YA and reading adult books and non-fictions. And always, always, always reading to the boys. Last week I squeezed in visiting The Boy’s pre-school class for World Read Aloud Day. I’ll leave you with some of our favorite Seuss books.

Busy Times and The Great CT Caper Book Launch

February 22, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

The school visits have all been wonderful so far! (I’ll have some really fun stuff to share from them soon when I get a chance to breathe.) Two more single workshops this week and then I’m done for awhile.

Also, I’ll be attending THE GREAT CT CAPER book launch (registration required, but the event is free) on Monday, February 29, 2016 from 4:00 – 6:00 p.m, hosted by the CT Humanities. The middle grade serialized mystery is now a hardcover book. Meet some of the authors and illustrators, enjoy light refreshments, and snag some Caper goodies.

In the meantime, the cool dudes at my house are happy the sun came out!

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February Writing Life Update

February 10, 2016 / Katie L. Carroll

February has historically been my least favorite month. It’s a low part of the year for me for some reason that I’ve never been able to adequately pinpoint. I think the weather is part of it. Here in southern New England, the days are short and cold and spring feels a long way off. (Although we did have a nice stretch of warmish weather last week.)

This year I think I’m going to be too busy for the late-winter blahs. In addition to reading a lot, I’m deep in querying mode for one project; looking forward to carving out some writing time for a new project that has yet to move out of the “rumination stage,” as I like to call it; and excited (and nervous!) to have a bunch of school visits booked up for the second half of the month. (Not to mention hanging out with the boys!)

The nerves are because I’m feeling a little rusty as I haven’t done any youth writing workshops since last June, and because some of the upcoming workshops are for students that are a little younger than I’ve worked with before, and because it’s a lot of visits in a short amount of time. But I love working with the students, so I know once I practice a few more times and get going with the first one, I’ll be fine.

It’s the change of mentality I think that’s tripping me up. I spent a good deal of the second half of 2015 in writing and then revision mode (very internal acts), so it’s required a brain shift to move into the more external acts of querying and workshop teaching. Both are important parts of my creative life, but as I get older, I feel like the transition from one to the other has gotten harder.

One of these school visits I’ll remember to have someone take a few pictures of me teaching a writing workshop so I can share it here. What’s in store for all of you this month and the rest of winter?

First School Visit

June 21, 2013 / Katie L. Carroll

Don’t forget, voting opens today for the You Gotta Read blog cover contest. Elixir Bound is entry #10. I’d love to have your vote if you get a minute to check it out!

In other news, I had my first school visit last week. I did a presentation on creating characters. It was for a group of 8th graders (including my oldest nephew, who is also one of my writing buddies), less than a week before graduation. Uh oh! Seriously, though, they were great. They were attentive and I even got some student participation…when they had to. When I mentioned Katniss, one girl said fairly loudly, “Katnip!” And when I talked about Edward Cullen, there were some sighs of delight and a few shouts for team Jacob!

We had a bit of technological snafu when I couldn’t get my PowerPoint presentation to come up on their computer (still not sure why it wouldn’t recognize my files). So instead of having all the bullet points and pictures up on the big white board, they were just up on my laptop screen. Luckily the group and the classroom were on the small side, so they were able to see all the silly pics I created. Including when I put the teacher’s head on a certain famous villain! (The teacher is my friend’s mom, so she was cool with it.)

I was sweating a bit when with the computer stuff, but I had a backup so it worked out okay (for future visits, I think I’ll be prepared with even more ways to access my presentations). Still wish I had been able to give them the full effect, but they got the meat and potatoes…just not the full bells and whistles. The teacher asked some good questions in the Q&A part about revision techniques for the students and also on generating ideas for creative writing. I think I might come up with workshops for students about those topics.

For those of you who do school visits, how do you access your visuals during school visits?