Category Archives: presentation planning

This refers to designing programs for audiences including the application of educational standards and curriculum links, setting objectives, sequencing content, determining time limits, and evaluating outcomes.

Author Visit Worries

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School Visit - 2011 SV Stockton - Sunday Sundaes

Even seasoned school visit presenters have moments of doubt, as do authors new to the circuit. Recently, when I did a presentation on author visits at the SCBWI North-Central California Spring Spirit Conference, the participants’ three major worries had to do with the content and pacing of their presentation, what fees to charge, and getting gigs.

Since these might be some of your worries, too, here are some articles to get you started. Search for more on this blog site, and, if you are a member of SCBWI, check out my SCBWI Bulletin column, “The Truth About School Visits” for additional articles.

QUESTION: What should I do in a presentation? How do I pace my time? How do I keep from boring the kids?

ARTICLE: What Do I Do When I Get There?
ARTICLE: Plotting Your Assembly Story

QUESTION: How much should I charge?

ARTICLE: How Much Should I Charge?
ARTICLE: Fee or Free?

QUESTION: How do I get gigs?

ARTICLE: Getting Gigs
ARTICLE: Nine Business Basics for School Visits

Please share any questions you might have. I’m happy to connect you to helpful resources.

Podcast: Evergreen School Visit Advice

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Brain Burps About Books - LogoGrab your earbuds and turn up your speakers for some “evergreen” school visit advice. This is an interview that the one-and-only Katie Davis did with me on her podcast, Brain Burps About Books.  Katie is a writer, an illustrator, and a video marketing maven (her description — and it’s true!) Her podcasts include interviews with publishing industry leaders on the creation, promotion and writing of children’s books.

This interview is an hour long. In case your time is short and you want to jump to the bits that are of greatest interest to you, I’ve provided a list of topics we discussed and approximate times in the podcast they appear (minutes & seconds).
Episode #31: School Visit Questions with Expert Alexis O’Neill

00:00  General announcements
05:54 Introduction of Alexis O’Neill, SchoolVisitExperts.com
08:00 Importance of authors being compensated for work
09:01 Surprising world of school visits following publication
09:30 Selling vs giving. Expertise & intent
13:54 AUDIENCE QUESTION: What’s the best way to get school visits?
17:48 Fees & discounts
28:53 AUDIENCE QUESTION: Crowd control. How do you deal with loud, noisy assemblies? How do you get their attention and respect in a humorous way?
35:45 AUDIENCE QUESTION: How can I connect with schools? Mailings fall flat. Other suggestions?
42:18 AUDIENCE QUESTION: How can I develop a program to create an on-going relationship with a school?
46:26 AUDIENCE QUESTION: How do you get in front of the decision-makers – teachers & librarians?
52.10 AUDIENCE QUESTION: How can we promote to schools and keep “green”? Who’s the first contact at a school?
57.22 AUDIENCE QUESTION: I donated a school visit. Media will be coming. What I should I be prepared for?
01:02:05 AUDIENCE QUESTION: How do you know what to charge for the different events? Do you think it’s important to include kids in the presentation or is it okay just to do a PowerPoint to the kids?
01:09:21 END of Podcast

5 Things I’ve Learned About Doing School Visits: Advice from Kelly Milner Halls

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by Kelly Milner Halls

5 Things - Title SlideFor several years, I didn’t dare do school visits. I was afraid I had nothing of value to offer. So I observed other speakers. I borrowed this thing from one author, that thing from another and prepared. Then I did school visits for free, until I found out if those things worked for me.  In time, I had the courage to charge a fee, confident I was now an author visitor worthy of a paycheck.  What changed?  I learned these five things – and more!

1. Don’t Just Talk —  School visit audiences vary from school to school, and class to class. But if you’re meeting with more than ten kids, be sure to offer them large visual aids along with your intellectual concepts. That keeps the kids at the back of the room engaged and helps visual learners to move with you, from speech point to speech point without disruptions.

2. Don’t Depend  On Visual Aids ALONE – It’s just as important that you useTalesoftheCryptidsKMH an engaging speaking style as it is to provide visual stimulus. Never forget – YOU are the rock star of your show. Your visual aids are like your back-up band. Join them together, and anything is possible.

