UMA'S SCHOOL PROGRAMS AND DEMONSTRATION WORKSHOPS

Why bring an author or illustrator into your school?

• To connect young readers with the process of writing and illustration.

• To celebrate student writing and art by exploring creative process with professionals.

• To allow for conversations between young people and the creators of books they have read and enjoyed.

Links to web sites with listings of authors and illustrators who offer programs and workshops in schools and community settings.

I speak about my books, writing process, and the work I do with young writers, at conferences and workshops for teachers, writers and other people concerned with literacy.  Often, when I travel to conferences or schools, I also sign books at a local bookstore.  Here's a list of school programs, residencies, conference presentations and signings.


K-12 classrooms and library/community groups

 

Sounds and Stories from India

Dramatic readings from my traditional story collections and picture books; music, artifacts, images that students can relate to the stories.  Stories, history, culture in relation to the geography of South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. An enhanced version of this program has been developed in collaboration with the education department of the Smithsonian Institution's Sackler Gallery.  We use slides and other materials related to Sackler collections as writing stimuli.  Links to Social Studies, Language Arts, and Arts standards and benchmarks.
Grades:  4-12

The Poetry of Place

Turn your field trip to a museum, park or nature trail into a writing extravaganza with my model demonstration workshop, Writing Trails.  Students experience place the way writers do, and translate their experience into original work.  If you choose a riverine or watershed setting, I'll offer an abridged version of my River of Words workshop.  In ROW, writers craft poems in and about the water systems in their community, and enter the finished work in the national ROW competition.  In the upper grades, ROW can also link up with ecosystems studies and service learning.
Grades: 2-8

Living Places

Using as an example either my picture book, Monsoon, or my YA novel, Naming Maya, I share the process of growing a piece of writing inspired by place. Includes early notes, revisions, changes over the life of the manuscript, and either illustration or language/glossary as tools to convey cultural context. Can be presented as a1 hour assembly, or a 2-3 hour workshop with classroom groups, in which students have the opportunity to draft and begin developing a place-inspired piece. For high school audiences, this presentation is in the context of the geography and ecology of the South Asian monsoon belt.
Grades: 3-6, 9-12

Stretch Your Body, Stretch Your Words

Especially for very young readers, a program using the images in my emergent reader, along with breathing, stretching, and story-building techniques.  We are cats, bees, snakes, trees, and more.  We roar like lions, and then we craft our own "We are..." poem together, and wrap it around the classroom or library.
Grades: pre-K-1

The Stories in Family History

Using objects and artifacts to spark story about times present or past.  We look at the role of objects and artifacts in family history through my picture book, Chachaji's Cup. We write together, using a range of objects, slides, and photographs as writing stimuli.  Limit 25 students.
Grades 5-8

Assemblies

Novel Through the Lens

Presentation focuses on the development of my YA novel, Naming Maya. I share slides and notes from the "writing in place" process I used when I revised the manuscript on a trip to India in 2001. I also talk about the intrusion of the events of September 11 on that trip; and the influence of two very different art forms on the story--traditional books of chants, and photography. Students write, using selected phrases from the book as prompts. 
Grades 5-8


Workshops for teachers

Writing Trails

An overview of the intuitive writing workshop Uma leads at a National Park Service site in Northwest New Mexico. Allows teachers to make their own curricular links, develop ways to use local historical and natural parks as context and setting in teaching writing. Sample lessons, slides.  Linkages to national and international programs promoting cross curricular writing.

Writing Off the Page

Using the form and structure of multicultural emergent readers to spark writing in the early grades. With a range of readers from Lee & Low's Bebop Books imprint, explore a wide variety of pre-writing and writing activities, with the objective of allowing young children to explore both the physical form and the content of these books, and then craft their own.

Negotiating the Revision Maze

Using non-linear processes to revise a piece of work. Taking a piece from idea to final container. How to help students see revision as critical to growing a piece of writing. Getting there by cultivating the dual personality of writer-critic. Strategies for teachers to practise getting to know their own writing process, so they can guide students more intuitively. Resources, issues in fostering student writing, genres, audience, containers for writing, writing exercises, and the process of building a writing community for yourself and your students.

Using Traditional Tales, Folk Tales, and Myth in the Classroom

Cuts across social studies/language arts/arts curricula. Process of researching and retelling folk and traditional stories, with implications for their classroom use; the fiction-nonfiction divide and traditional stories; the universality of folk and traditional tales. Using the retold story as a genre in writing programs. Myths about myth: teaching mythology without the romanticism of monomyth theories.

 



EQUIPMENT NEEDED
For programs in schools and libraries, LCD projector and screen, CD player, table to display books and artifacts.  For field trips, make sure students bring writing materials, and plenty of extra pencils/pens.

BOOK SALES
I appreciate my books being made available for sale to students and staff on the day of my visit, and I’m happy to autograph copies on purchase.  Titles are available through major bookstores and distributors, or directly from the publishers.

TRAVEL/LODGING
I'll need to fly out of either Farmington NM or Durango CO.  I'll need vegetarian meals--dairy is fine.  My lodging needs are flexible and modest, but I do prefer that you handle travel/lodging costs directly.  Local transportation: you'll need to give me rides to and from school on presentation days.  To reduce travel costs, you might consider coordinating with another school or community organization (park, museum, library) in your area and booking me for multiple days.
 
Call or e-mail for current fee schedule
(812)323-1732
Dayton Bookings

 

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