About Alma Flor Ada 1
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So you have always wished you could have a well-known author come and visit your students in your classroom. Then your dream is very similar to mine. How I wish I could visit every classroom!  

While it is not always possible to have authors visit classrooms, every classroom can have a special connection with an author by making an Author’s Study and sharing it with the author, or even by creating a make-belief visit using the author’s videos and tapes. 

Introduction

This suggested framework will help teachers carrying out a successful Author’s Visit or Author’s Study.  The goal is to provide many ideas which will enable the teacher to maximize the benefits from the Author’s Visit or Author’s Study. The quality of the visit or study, and its benefits, will be greatly enhanced by spending an appropriate amount of time preparing for the event. 

Benefits 

Of course one of the primary benefits to an Author’s Visit or Author’s Study is to arouse a child’s interest in literature.  Children’s interest in reading is stimulated when they are made aware of the people behind the creation of the books: the authors, illustrators and translators.  An Author’s Visit  or Author’s Study (this can also apply to an illustrator or a creative translator) is one of the most effective ways to develop this awareness in children.  If the author is a woman, the visit contributes to eliminate sex role stereotypes.  If the author is a minority person, it assist in eradicating prejudice and racism.  Above all, the Author’s visit should bring children five very important messages: 

1.     Good books are fun and can be great friends to everyone, all we need is to find those appropriate for each moment.

2.     Language belongs to all of us, and  we can all use it creatively to enhance our lives. 

3.     Stories, values, feelings, ideas and information can be shared with many people via writing. 

4.     Each child has the potential and the right to become anything they want in life. 

5.     Two languages are better than one. Developing the ability to translate can be a useful and rewarding profession. 

Preparing for the Visit or Study 

The quality of the visit or study  and its benefits, will be greatly enhanced by the advanced preparations made by the teachers.  An important aspect of preparing for the visit pr study is to have the children become familiar with the author before hand.  The more familiar children are with the author the more value they are likely to gain from the visit.  The students will be more at ease and have a tendency to have a more provocative exchange with the author, when they  already know the elementary information about the author.   

As an author I welcome students’ letters and try to answer them. How much more significant they are when instead of asking the few already known biographical data, they ask personal questions about the creative process or relate what they have read to their own lives! Following are some useful suggestions for the preparation: 

I. Exhibits 

Prepare an exhibit of a collection of the author’s books in the classroom, and/or the school library. 

Create a bulletin board or wall display with book covers, photos of the author, quotes or sayings by the author, etc. 

II. Reading and responding to the literature 

Read the author’s books, or selections from the books, to the children during several days or weeks. 

Have the children read the books.  If possible allow them to borrow the books and take them home. 

Comment the books with the children.  Develop units using the books as a spring board.  For useful ideas on using literature in the classroom you may want to refer to:  Alma Flor Ada, A Magical Encounter: Latino Literature in the Classroom. Allyn and Bacon, 2004. 

III. Turning the focus to the children 

Have the Author’s Visit or Author’s Study be an opportunity for children to experience the visitors creative tasks first hand. The benefits are multiple: Children will be exploring their creative talents. The children’s exchange with the author, whether in person or through letters,  can be on a plane where the creative process that both have experienced can be shared and discussed. And finally, the appreciation for books and the creative process they require will be enhanced. 

Explain to the children that the author (illustrator or translator) has made an effort to share her/his talent with them.  Invite them to prepare their own creations, as a response to the books they have read so that they can share them with the author, whether it be in person or by sending letters and photos..  The responses from the children may take many forms: 

Visual arts creations:

* posters

* murals

* dioramas of favorite moments in the story

* painted T-shirts with scenes from a book

* masks of characters 

Verbal creations:

* poems

* debates 

Musical creations:

* songs

* dances 

Dramatic creations:

* plays

* readers’ theater 

IV. Facilitating interaction 

Prepare the children for dialogue with the author by having them prepare questions for the author.  Learning to question is a very important aspect of learning to think and reflect.  Encourage each child or each cooperative group to come up with different interesting questions. 