3. Remind the Kids YOU Were a Kid Once, Too – When I walk out for my presentations, I get the biggest kick out of the kids’ reactions. Little kids say it out loud.
“You’re old.” 
“I know!” I reply with a great big smile. “Who knew a writer could be an old lady?” 
That part is obvious. And to a kid, anyone over 16 is OLD, so don’t take it personally.  What is not obvious is the fact that you were once a kid, very much like they are. So give them a bridge to the child you once were. Use those over –sized visuals to prove you were little once. Use your personality to prove you’re STILL little, deep inside. That relationship is crucial.  BTW, to “old” writers, anyone under 18 is LITTLE, too.

4. Have Fun!  Get Sad!  Have Fun! –That sounds simplistic, but it’s not. If youAlienInvestigationSMALL don’t have fun, neither will the kids. If you don’t show the sad side, you’re being dishonest. When they pay you to speak, fun better consider sharing pieces drawn from the whole human spectrum.  Tell a joke related to the topics your write about. Spell out the danger that made someone a hero. Admit to something crazy you did to get the story. Tell your truth, whatever it turns out to be.  Use age appropriate humor and tragedy the same way a novelist does to hold your audience’s attention and loyalty.

5. NEVER Forget How SMART Kids Are!   Kids may not know as much about the planet as you do, but knowledge and intelligence are not the same things. Kids are not stupid, even when they are in kindergarten. They are inexperienced, true. But they can spot fear and falsehood from a mile away. So leave them in your car. Go out there and celebrate that potential by sharing smart, again, age appropriate information. Never talk down to a kid. Don’t patronize or be dismissive. Make a real connection through mutual respect.

Headshot - Kelly Milner HallsFor the past 20 years, Kelly Milner Halls has been writing carefully researched weird nonfiction for young readers across the country — first in magazine and newspaper articles, then in full-fledged books. From monsters to Sasquatch, from aliens to ghosts, Halls is drawn to all things odd, and is proud of it. She makes her home in Spokane, Washington with two daughters, two dogs, too many cats and a five foot rock iguana named Gigantor. She visits schools on a regular basis and will soon star in her own video series for MSN called, “Kelly’s Curiosities.”

How I Got Back Into the School Visit Game

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Guest Post by Joanne Rocklin

  “While I’d been gone . . . kids had been born who’d actually never seen an old-fashioned slide projector! I was riddled with anxiety.”

 Cover_Orangestreet_Joanne_RocklinI hadn’t published for a few years, but if you love writing and it’s one of the few things you do well, eventually you go back to it. The good news is, I did sell three novels. The bad news is, I had to completely revamp my school presentations to include my new work.

While I’d been gone, school visits, it seemed to me, had morphed into productions involving a great deal of new technical wizardry. Kids had been born who’d actually never seen an old-fashioned slide projector! I was riddled with anxiety. So I spent one happy afternoon reading old posts on the SchoolVisitExperts.com site (an activity I highly recommend) and I began to feel much more confident.  Certain posts and topics were especially important to me:

Tips on Crowd Control

For some reason I’d forgotten that I’d spent a large part of my life as a school teacher, clinical psychologist and parent. Reading old posts, I was reminded that kids themselves haven’t changed. Crowd control is just a matter of knowing the right tricks –humor, a well-placed pause, signals, and some clever, pointed questions to chatty kids help a lot.

Ideas for Great Beginnings

I went straight to the “Great Beginnings” post in the archives–it’s terrific. It was a reminder to Mitzie_Zoe_Puppets_Oaklandme that openings set the mood and the stage. The beginning of the presentation should be engaging, and most importantly, show that you yourself are glad to be there. Some authors begin with a song, some with humor, some with visuals, or costumes, some with intriguing questions. What this post made me realize was that I already had a great beginning – why was I throwing the baby out with the bath water? Or in this case, the silly cat puppet who had problems with his own writer’s block, a puppet that kids have always loved, no matter what their ages.

Lessons on “Shaping the Presentation”

Cover_ZOOK_HC_Joanne_RocklinHere was the post written just for me, and all other authors who are invited to visit schools but need to be reminded why. Why do we do school visits?  Because we are authors! We have lots to say about our books, about our day, about our desks, our pets, our childhoods and about those secrets we’re really excited to share. And here’s the phrase I needed to read: “. . .if you’re not a wizard at PowerPoint”…(Yes! Yes! That’s me!) and then the article goes on to enumerate all the other ways to make my presentation exciting without fancy-schmancy technology: use props, interact with the kids, think of the presentation itself as a story with a great beginning, an interesting middle, and a definite ending. I could do that!

