Due to increasing writing commitments, I’m unfortunately unable to maintain so many blogs.

So Teachers Writing Helper has moved to my DeeScribeWriting blog http://deescribewriting.wordpress.com where I will be having writing tips, classroom and literacy activities, author interviews and reviews.

I’m also the new kid’s book blogger at Boomerang Books and you’ll also find author interviews, reviews and activities there at my Kids’ Book Capers blog http://content.boomerangbooks.com.au/kids-book-capers-blog/

Hope to catch up with you there.

Dee:-)

Meet Rebecca

It’s great to have Rebecca here today. Rebecca is the editor of a Alphabet Soupt, a great magazine for kids who love reading and writing.

The Spring Issue of Alphabet Soup is out now, and Rebecca has some great tips on how it can help teachers in the classroom.

Wonderful to have you here, Rebecca.

What are the benefits to teachers of using your magazine in the classroom?

 Alphabet Soup is an Australian magazine, so content includes the voice, language, idioms, and settings familiar to Australian students.

A magazine with a variety of genres can be a useful tool for encouraging children to read – some children find a long book daunting, but they can dip into different sections of the magazine to read a short story, poem or article.

Students can use Alphabet Soup for silent reading, or ‘take home’ reading.

Can you suggest a literacy or writing activity for students in prep to grade 2 using Alphabet Soup?

For students at the younger end of this age range

Read ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ to the class and ask the children about how the characters behave. ‘How do you think Jack felt when he heard the giant roaring?’

To gain an understanding of the giant’s scary character, the children stomp about and chant his rhyme in a scary voice:

Fee, Fie, Foe, Fum,

I smell the blood of an Englishman;

Be he alive or be he dead,

I’ll grind his bones to make my bread!

Older children

Read ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and ask the children questions as a prompt for writing:

What if the magic beans didn’t grow after Jack’s mother threw them away?

What happened after the story, during the ‘happily ever after’ time?

Can you think of an alternative ending for the story?

Can you suggest a literacy or writing activity for grade 3 to 4 students using Alphabet Soup?

1. Ask students to bring in a vegetable.

2. Read the poem ‘Brussels Sprouts’ by Brian Langley as an example.

3. Ask students to write a poem about the vegetable they’ve brought in.

Ways to use the vegetable poems: 

• Display a copy of each poem (and a drawing or photograph to match) in the classroom or the school library or exhibit at a nearby public library.
• Use them to make a book of vegetable poems (perhaps called Vegetable Soup!), written and illustrated by class members. Display the book in the school library for a couple of weeks, and/or a selection of the poems could be read at a school assembly.
• Glue each poem (with illustration) to a card for Father’s Day/ Mother’s Day/birthday/Christmas.
• If the students have used their poems to make cards, talk about the correct way to address an envelope, and then post the cards. (Australia Post has online instructions for hand-addressing envelopes at http://www.auspost.com.au/BCP/0,1467,CH2092%257EMO19,00.html.)
• Send the finished poems in to our spring writing competition (if they meet the entry requirements – see the ‘competitions’ page of our website: www.alphabetsoup.net.au).

Can you suggest a literacy or writing activity for students in upper primary school using Alphabet Soup?

Read ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, or ‘Garden of Guesses’ and retell the story from another point of view. For ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ students might choose to tell the story from the point of the view of the giant, or the cow, or the beanstalk. For the garden story, they might choose the point of view of the teacher in the story, the potatoes being planted, or a worm in the garden.

or

Use Alphabet Soup as the starting point for creating a class magazine.

Groups of students take on different pages (or roles) in the magazine (i.e. illustration, creating crosswords, writing book reviews, writing poems, stories etc)  

Display the magazine in the school library (or lend it to another classroom and ask them to review it!).

How do you think that author interviews benefit young readers and writers?

The obvious benefit is that authors offer encouragement to young writers and usually have some useful tips! In addition to writing tips, children discover that an author was just like them once – a child who dreamed of becoming a writer.

