OK, let me set the scene for you…it’s Friday afternoon, sixth grade, twenty-six restless students sitting in front of me, and a nice day outside the windows…I had to work hard to get through ninety minutes and make them meaningful & productive. Our focus was discussing and working on projects with our books for book clubs. The books we’re working with include:

TouchBlue by Cynthia Lord
I Survived by Lauren Tarshis
Heat by Mike Lupica
A Whole Nother Story by Dr. Cuthburt Soup
Viola in Reel Life by Adriana Trigiani
Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson

One of the projects we attempted was tweeting as the characters of the books. I pulled twitter up on the promethean board and we discussed the why’s and how’s and what’s of twitter. I shared my twitter feed with them. We talked of hashtags and usernames and tweets. A question before they began, “My book takes place in 1917. Can I have them say LOL, even if they didn’t say it then?” I taught them the word that explains that phenomenon: “a chronological inconsistency” is an anachronism…but I allowed it, because it would be fun. Off they went to tweet as the characters from their books. The buzz was alive in the room as the students laughed about what their characters might say. Suddenly, I heard one voice above the others…”Ms. Haseltine, LOOK it’s the author of our book. She’s on twitter NOW!” It was Kirby Larson. She was responding to a tweet from someone else. So, I engaged and told her what we were up to…

@KirbyLarson Working w/6th graders who read HBS! They LOVED it!!! (We are also having Hattie “tweet”!) 🙂 We’d love to hear from you!

— Michelle Haseltine (@Mhaseltine) March 21, 2014

The entire class stopped…and waited…for a second…and then returned to work. As I was explaining that she may have left her computer…a response appeared…

@Mhaseltine Hattie tweeting? This I’ve got to see!

— Kirby Larson (@KirbyLarson) March 21, 2014

So I showed her…

@KirbyLarson I’ll send you their tweets! Tweets from Hattie, Karl, Mr. Whiskers & Traft too! — Michelle Haseltine (@Mhaseltine) March 21, 2014

@KirbyLarson Here’s Hattie’s tweet… pic.twitter.com/e74Kpt7sKY

— Michelle Haseltine (@Mhaseltine) March 21, 2014

@KirbyLarson Here’s Karls… pic.twitter.com/rAvDFq5C7n — Michelle Haseltine (@Mhaseltine) March 21, 2014

It’s funny…as I look at these tweets, I realize her responses are pretty instantaneous…but sitting in class…it felt like forever! The kids were mesmerized. They (and me too) couldn’t believe that we were live tweeting with an author. In real time. In front of them. Right now! We continued to work and finally cleaned up and prepared to go home for the weekend. No response yet about the tweets…yet. I knew she’d respond. Here’s what we got:

@Mhaseltine Love the attitude! Don’t you wish Karl had been free to be that bold out loud?! — Kirby Larson (@KirbyLarson) March 21, 2014

@Mhaseltine Oh, this one makes me teary. Poor Mattie. My daughter still hasn’t forgiven me for that.

— Kirby Larson (@KirbyLarson) March 21, 2014

My girls will be over the moon excited about her response. Thank you, Kirby Larson! I don’t think you know what a difference you made in a sixth grade classroom in northern Virginia on a Friday afternoon. We will never forget it!

***********Update***********

Since I posted this blog post, here’s what has happened…

@Mhaseltine This author’s afternoon was made, too. Love those kids and their imaginations!

— Kirby Larson (@KirbyLarson) March 22, 2014

 

And..she wrote a comment…this is from my other blog. Here’s the comment…