Then a funny thing happened on the way to my school visits. I outlined everything I wanted to do and say. I streamlined my old school presentation and shaped it all like a story. I yak about how my pets have helped improved my writing, interspersed with student participation and the use of props and my trusty cat puppet. 

Relieved of the burden of “having” to use the new technology, I decided to trot over to the Apple store to learn how to fool around with the new Keynote software. Just, well, just because. Just because it didn’t matter as much anymore. And, just for fun. And it was! I fell in love. I am now an official Geek, the proud possessor of a presentation with a certain amount of bells and whistles and music and, yes, piped-in cat yowls.  I may have overdone it, but as I said, it was fun.  And hopefully, if I’m having fun, so will the kids.

Thanks, Alexis!

Disclaimer: Let me assure you that Alexis O’Neill did not pay me to say wonderful things about this site. I did offer to mail her a brisket pot roast but she refused; that’s how much integrity she has.  Or maybe she’s a vegetarian…

Joanne_Rocklin_aug_2010-330JOANNE ROCKLIN is the author of middle grade novels and early readers. Her novel The Five Lives Of Our Cat Zook won the 2013 SCBWI Golden Kite for Fiction, and her novel, One Day and One Amazing Morning on Orange Street won numerous awards including the FOCAL Award from the Los Angeles Public Library and the California Library Association Beatty Award. Joanne has a doctorate in psychology and is a former elementary school teacher. For several years she taught a popular class in writing children’s books at UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. She gives presentations to schools, libraries, bookstores and other organizations. http://www.joannerocklin.com/

 

4th of July School Visit Lessons from Dad

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4th of July parade in Wakefield, Massachusetts. My dad, Ernest Francis "Tip" O'Neill, with his best friend, John Mahoney, sports his "flag" socks as they cheer a marching band.

It dawned on me the other day that so much of what I learned about doing school visits, I learned from my dad – on the 4th of July. And this was years before I even thought about becoming a children’s book writer.

I grew up in Wakefield, Massachusetts on a dead-end street with ten houses. At the upper end, through the little woods, was my elementary school. At the lower end, across the street, was a park called Moulton Playground. In the park was the West Side Social Club, the group that organized a 4th of July parade every year, and the park was where the bands, cheerleaders, majorettes, marchers, politicians, Revolutionary Patriots, and floats mustered before heading out on the parade route. My dad was a member of that club. And 4th of July was his favorite holiday.

So here’s what I learned from Dad:

Be prepared. We lugged picnic benches and beach chairs down to the bottom of our street early in the morning to save our spots for watching the parade. Today, I always arrive early at the schools I visit to scope out the layout and rearrange any furniture that needs moving.

Embrace crowds.Every year our backyard was packed with friends, neighbors, relatives and strays. Everyone was welcome. Today, my mantra is, the more the merrier in an audience. Something magical happens when an event is shared by many.

A sampling of the many of our friends who gathered in front of Mr. McIntosh's house to catch the parade.

 

Give people something to do. Whether the task was to bring food, champion the grill, keep the little kids busy, replenish plates, or clean up, everyone played a role in the success of the day. Today, I involve all audience members, whether in a group task or as individual volunteers, in my school visit assemblies, so that they all have a hand in the success of the event.

Do something a little surprising. Dad worked as a shipper in a clothing factory. He always bought a few (illegal) fireworks from the truck drivers coming up from the South. With these “surprises,” dusk on the 4th brought a bit of sparkle and flash. Today, the “sparkle and flash” I add to assemblies is a bit of music and group singing, which surprises audiences who expect a talking head.

Dad, Donna and Alexis

It’s impossible to fail. Dad planned a great day with all those friends, neighbors, relatives and strays. Everyone expected to have a good time when they came to our house. No matter the small glitches, nothing distracted from this. He knew that when you are among friends, you cannot fail. They want you to succeed. Today, I know that when I step in front of a room of kids and teachers, they are my friends. They like my books. They want me to succeed. And because of this, I know that I cannot fail.

