This resource is great for:
Using your Book Festival visit as inspiration for further work once back in the classroom.
Summary:
A selection of top tips, hints and resources that can be used before or after a Book Festival visit to help you make the most of your trip.
Introduction:
You will notice lots of handy resources relating to Book Festival events popping up on this Learning site over the next few months. If you’re looking to expand on your event visit back in the classroom, or get your class enthused with some preparation work before your trip, below are a few ideas to get you started.
Do keep checking back at our Learning Resources page to find resources related to specific events in the coming weeks.
Top Tip 1 – Building on Author Events (CPL Event)
Not sure where to start? Why not come along to our Career-long Professional Learning event during the Book Festival in August and find out how to make the most of your class visit, author visit to your school or online author talk. Poet and literacy specialist Georgi Gill shares tips and ideas for activities to help you harness the enthusiasm of your pupils and maintain momentum when you’re back in the classroom.
You can find more information on all of our CPL events, plus details on how to book here: learning.edbookfest.co.uk/cpl/
Top Tip 2 – Using resources in the Book Festival Schools brochure
Don’t just book your Festival events and then sling the programme to one side! Remember that underneath each of our schools events listings, we include ideas for further classroom work, focusing on different curriculum areas. So make sure you keep hold of the programme and you can expand your visit into a day of activities back in the classroom – or even a whole project!
The full brochure is available to download on this site.
Top Tip 3 – Making the most of internet resources
Lots of publishers and authors create activities around their books. We’ve listed some of our favourites below:
Neill Cameron (see p.9 in the Schools brochure) regularly blogs fun ideas to get kids creating their own comics, and even did a series on Comics and Literacy. We particularly love his great post on creating InstaComics.
Publisher Macmillan have created useful discussion points around Moira Young’s The Road to Ever After (p.9 in the Schools brochure).
The Flying Fergus website contains a whole hoard of activities to create a school project around Chris Hoy’s exciting cycling series (p.10 in the Schools brochure.)
There are songs, activities and videos galore to get pupils ready for fun with Kristina Stephenson and Sir Charlie Stinky Socks (p.13 in the Schools brochure).
You can find lots of copies of Joshua Seigal’s poems (p.21 in the Schools Brochure) on his website to use with your class.
M G Leonard (p.30 in the Schools Brochure) has fantastic cross-curricular activities on her website to bring beetle-mania to your classroom.
The Floris Books website has a great resources section – including this fun hieroglyphics puzzle inspired by Mike Nicholson’s Museum Mystery Squad (p.39 in the Schools brochure)
The Scottish Book Trust have also created lots of wonderful resources, available on their website – including for lots of authors appearing in the Baillie Gifford Schools Programme such as Cathy MacPhail, Theresa Breslin, Elizabeth Laird, Elizabeth Wein, Juno Dawson, Maz Evans, Marcus Sedgwick, Lari Don and David Almond.
We hope these tips prove useful!