by: Patti Weeg

"Authors in Residence" programs bring published authors and budding student writers together in a very unique mentoring opportunity. Some authors come to school and work with their young writers on the school campus such as in the Oyster River High School program. Other authors work online with their student writers by sending e-mails.

Working Together at School

Local Authors in Residence at Oyster River High School

Another program where the author worked with students in the school took place at P.S. 115 in Washington Heights with author, Leyla Torres. In this program Leyla showed the students how books are made and captivated their attention when she told them about the many drafts that were necessary just for a picture book.

Leyla Torres P.S. 115, June 2-6, 2003

Working Together OnLine

In other "Author in Residence" programs, students and mentoring authors work together online. At Delmar, two groups of six Title 1 students work together with published children's authors to create original stories. The authors work with the students from November through May. All of the communication is done online until the end of the school year when one of the author travels to Delmar and meets her young authors face-to-face for the first time. Explore this program that has been running at Delmar Elementary in Wicomico County, Maryland for the past 5 years:

Authors in Residence Online - presented at the Title 1 National Conference in Florida in January, 2002.

Includes these topics:

  1. What is "Authors in Residence"?
  2. Why use a non-traditional approach?
  3. Delmar's author program
  4. How to design your own author program

Case Study: Using Kidspiration in "Authors in Residence" program

Benefits

  1. Students become active participants in their learning.
  2. Mentors are authentic role models.
  3. Teacher to student ratio is improved.
  4. Mentors share expertise.
  5. Instruction is personalized.
  6. Mentors provide on-going support and encouragement.

Limitations
  1. Works best with small groups of students.
  2. Requires a stipend for the authors in some cases.

Adaptations to the Learning Environment

For an Author program that is done online, these considerations are necessary:

  1. Computers that are connected to the Internet must be available for the students.
  2. Students need an e-mail account or their classroom teacher sends all the stories through his/her own e-mail account.
  3. Each student and his/her classroom teacher needs time to conference about the student's writing.

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Patti Weeg
www.globalclassroom.org
April 16, 2004