Thanks, Dad.

And Happy 4th of July!

Signature Openings

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Even outgoing authors get butterflies before school assemblies or other presentations. A little anxiety is a good thing! But don’t let nervousness to derail the rest of your presentation.One way to avoid this is by having a signature opening.

 A signature opening means that you choose specific way to begin each presentation. Since the opening is something you are used to doing time and again, this can help calm your jitters. Here are some examples of types of signature openings

  • STORIES. Start by telling a story – not just “When I was a kid I loved to read,” but tell a specific story that demonstrates your passion for reading. People remember stories better than lists of rules or maxims.
  • IMAGES. You might click through a series of photos wordlessly before you begin, perhaps with some funny or unusual ones included. This shared experience bonds the audience and helps them anticipate your core program.
  • POLLS. Ask a question that all kids can answer such as “Where in the room are my kindergartners?” and then go on up through the grades. Or “How many of you love good stories?” Or “How many of you sometimes get stuck on what to write about?” Whether they raise their hands or not, the question itself requires kids to pause and think.
  • ACTIVITY. Engage the audience in an activity. If you’re comfortable getting kids to join in, have them join you for a song, a chant or just to clap along with something you perform.

 All of these techniques can help you capture the audience’s attention, but do what feels best to you. A signature opening can oil the gears of your presentation. Once you get rolling, it’s easier to stay rolling. Before long, the butterflies calm, and you’re into the core of your presentation, having a good time.

Scoping Out a School

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Before I visit a school, I explore the school’s website try to find out as much as I can such as

  • Location & directions (obviously)
  • School mascot
  • School colors
  • Upcoming special events
  • Total population
  • Minority population
  • Number of classes per grade level

 

This information gives me a feel for the approximate sizes of the audiences I’ll be seeing and how many handouts I’ll need for workshops. When I drop in a mention of the mascot or colors, this makes an instant connection with the kids. While I often get some of this information from my host, I just found out about a tool to use for demographics: SARC (the School Accountability Report Card).

 For SARC, public schools annually provide information about themselves to the community allowing the public to evaluate and compare schools for student achievement, environment, resources and demographics.

Taking into account your website search, your host’s information and SARC, these rich sources of data can help you prepare better for your school visit and help you make a stronger connection to your young audience as well as their teachers.

 To see examples forNew YorkandCalifornia, go to

New York 

https://reportcards.nysed.gov/

 California

http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/ac/sa/

 

4 Tips for Book Festival Presentations

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Book Festival Props

For outdoor presentations, blow up book pages to at least 16" x 20" and have kids help on stage

Book festivals offer big challenges to authors and illustrators when it comes to keeping the crowd focused and engaged in your presentation.

In school assemblies, you’re confident that the kids have a collective understanding of the school’s rules and are grouped by age. You can use a PowerPoint presentation to great effect.

But book festivals are open-air, multi-generational, noisy settings full of distractions and a fluid crowd. PowerPoint? Forget it!  A reading? It won’t engage enough of a crowd. Props? Better make them big so they can be seen. In short, you’ll have to revamp your presentation to suit the setting.

For my presentation at Feria del Libro in downtown Los Angeles, the stage was a small outdoor amphitheatre. Many of the festival-goers’ first language was Spanish.

 For color, I enlarged key pages of my book, Estela’s Swap, into poster-size images and laminated them. To engage the crowd, I invited kids to hold the posters on stage with the blank side toward the audience. Then I had the crowd sing a song that’s key to my story, “Cielto Lindo.” (While I don’t know how to speak Spanish, I can sing this song in Spanish!)

As I shared my book as a storyteller would (telling, not reading text), I tapped on kids to reveal the images for key points in the story. In the last scene, I had one child be the main character: she put on a bright orange Ballet Folklorico skirt and twirled.

To end, I had everyone – kids on stage and the audience – sing “Cielito Lindo” once more. This took about 15-20 minutes from start to finish, the perfect amount of time to keep a festival crowd’s attention.

 So here are 4 tips for successful Book Festival presentations:

1)     make your props big

2)     engage the audience in a group response

3)     use kids as volunteers

4)     keep the time limit short.

Click here for a list by state of Book Festivals and when they occur.

ASK ALEXIS: How Should I Shape My Workshop for Students?

