A BIG thank you to the Singapore Writer's Festival for helping us connect with Jack Cheng. He visited the middle school library and spoke to our grade seven writers about his writing process. It was amazing how so many of Jack's experiences connected with our students. Our students and teachers took away so many great tips on the writing process in an hour long session with Jack.
Our grade seven students had an awesome day working with performance poet Marc Nair! The were able to share some of their own poetry while taking away some awesome tips from Marc about how he is able to use words to share such a strong message.
KA spent two awesome weeks as our author in residence. She shared her writing journey with all middle school students but worked in small groups with our grade six teams during their writer's workshop. She helped our students understand more about taking their own personal stories and sharing them with their audience as a writer. She also shared some of her process as a writer taking the stories and turning them into novels in verse and a piece of written art!
Students in our graphic novel club enjoyed a virtual workshop with Matt. He was able to look at their current work and give them professional advice on improve parts of their own work. Matt also led lessons for our grade eight students as part of their graphic novel unit. He shared his own experience as a graphic novelist and taught them about how he enhances his work with certain text and graphic features.
Kekla Magoon is the author of many novels and nonfiction books for young readers, including The Season of Styx Malone, The Rock and the River, How It Went Down, and Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People. She has received the Margaret A. Edwards Award, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the John Steptoe New Talent Award, three Coretta Scott King Honors, the Walter Award Honor, an NAACP Image Award, and been a finalist for the National Book Award. Kekla conducts school and library visits nationwide and serves on the Writers’ Council for the National Writing Project. Kekla holds a B.A. from Northwestern University and an M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she now serves on faculty. Visit her online at keklamagoon.com.
