Presentations/Workshops

Presentations

(See below for Workshop info)

Ted does school visits to all grades, K-12, Family Literacy events, and general audience presentations. They’re interactive, fast-paced, funny, and often involve some music via Ted’s banjo or guitar. Material varies with age group and audience.

Ted presents about the creative process: where stories come from and how they become books. He tells starter anecdotes, reads, leads imagining activities, and shares manuscripts, editor’s comments, and artwork to show how many people contribute to a project and how ideas change. Q&A time follows.

FAQs

• K-2 presentations are maximum 45 minutes.
  Junior grades and up usually last about an hour.
  Ted can do four sessions in a day.
• Ted happily works with big groups (100+) as long as space is adequate and the grade range not too broad.
• The school library is best, but Ted has worked in lots of gyms.
• Ted needs a table for show and tell material, and an armless chair. A screen and projector to hook his laptop to are helpful. A microphone or other audio is not needed unless the group is really large.
• Ted can bring copies of his books for sale and autographing. Please arrange this with him ahead of time.

Fees & Booking (all fees plus HST)

Single session: $350
Half day (2 sessions): $575
Three sessions: $800
Full day (4 sessions) $1,000

Ted can be booked directly, or through Author’s Booking Service, or The Writers’ Union of Canada. Please see full contact info.

Workshops

Story Team: Collaborative Writing with Ted Staunton & Richard Scrimger

For grades 6-12

Two-person teams of students collaborate with each other, the larger group, and Richard Scrimger and Ted to write a collection of stories on the theme The Wrong Magic. In the process, students will realize the combined power of differing insights, ideas, and talents can help lift their writing and creativity to new heights, if they also practice key traits of teamwork: listening, contributing, and compromise. The end result is an anthology of their work, a copy going to each student.

Versions of Story Team can be presented in single or multiple visit formats, usually over two weeks.

Fees vary with format. For booking contact Ted or Richard.

Building Books

For grades 1-12

Building Books is a series of five weekly visits in which students “publish” their own picture book via a structured, step-by-step process that includes  group brainstorming, drafting a story on a storyboard, specific revisions, layout and design, illustration, and details like copyright, dedication, about the author paragraphs, etc. Students learn how and why these tasks are done professionally, and how they can try them in the classroom. The work calls on a variety of talents; everyone has a chance to shine, and lots of wonderful picture books by famous authors are read and shared along the way.

In keeping with the “professional” approach, the  series concludes with a book launch party, usually a couple of weeks after the last visit, in which the students’ work is celebrated as publicly as possible.

Fees

Once per week series (five visits plus celebration; four classes), $2,000;
twice per week (ten visits plus celebration; eight classes) $3,000;
both plus HST.

For booking contact Ted.