Author, Jennifer Jacobson, Visits WES
Williams Elementary School is so thankful that the Atwood and Williams PTA sponsored Jennifer Jacobson’s visit to Williams Elementary School on October 11. Ms. Jacobson captivated all grade levels as she shared her writing challenges as a professional writer, talked about some of the strategies she uses to generate ideas for her stories, and also discussed the writing process. When writing, Ms. Jacobson sketches for her prewrite. She shared some of her sketches with the students and also discussed how illustrators revise their drawings as well. Ms. Jacobson shared how she develops characters. During her presentation, she shared three purple backpacks that three best friends had in one of her stories. She then proceeded to unpack each backpack’s special items and asked students to identify character traits for each one of the three friends based on what she unpacked from their backpack. She explained how the backpacks helped her to establish the three characters.
Ms. Jacobson also shared helpful writing tips with WES students. She shared that her job as a writer is to get in the character’s way and to make their situation challenging. She explained that it was with purpose that she had the character spend all of their money at the store and also go into the water with their cell phone in their pocket. She expressed that stories need to have conflicts. Ms Jacobson shared that it is her job to keep her readers engaged in the story. She explained that she had to learn to make things tougher for the characters in her stories, and she shared that she received feedback from an editor that she was making it too easy for her characters.
She also shared, “I do not like erasers because writers change their minds all the time… that’s a high five moment. That’s revising!”
One of the students shared, “Ms. Jacobson inspired me to write a story about myself that I wasn’t very proud of to share with others. I felt the character’s story paralleled my life. She made me feel like a better writer.”
All of the students at Williams left with a signed copy of Small as an Elephant, written by Jennifer Jacobson. All books were purchased for each one of the students by the wonderful PTA. #WeAreRSU18 #WESproud18
