Tweeting Author Todd Parr

My class tweets to children's book author @toddparr

Earlier in January I had seen a Tweet by one of my favorite education & technology speakers, George Couros (@gcouros), about Tweeting the Read-Aloud: Engaging and Motivating Readers a blog post by Monica Burns. In it she discussed all the great things that can come to students and your read alouds by incorporating tweeting to your favorite authors. I thought this was a FABULOUS idea and since I am newer to the Twitterverse, thought it was a great challenge for me. It seems like a simple step to becoming a more connected educator and build my PLN at the same time. Soooo challenge accepted and now completed!

How did I go about it? Monica Burns was kind enough to include a link to her document in her post that lists popular children's books authors and their Twitter handles. This month I am using Todd Parr's books to focus on my monthly character building skills and I saw that he is on there! He is a fantastic author and if you haven't checked out his books and website you should now! It is an amazing resource!!! So I decided to ask Mr. Parr a few questions that my class generated.

Our class discussion to generate the questions was fabulous and something I hadn't done quite like that with my kinderkiddos before.  It was a great way to focus on our speaking and listening standards, as well as revisit what makes a question and more importantly, what makes a question good.
We then voted (another great skill to practice) and decided on our top questions to ask. I tweeted him our ?s on February 10th, along with pictures of our class partner posters that were inspired by his book Its Okay to Make Mistakes.

@toddparr response! How awesome is that?!?! 

On February 11th Todd Parr replied to us and boy were we excited!!!! My students thought it was THE COOLEST! (Okay okay so did I!)

It really helped my students feel connected to the stories & the author. sit also made them feel super cool! To them, Todd Parr is a celebrity. His response made the day of so many 5 & 6 year olds. They couldn't stop talking about it! It would be like if Ellen Degeneres
responded to one of my tweets! Ahhhh I would be all a 'twitter'!! (See what I did there?!)

Anyhoo....but more than feeling special or in awe, my students felt a connection to books. They realize now that when I say they are authors & illustrators, they really are! Because authors & illustrators are real people just like them. One simple tweet has brought inspiration, connection and excitement for literacy! I'm so glad I challenged myself. In fact, I think I will try do this lesson again and tweet at 1 children's book author/month! If you are a children's book author let me know your Twitter handle!

Twitter is a fabulous way to connect classrooms and authors, building student connections that run even deeper than we know! So now I challenge you-try to Tweet an author before this year is over. Be sure to let me know how it goes!