Whether the author is physically visiting the school or not, encourage the children to assist in designing and creating Welcoming Banners or Displays to greet the authors to the school and/or classroom or to let the school know they are studying an author. 

Have the children create their own original name tags, with very visible letters.  This way the author can refer to them by name. 

V. Becoming Authors 

Turn the Author’s Visit into a Meeting of Authors. 

Take advantage of the opportunity to encourage children to become authors.  Have the children respond to some of the books they have read by creating individual and collective books. 

Books which respond to a particular book by the author could be a continuation of the story or may have:

* the same characters, in a new story 

* the same setting, with different characters 

* the same structure 

Some examples of books produced by children during Author’s Visits are described later in the section “Classroom activities in response to literature” 

Children and teachers can create their own original books. 

Some good resources that provide ideas for types of books which can be created in the classroom  are:

·        The 18 minutes section “Becoming Authors” in the video Writing from the Heart by Alma Flor Ada

·        The 21 minutes section “Seamos autores: una invitación a escribir” in the video Escribiendo desde el corazón by Alma Flor Ada

·        The book  

VI. Making the Visit or Study  a Whole School Event 

If you are having an Author’s Visit, find out from the author what size group is most effective for her particular style of interaction and/or presentation. Keep the group to the preferred size.

Whether you are having an Author’s Visit or an Author’s Study, you can  involve the whole school by having: 

* An assembly where some of the children can show their own books or perform their response to the author’s books. 

* A Students’ Book Fair, where the original books of all the children in the school will be displayed. 

* An exhibit of children’s art done in response to the books read. 

* A treasure hunt, or a mystery game, posted along the school’s hallways.  For example, some data from the author’s biography, or from the author’s books can be used as clues.  The hunt or game can culminate in the school library or one of the classrooms where there may be a book exhibit. 

VII.  Purchasing Books and Autographing 

Whether you are having an author present in the school or you are doing an Author’s Study it is a good idea to facilitate that children may be able to purchase their own copies of the books.  Usually paperback editions are economical and more accessible.  You may want to send home order forms before the Author’s Visit, or Author’s Study. 

If there is going to be an autographing session with an Author, make sure that all the children receive something that can be autographed, in order that  those who do not purchase books, will still be able to ask for an autograph.  Bookmarks are particularly nice.  They can be created with an illustration from one of the books and/or a saying from the author. 

Even better is to have the author write a comment on the books created by the children.  You may prefer to spend the time with the author in a different way, instead of having  an autographing session, and yet have the books autographed.  In that case, place a slip of paper with the person(s) to whom the dedication should be addressed inside each book. The author may then sign the books during a break, at lunch time, and even during the evening. 

If you are doing an Author’s Study, you could have the children write a nice comment on each other’s books about what they specially like in the book. 

Other adults, can also be invited to participate in the Author’s Study, and write their comments in either the books authored by the students or the ones they have purchased. Librarians, the Principal and Assistant Principal, other teachers or school staff, parents and volunteers all can  enrich the Author’s Study with their presence. 

Enjoy your Author’s Visit or your Author’s Study… and do share some of your highlights with me. I would love to, in turn, share them with others. Have a great time! 

SOME EXCITING ACTIVITIES CARRIED ON IN REAL CLASSROOMS AS A RESPONSE TO LITERATURE 

Children become flowers and trees 

After listening to Como una flor, a song with lyrics by Alma Flor Ada and music by Suni Paz, from the cassettes APRENDER CANTANDO, second graders learned to read the words. Dressed with construction paper petals and leaves they became the flower and tree of the inspirational song and represented the song for a parents’ meeting. Teacher: Aida Molina, Galt, California  

Video
The Rooster Who Went to His Uncle’s Wedding has been a favorite story to represent. Children in Bakersfield, California, acted it out enthusiastically during their 1995 Author’s Fair. And children in Stockton were so proud of their acting that their teacher recorded it in a video. 

