author visit: Michael Wade

On Monday afternoon, all the intermediate classes and some students from division 6 came down to the library and participated in an author visit with Canadian author, Michael Wade. He discussed that he exercises his body and that reading exercises the brain. And the students were excited to find out that he used to be a prison guard!

Students from divisions 1, 2 and 3 created book cover art for all of Michael's 10 books. 

He autographed each of them for us!

Michael introduced the 31 words that most students learn in grade 1 and that are significant to us as English readers and writers. These 31 words (such as and, the, like, on, for) comprise about 25% of all written texts. Michael then had the students look at the first sentence from the Harry Potter series to make this point.

Michael shared his writing process and how he writes about one book a year. He also shared a draft of one of his stories and how he rewrites each draft about seven times.

More information about Michael and his books can be found at:

http://www.boysbookshelf.com/

Michael talked about the power of words and how humour writers often use a dictionary to play around with language. He then had some students fill out a short questionnaire about their dogs. Michael created little stories with the students' responses but by changing just one little word, from "dog" to "dad", he had the students laughing hysterically!

Throughout the presentations, Michael emphasized that anyone can be a writer.

What a great message for our students at Blair to hear!

~Ms Novakowski