One of my favorite days of the year is when Author Phil Bildner visits our library for a Writing Camp with 4th grade!  He leads them in a fun, engaging learning session all about writing and the kids always walk away with new ideas and inspiration.  This was his third visit to England Elementary and he had nothing but amazing things to say about our school and our awesome 4th grade students!

Mr. Bildner gave us lots of great advice, but I wanted to share with you some of his most important messages:

• If you put your name on something, it is a direct reflection of who you are… so make sure it’s your best work!

• The key to being a good writer is that you have to READ!!  Read on your own, for fun, every single day!  Reading is NOT OPTIONAL.

• The real writing takes place during the re-writing.  Editing is not the most fun part of writing, but it is the MOST important.  Your first draft should never be your final draft!

• When you think you’re done, you’ve just begun.  Spend 10 more minutes on your writing and you can turn something good into something better!

Several students were selected to have a special “Meet and Greet” with Phil Bildner! These students had written really great letters persuading me to choose them to attend the Meet and Greet and we all had a great time visiting and asking each other questions.

Thank you to our FABULOUS PTA for allowing his visit to be possible!  We are so lucky to have a PTA who supports bringing authors and writing camp to our students.

A few weeks ago, Phil Bildner began his own web show on YouTube focused on reading and writing. You can watch the first episode below, entitled “Just Read.”