Biographies // “Autobiographies” 

It was a great surprise for the author to discover nuances of her life she had never imagined reading the biographies and autobiographies which children from the Coral Way Elementary School in Miami, Florida had written. The children used information from the videos Escribiendo desde el corazón and Writing from the Heart and complimented their research looking at the dedications of the author’s many books. They wove some of those into the “autobiographies”. 

Authoring their own version of No fui yo / It Wasn’t Me 

Boys and girls in first and second grade at Holt Union Elementary in Stockton, California created this wonderful book. They were given a blank page, with borders and blank lines. A short one on the upper left corner, where they were instructed to write either No fui yo or It Wasn't Me. And three longer lines along the bottom, to write their text and their signature.

The children were wonderfully revealing. Here are some samples: 

No fui yo...                                                      It wasn’t me

quien aventó los marcadores             I didn’t shoot my Math beans

en el piso                                                        at my friend

Rocio                                                              Jessica

No fui yo...                                                      It wasn’t me

quien agarró las reglas                                  I didn’t run through the

para jugar como espadas.                              sprinklers

Juan                                                                Joshua

Authoring a book following the pattern The Good News is... 

After reading The Kite - El papalote children used the books’ structure to create a wonderful collective book in preparation for the author’s visit.

Here are samples of some entries: 

The good news is...                           The bad news is... 

Almaflor is coming to our school               She’s only coming for one hour.

Almaflor writes good books.                       She doesn’t know how to illustrate.

Tomorrow we get to meet her.                     We have to wait 24 hours.

She gets to read us a book.                          We don’t know if it’s English or Spanish.

She can translate.

Holt School, Stockton, Facilitator: Dr. Nancy Jean Smith 

Authoring a Book in Letter Format  Dear... Querido... 

As a response to Dear Peter Rabbit and Querido Pedrín, students from Salón 4, wrote a wonderful collection of books, which their teacher laminated and made into a book, by spiralbinding them. Here is a sample: 

Dear Snow White:

I am sorry because you had to eat that poisoned apple.

How could you stand cleaning the queens castle?

Which one is your favorite dwarf?

Do you still Love the prince. 

P.S I am 8 years old 

Your friend

Sandra Calderon 

Responding to Amigos / Friends 

First grade children in San Diego, California, illustrated with geometrical cut outs the favorite things that they like to do with other children, inspired by the books Friends / Amigos / Zanmi  To present to the author the book formed by the collection of their individual pages, the teacher created a house with multiple square windows and on each of the windows pasted a small school picture of each child. A magnificent gift! 

 Students  Debate 

After reading Me llamo María Isabel and My Name is María Isabel third grade students set up an exciting debate. The children were divided in two larger  groups (one representing parents, the other teachers) and a small group (representing the School Board) which served as arbitrators and ruled on the merit of the arguments. The issue was whether teachers should change their students’ names or respect them. The reflections of the students’ showed their excellent reasoning ability as well as their perception of the world around them. Teacher: Ms. Claudia Del Toro-Anguiana, School: Valley Oaks, Galt, California 

Readers’ Theatre 

After reading The Gold Coin, a 5th grade bilingual class created a bilingual script to read as readers' theatre.  Teacher: Araceli Flores, Galt, California 

Arena Theatre 

The same book was represented by a group of Zapotec students in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, México, in the town’s plaza. The students first read the story, then analyzed its structure and decided to follow its circular design. They constructed a cane hut and accompanied the movements of the two main characters with specific sound effects, a wooden drum for Juan, a rain stick for doña Josefa.  Direction: Sylvia Dorta-Duque de Reyes, San Diego County Office of Education

Watch Video from Meeting An Author
Download Friends Mini-Lesson as Word Document