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Image courtesy of digitalart/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

My email inbox sees a steady stream of authors asking for advice on how to handle specific school visit situations. Since these concerns are the concerns of many, I thought I’d do a little “Dear Abby” here and post the question and my response in case this might help you, too.

 Dear Alexis,

I have a school visit set up for a local 6th grade language arts class. I thought I’d start with the publishing process and then talk a bit about where ideas come from. The teacher asked that I lead them into a Halloween creative writing assignment, so figured I might give them a couple different images to choose from. Just how much can I shove into 30-60 minutes? I was afraid if I talked about details as well, that it might be one subject too many. What do you think?”   — Happy-But-Anxious

 Dear Happy-But-Anxious,

First, congratulations on trying out new material in this one-class-dose at a familiar school. When you do this, it gives you a chance to get feedback from the teacher in a supportive environment and to tweak your presentation before you do it at another venue.  This builds skill and confidence.

 Now – about the workshop. A workshop is different from a school assembly in that it engages students in a hands-on experience to teach a specific strategy that students can apply to their work. In terms of pacing, think in chunks of time.  How many minutes will you devote to each segment of your session? Possible sequences (60-minutes, 45-minutes) might look like this:

 SEQUENCE for 60-minute session (ideal time)

10 minutes:    Introduction to you and your works

15 minutes     Activity Part 1: Model the strategy with the students

15 minutes:    Activity Part 2: Have students apply strategy independently

10 minutes:    Group Share

5 minutes:      Wrap-up & Next Steps

5 minutes:      Q & A

 

SEQUENCE for 45-minute session

5 minutes:      Introduction to you and your works

10 minutes     Activity Part 1: Model the strategy with the students

10 minutes:    Activity Part 2: Have students apply strategy independently

10 minutes:    Group Share

10 minutes:    Wrap-up and Q & A

 OPENING: The kids will want to know about you and your upcoming book, so it’s a good way to start and build rapport.

 ACTIVITY Part 1: Plan to focus on ONE thing and do it thoroughly. For example, rather than talk about where ideas come from, why not do a couple of different exercises that will have them actually generating ideas. Using photos as prompts is a great technique. You might call this exercise the “Idea Bank” (and in your case, it might be the “Halloween Idea Bank.”) They will make “deposits” into this bank that they can “withdraw” from when they need to.

 It always helps to model what you want the students to do, so, you might begin this segment by observing a photo together and have them generate ideas as a group.

 ACTIVITY Part 2: In the next step, give them another photo and have them generate ideas independently. You can show one photo on a big screen to the whole class, give a photo to small groups, or give out individual photos.

 GROUP SHARE: Invite students to share some ideas they’ve written down. (Make this voluntary.)

 WRAP-UP and NEXT STEPS: Quickly review the technique you demonstrated and extend this by sharing other specific strategies that you have used to generate ideas for your books or magazine articles.

 In addition to generating the Halloween Idea Bank, you might have students produce an opening sentence, a slice of dialogue, or a dramatic closing sentence to prime the pump for future writing. But by teaching them the bigger strategy of how to generate ideas, they will be better equipped to create stories later.

 Q & A: If you have time at the end, invite them to ask you about your work. This helps build a bond, writer-to-writer, and lets students know that their struggles are normal.

 Finally, by blending the “you” part (you as a writer and your book) and the “them” part (giving them a strategy they can apply to their writing) you’ll produce a satisfying session.

 Good luck!

 If you have a question, send an email to alexis@SchoolVisitExperts.com and put “Ask Alexis” in the subject line.

Latest Buzz Phrase for “Educational Standards”

Author and teacher Darcy Pattison has an interesting post on her “Fiction Notes” blog: “What Do New Education Standards Mean for Writers?”  The new buzz phrase and acronym for curriculum or educational standards is Common Core Standards (CCSS).  While Darcy’s post focuses on how to use CCSS to inspire story ideas, you can use them in two very powerful ways as a school visit presenter:

  1.  To help you write a promotional school visit brochure or web page copy that uses “EducationSpeak” to connect better with teachers and librarians (see my blog post o July 14, 2011)
  2. To help you create program objectives that connect your books and activities directly with core content standards at various grade levels.

 Here are links to each grade level’s curriculum maps that will give you an idea of expectations at grade levels k-12 in English/Language Arts