School visits

I enjoy visiting schools in London and the South East and am happy to provide one or a combination of the following:

General Talk: Lasting up to one hour (to include time for questions and book signing), for up to 60 or 70 children, about the way I write, how an initial idea becomes a story, how I develop my characters, the importance of planning and structure, how I go about researching various historical periods, and various writing tips I’ve picked up along the way! I aim to enthuse children to read, write and use their imaginations. If there is access to the Internet, I can also include discussion of some of the pictures and information on this website.

Workshop: Lasting up to an hour and a half, for up to 30 children, resulting in a piece of creative writing set in the Victorian period. I give the children some information about this period in an introductory talk of 15 minutes or so, then give out copies of photographs from the website. Working in smaller groups of up to 6, the children discuss the photograph they have chosen (another fifteen minutes), prompted by a corresponding question sheet, and begin to develop a story around it. They then each individually write up the first paragraph (20 -30 minutes) and for the last half hour or so, we discuss how they’ve got on and volunteers read out their work. This workshop is most suitable for Years 5, 6 and 7, I think.

Fees and Books for Sale
If you are interested in a visit, please email me to discuss length of sessions and fees, etc. Bringing books for sale helps me keep down the cost of my author talks, and children often like to have a signed copy. I can bring books with me or they can be supplied by your local bookshop. If this would cause a problem, however, please let me know. If not, please remind the children in advance to bring in money on the day.

Discipline
I’m sure there won’t be any discipline problems in your lovely school, but would be grateful for the attending teacher to deal with any that might unexpectedly arise.

Preparation for the Visit
The most successful visits are those in which the children have read something from one of my books, or have visited my website, or have thought up questions they would like to ask me, or ideally, all three!

Some Feedback:

Dear Jennie Walters, Thank you for visiting our school to tell us all about your new book. The tips you gave us on how to write a good story were very helpful when it comes to our English lessons! We really appreciated when you told us about what you found difficult as a lot of us have the same problems.
Patricia, Enya and Kalani, on behalf of Year 7

It was great meeting an author! I’ve never met an author in my life before so it was amazing. Your new book was very interesting when you read it to us and I am really looking forward to reading it later!!!
Sarit, Year 7 Red

Hello, thank you for coming over, I seriously enjoyed your talk. I was constantly putting my hand up to ask you questions. I was quite determined to ask you those questions, since I wanted to become an author myself. Your new book was great, I wanted you to read the whole book, which I know would not be able to come true, so in the end I just signed up to wait in the library to read your book.
Monelle, Year 7 Red

Dear Ms Walters, Thank you so much for the session you came and led for members of our Year 7 Reading Club yesterday afternoon. I have already seen two of the girls early this morning – they were still very enthusiastic about your talk and said it had inspired them to write and read!
(Librarian)