A teacher's review of my visit to Butler Elementary

“On Tuesday, April 30th the grade 6 and Sec. 1 classes were very pleased to welcome author Julia K. Rohan into our classrooms. Julia, who is originally from Ontario but now resides in Knowlton, has written a fantasy novel for youths and is currently working on publishing the 2nd of 3 in the series. Both classes have been reading from her novel "Weaverworld - Grimsnipe's Revenge".

 

Julia shared with us the process of creating her characters and story; her inspirations as a writer; and all about the world of publishing.  The students showed a lot of interest and asked pertinent questions that lead to a fascinating discussion.

 

During story planning for narrative writing in our MELS end-of-year exam, one of the grade 6 students brought up Julia’s discussion on character development. Julia told us that she spent a really long time developing her characters’ personalities before she even knew what the story would be about. It’s the characters that control the story.  Many of the students really thought that was a good idea and began to really think about their characters’ personalities in the stories they would create. We also used passages in her book to demonstrate how a writer can describe a situation with so much detail and in such an interesting way.  I, the grade 6 teacher, was really pleased to see how Julia’s visit affected the class and how my students were inspired to become better writers. What more could a teacher want?”

 

Christine Blinn, Butler Elementary