If a child finds an interview interesting, they will be more likely to seek out books by that author that they haven’t yet read.

Thanks for visiting Rebecca. There are so many great things for both teachers and students in your magazine.

You can subscribe to Alphabet Soup online at www.alphabetsoup.net.au

Also, visit these other great blogs to find out more about Alphabet Soup, and where Rebecca will be/has been to on her tour:

September 1 – http://www.livejournal.com/users/orangedale – the background of the mag.

September 2 – http://sallymurphy.blogspot.com – the editorial process.

September 3 – http://ww.letshavewords.blogspot.com – some printing questions.

September 4 – http://belka37.blogspot.com – the submission process.

September 5 – http://teacherswritinghelper.wordpress.com (that’s here!)

September 6 – http://robynopie.blogspot.com

September 7 – http://www.sandyfussell.blogspot.com

We’re going to be talking about bipolar themes in the story and the affect on teenagers of having a family member with a mental illness.

Hope you can join us at http://www.JenniferBrownYA.com

Dee and Matt:-)

Melissa from Walker Books has prepared some fabulous comprehensive teaching notes that you can download from www.walkerbooks.com.au – they cover all sorts of things to do with how Letters to Leonardo was written – and they mention some of the themes in the book:

• mental illness
• art
• family relationships
• emotional control

Themes summarise a common experience that make it possible for the reader to identify with the characters. Themes are the dominant ideas that carry your story forward.  In Letters to Leonardo, I also see friendship and loyalty as major themes.

Matt is loyal to his mum. Dave and Troy are loyal to Matt.

Themes are important because they adds layers – and provide deeper meaning to your story. In Letters to Leonardo for example, the themes make it more than just a book about a boy who gets a letter from his dead mother. This is the basic plot outline, but the themes are what tell us about the characters and also make us care about what happens to them.

CLASSROOM ACTIVITY

This activity can be an individual or group activity. It could be written down or discussed.

STEP 1

• Write down/discuss an event that happened to you this year.
• Who was involved?
• What happened?
• When did it happen?
• How did you react to what happened?
• How did others react to what happened?
• What was the outcome?
• How did it make you feel?
• How did it make other people feel?

STEP 2

From the information you gathered in step 1, see if you can identify themes.

STEP 3

Take one or more of these themes and the event itself and see if you can come up with an idea for a story.

Thanks for having us in your classroom. We hope you will join us tomorrow at http://tips4youngwriters.wordpress.com to learn all about turning fact into fiction.

Hope to see you there.

Happy reading and writing.

Dee and Matt:-)

And just in case you’ve missed any other parts of the tour, here’s where we’ve been already.

Feel free go back and visit these great sites and find out more about Letters to Leonardo and the writing process.

24^th June 2009             http://sallymurphy.blogspot.com        

Dee and Matt talk about promoting Letters to Leonardo online.

25^th June 2009             http://spinningpearls.blogspot.com     

Author interview

26^th June 2009             http://thebookchook.blogspot.com    

How art has been used in Letters to Leonardo

27^th June 2009             http://belka37.blogspot.com

The research process involved in writing Letters to Leonardo           

28^th June 2009             http://weloveya.wordpress.com

Guest blogger – talking with Vanessa Barneveld – interactive discussion with bloggers

29^th June 2009             http://www.livejournal.com/users/orangedale            

An author interview covering things like inspiration and perspective

30^th June                      http://www.letshavewords.blogspot.com

Mentors in YA fiction, and Leonardo da Vinci’s involvement in the book

1^st July                         Cyber launch http://deescribewriting.wordpress.com including cross to Robyn Opie’s blog http://robynopie.blogspot.com – hurdles overcome on the way to publication.

2^nd July                        http://persnicketysnark.blogspot.com

How the author’s life paralleled Matt’s – her growing obsession with Leonardo da Vinci

3^rd July                         http://bjcullen.blogspot.com

Working with a publisher and the editing process

4^th July                         http://sandyfussell.blogspot.com

Interview with the elusive Matt Hudson

5^th July                         http://teacherswritinghelper.wordpress.com

Class writing activities based on Letters to Leonardo

6^th July                         http://tips4youngwriters.wordpress.com

Tips 4 young writers on how Letters to Leonardo was written

7^th July                         http://www.JenniferBrownYA.com

An overseas stop before heading home

.

