Tips for Facilitators in Sharing Sessions

Thank you for agreeing to work at UAB’s Young Author’s Conference this year. You

make this event possible! As a facilitator you will serve in one of five

buildings at UAB. Plan to arrive at 8:15 and to stay until 12:00. Walk up to the

registration desk and introduce yourself as a sharing session facilitator.

At the three hour Saturday morning conference from 9 to12 (to which everyone comes early) there are several segments of the event. Each child shares his/her writing in small groups and gets to hear a “real live author” who talks to the children about how he/she gets ideas for stories. Perhaps the children will buy a book and get it autographed on site. There is also time for the children to attend some sort of creative “edutainment” and

enjoy refreshments. But the sharing session you host is a key element of the day, so

please develop a celebration for the writing efforts of individual children.

Your job is to lead your sharing session(s), approximately a 45 minute period

for a group of 10-15 children. Your basic duties are to:

· help the children share what they’ve written;

· and to distribute the Young Authors’ Conference 2004 certificates. *Please

bring a good black pen to write the kids’ names in the blank on the certificate.

· (From listening, make a big deal about some aspect of each child’s

writing.)

Recap:

1. Sign-in as a facilitator.

2. Pick up the certificates for your sessions as you sign in.

3. Find your designated sharing area--Be ready to roll with the punches—or to

be flexible. As a time filler, you might have some kind of mixer game planned,

or a book to share, or a poem the children could recite together about writing

or reading.

4. Leave your area neat and tidy.

One possible way to use the time follows.

BREAK THE ICE: 10 minutes --Student and facilitator introductions--

Ideas for seating the children in small groups within the large group.

You may ask the children to work in one large circle, or in groups of three, or

ask them to sit in groups of six as they share answers around the group. (You

may have 3 or 4 schools represented in your session, but no more than 20

children. Encourage them to sit by one person they know and one person they

don’t know.)

( In some buildings teachers and parents can stay as silent observers, in others

they are encouraged to wait outside.)

Introduce yourself and have students introduce themselves within their groups.

· They could pantomime their school mascot.

· From there they could be asked to pantomime an emotion in their story that

a character has.

Book Sharing 20 minutes Ask some or all of these questions.

Ask students to pass around their books to scan—just to look at covers and illustrations quickly—as a preview for sharing.

1. Let students share briefly how they got the ideas for the books they wrote.

2. Ask the children to describe the setting of their books. (Be sure that each student has a chance to speak.)

3. Ask students to name the characters in their books. Is one autobiographical? Or like a friend?

4. Was there an obstacle or problem the character had to solve?

5. Ask them to read a page of their writing to the group. (Younger students have shorter books and there may be enough time for them to read all of his or her book. Older students have longer books and there may not be time to read all of the book. They minght pick out a page to read they had to revise until they got it right.)

6. What kind of book do you want to write next? You may have gotten an idea

7. from the author we heard today; or from looking at other books; or you may have been thinking about a good idea for a book.

8. If time permits, maybe they could swap books to read silently.

CERTIFICATE TIME: 10 minutes

Make a short speech as you ceremoniously hand out certificates individually. You might say some or all of the following:

1. I am so proud that you are learning to express yourself in written form.

For some it comes easier than others. But you have stories no one else has. So

keep writing and your ideas will be preserved forever when you write them down.

2. You are to be commended for giving up a Saturday to come and learn and

share. You are young people who know there are good ideas out there. Idea

collectors make good writers.

3. Congratulations for completing a task. If you wrote a book to come today,

we all know it went through many steps-- the idea step, the first draft,

corrections stage, and then the production of the final copy. Congratulations on

finishing.

4. At this time, I want to give you your certificate on behalf of the

Education Department of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Please let me

read your name on your name tag as I shake your hand, and then your teacher can put your name on the certificate.

Once again, facilitators, it would not be possible to hold an event without YOU!

Thanks!!