SIMON SAYS – Author Visits, Presentations and Workshops by Children’s Writers – Study Guides and Classroom Resources

Study guides are free for teachers to download and use either before an author visit or just as a teaching resource. Even those in schools that you may never visit might buy your books or even purchase a class set and use the study guide. The guides describe potential projects related to the books. The Sorcerers’ Letterbox and The Heretic’s Tomb are set in the Middle Ages so teachers can do projects about medieval life, castles, research the Black Death and other historical events. The plot of The Alchemist’s Portrait involves an art gallery in a museum and students can be asked to draw inspiration from classic paintings. Children can create superheroes and comic books using The Emerald Curse or even invent their own unique board game.

I also have free word search puzzles for children to download at any time, although I also encourage teachers to make use of them before an author visit, to familiarize the children with me and my work.

Teachers can also access The Super Scavenger Search, where the answers to a series of mind boggling questions are hidden in different pages all over my website. This not only allows the students to learn about me prior to a visit and thus have lots of great questions, but also boosts traffic to most pages of your website.

I even offer workshops for teachers so that they can learn a little about the value of my workshops and appreciate how much children enjoy them.