As part of I Love to Read Month we are proud to announce that Sigmund Brouwer will join our grade 7 and 8 classes between February 10 and 13, 2020! Students and teachers will learn more about writing and literacy through this Writer in Residency Program.

Overview
Over the course of the school year, through a combination of in-school visits, live classroom video visits, instructional videos, and free ebook downloads, author Sigmund Brouwer connects with students at Mitchell Middle School to help teachers motivate and prepare students in narrative and essay writing, with a book publishing focus as extra motivation. The website allows for continued Writer In Residence interaction through the school year.

Here is an example of a website for the school Writer In Residence Website: www.writerinresidence.org/bashaw

The Mitchell Middle School website, of course, would be: www.writerinresidence.org/mitchellmiddle

Author Background
Sigmund Brouwer is the author of 20 novels for adults, and dozens of books for children. He visits over 150 schools per year to deliver his Rock and Roll Literacy presentation, reaching about 60,000 students per year. His recent novel, Thief of Glory was the an Alberta Readers Choice Award winner, and his YA novel, Deadman’s Switch was an Arthur Ellis best juvenile mystery in Canada. He has
also twice been a finalist in the TD Children’s Literature Awards.

Program Results
Sigmund Brouwer completed three years as Writer in Residence for Horizon School Division of Saskatchewan. Through his time with working with teachers and students of the 41 schools, he has developed practical resources that have helped raise the literacy scores across the division. In year one, students who were at risk (a full grade level or below) dropped from 769 to 580. Those at or
above grade level went from 559 to 845 and according to the report: “. . .the most significant contributing factor for this result is engagement in reading. Engagement of middle years readers is the most prevalent factor as we have considered the changes taking place in most middle years schools and classrooms.”

As well, the program had huge impact on the First Nations students : “. . .those who worked directly with Sigmund Brouwer showed significant gains of 34% fewer at risk and 27% more at/above grade level. The average growth rate for students in this project was 5 levels (2.5 years’ growth). While, again this is not the only factor in this data, it certainly can be considered a significant factor with respect to engagement of students with literacy and reading.”

Author Goals:

1. Deliver comprehensive Story Ninja program for classrooms to reading and writing skills to increase literacy benchmarks.
a. 21 classroom videos for teachers to use over school year as part of an organized approach to writing
b. Story Ninja writing folders
c. Story Ninja writing game
d. video visits to classroom build community awareness of program through parent evening events

2. Build teacher capacity through interaction with the author, tools and resources made available through www.writerinresidence.org/mitchellmiddle which includes 23 writing videos on different
areas of writing.

3. Help teachers build Literacy Culture in all grades via:
i. A four day of in school residency:
ii. Keynote sequel Rock and Roll Literacy Presentation (February 11 periods 1 and 2)
iii. Workshops with every grade 7 and 8 class
iv. Live classroom video visits as follow up
v. help each class publish a book of collected short stories

in: General