We started the day with a casual buffet breakfast sponsored by the foundation. We spent the morning meeting and talking to the other participants at the conference, including several authors. The first session was spent learning about Highlights magazine. We discovered that they publish student writing once a year, and are specifically looking for poetry by boys. This is exciting since we teach poetry writing and feel that some our students would be candidates for submitting their pieces.
This afternoon we rode on school buses to Westfield for a picnic bar-b-que. The guest speakers were award winning authors Jerry and Eileen Spinelli. They answered some great questions that writers and children ask them on a regular basis. The quote of the day comes from Eileen who said, "Reading is incredibly important to me as a writer. I learned to write through reading. It just seeped through my bones." This is something we can share with our young readers and writers. We also spent some time talking to Eileen about one of her picture books that we use to teach reading and writing. She shared where the idea came from and her thinking behind the book. We plan to share this with our students next year when we read the book in class.
During the evening we met an author who is also a retired university professor in education. We talked about teaming up to possibly do some teleconferencing and blogging with our students, as well as presenting together at a teacher's conference. We plan to get together and discuss this more during the week. The possibilities are exciting.
Tomorrow is our first real day of curriculum where we meet with our mentors and attend specific workshops. We are looking forward to another day of learning.
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