Hope you’ll join us.

Dee and Matt:-)

Please feel free to ask any questions or leave any comments about anything to do with today’s Cyber Launch.

Thanks so much Sue Whiting, Margaret Hamilton, Robyn Opie, Hal, Debbie  and SJ – and all my kind writing friends who have left lovely comments, for making this such a wonderful occasion.

This event has been brought to you by the following:

www.walkerbooks.com.au

http://deescribewriting.wordpress.com

http://tips4youngwriters.wordpress.com

http://teacherswritinghelper.wordpress.com and

http://robynopie.blogspot.com

Don’t forget to check out our movie book preview at:

http://www.blazingtrailers.com/show.php?title=504

Tomorrow, the blog tour continues and it should be a really fun day because we’re off to visit Persnickety Snark. If you’d like to know how my life paralleled Matt’s, drop in and see us at http://persnicketysnark.blogspot.com

It’s been a huge day – thanks so much for coming. Now it’s time to curl up with a hot cuppa and a good book.

Hope to catch you again in Cyber Space.

Dee and Matt:-)

AVAILABLE IN ALL GOOD BOOKSTORES FROM TODAY:-)

Listening to music or looking at art can evoke all sorts of images in your head – images that can be used as the basis for a story.

CLASS ACTIVITY

• Think of your favourite musical artist/group.
• Write down the sorts of images that their music evokes for you.
• What pictures does it create in your head?
• Do these pictures remind you of anyone or anything?

This activity is great for setting the ‘writing mood’.

Happy writing.

Dee & Matt:-)

MATT:       Why did you think that Leonardo da Vinci would be a good person to help me tell my story?

DEE:          Even though you two lived over 500 years apart, Leonardo was a lot like you, Matt.

MATT:       How?

DEE:          You both got taken away from your Mum’s at a young age, you both seek truth, you’re both sensitive – and you’re both perfectionists.

MATT:       I guess you’re right. Anything else?

DEE:          Your art – it was a strong connection between the two of you – and it linked you to your mother as well.

MATT:       You used Leonardo’s paintings a lot throughout the book. Why do you think people will want to know about them? Not everyone is an LDV fan like us?

DEE:         The paintings were a great way to symbolise people and events in the story. Take the Mona Lisa for example – she was an enigma, just like your mum.

MATT:       And that painting of St Jerome – you used that to show how I was feeling?

DEE:          That’s right – sometimes the emotion of the painting was a good way to show what was going on with you – without have to say “Matt’s upset” or “Matt feels bad”.

MATT:       Why did you have to tell everyone how much I loved LDV’s stuff? Why do you think it was their business anyway?

DEE:          Readers needed to understand the sort of person that you were – so they could empathise with you. Like when you talked about the Drapery Study and you said, “We all wear an outer layer to hide who we really are,” that was to help people realise how vulnerable you were.

MATT:       How does LDV connect us – you and me, I mean?

DEE:          He’s our shared obsession:-)

Hope you enjoy solving  it as much as we enjoyed creating it.

Dee and Matt:-)

LETTERS TO LEONARDO

 WORD SEARCH

THINK ABOUT THIS:

• What devices/techniques/things did I use to interest readers right from the start?
• What does the start of the book tell us about the main character, Matt?
• Do you think a letter is a good way to start a story?

WRITING ACTIVITY

1. Write a letter to someone you don’t know – it must be a person that you admire or dislike because of something you believe they have done. It could be a politician, an actor – anybody.
2. Try to use this letter to start your own story.

Have fun and happy writing – and for more activities and writing tips, make sure you check out http://tips4youngwriters.wordpress.com

Hope you’re enjoying the Cyber Launch.

Dee and Matt:-)