Welcome to Julia Edwards Books!
School Visits
Every year, Julia speaks to between two thousand and four thousand children. At the height of the pandemic, she was approached by a school requesting a virtual visit, and has since visited schools all over the UK (plus one in Saudi Arabia and another in Dubai) via Zoom, Teams and Google Classrooms. She prefers face to face visits, but she is happy to offer virtual visits for schools too small or too distant for her to visit in person from Salisbury.​
Face to face workshops
Julia offers a wide range of in-school workshops, including:
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a historical whistle-stop tour for any number of KS2 children;
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class-sized historical workshops for KS2 based on The Scar Gatherer books;
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workshops for any age to teach specific skills such as how to write dialogue, how to evoke setting, and how to edit; and
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two inference workshops based on Unlucky for Some, one specifically targeted to the 'What Impression?' SATs question.
She is very happy to be flexible: in one week in March 2022, she taught workshops to children in Y1 and 2 as well as students in Y12 and 13, with lots of KS2 and a smattering of KS3 in between!
Download the latest workshop lists via the buttons. If you would like a workshop on a topic not covered on these lists, please contact Julia to ask. (Her Y12/13 session was devised around 'The Great Gatsby' since this was what the students were studying.)
There is no additional fee for this, and Julia is glad of the excuse to devise new sessions.
Julia also had a visit from some home-schoolers in summer 2022, which worked extremely well. If you would like to do this, please get in touch.
Recent in-person visits include Magdalen College School in Oxford, who sent Julia this delightful message following her visit:​
"What an absolute joy it was to have you with us last week! Your enthusiasm and knowledge was so evident to all of us staff and pupils, and there have been many conversations about your work and historical fiction more widely since your visit. I’ve spotted boys across the years reading your books, and the waiting list to borrow the library copies is growing day by day! So a huge thank you for bringing your energy and passion to our little corner of Oxford, and getting the boys excited about history."
Other school projects
In addition to one-off visits, Julia has worked with several schools over the past decade as their Patron of Reading, most recently with Amesbury Archer Primary throughout the 2024/25 academic year. You can find out more about what this scheme involves here. Julia loves working as a Patron of Reading and would be delighted to work with another school on this scheme in the future. Please do get in touch if you would like to discuss this with her.
She will also be returning to Amesbury Archer in 2025/26 to teach a series of specialist writing days for KS1 and KS2. EPIC Days focus on comic writing to entertain, and are designed to stretch ARE pupils and challenge GD children. These days will be hosted by Amesbury Archer for children from multiple schools. Find out more, including how to book, on the Epic Writing Days page.
Resources
Julia has also created resources to help teachers wishing to teach their children about the Slave Trade. You can download Julia's lesson plan for Teach Primary (July 2021 issue) directly here. Julia was also invited to write a blog post on Books for Topics on the Slave Trade with plenty of tips for teachers.
Alternatively, if you are considering using The Leopard in the Golden Cage in the classroom to support topic work on Romans, there is a 7 week English teaching scheme available from Teaching from Text.
Books for Topics post