Doug Dillon's Blog, page 147
November 2, 2013
Teen Paranormal & Historical Book Trailer
The fan generated young adult book trailer for Sliding Beneath the Surface, when used in a high school reading classrooms, really generates a tremendous amount of student interest. When this was first done with 11th & 12th graders who had failed the Florida state reading test, the students couldn’t wait to read the book.
Here’s the actual trailer, produced by Cheree Crump from South Carolina.
Sliding Beneath the Surface is Book I of The St. Augustine Trilogy
Book Description
In America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida, Teenager Jeff Golden is in trouble. Horrible dreams won’t let him sleep, and he is up to his eyeballs in terrifying, paranormal experiences.
Finally, Jeff turns to his girlfriend Carla, and Lobo, the mysterious Native American shaman, for help. But what he discovers is a lot more than he bargained for.
A ghostly presence linked to a local historic cemetery is not only threatening Jeff’s sanity but his life as well. And before he knows what’s happening, Jeff finds both himself and Carla pulled into one of the nastiest and bloody events in Florida history. It is a place from which they may never escape.
See the links below for Further Details on This Book, Its Reviews and How It Is Being Used in Schools
Description for The St. Augustine Trilogy
Reading Motivation that Worked
The Sliding Beneath the Surface Reading Project
Reading Teacher Sparks Student Interest
An article from teacher Kathy Snyder about her experience.
Quotes From Sliding Beneath the Surface Book Reviews
Book reviews for Sliding Beneath the Surface on Amazon.com
Includes reviews from reading and language arts teachers.
A Book Series for the Reading Classroom
The multiple themes and threads that make the series of value.
The St. Augustine Trilogy and America’s Oldest City
The setting for the series in St. Augustine, Florida and how that provides a fascinating backdrop for action.
The St. Augustine Trilogy & Historic Events
Specifies the actual historic events that happened in America’s oldest city that are woven into the series.
October 30, 2013
Using Novels To Teach Reading 7-12
Kathy Snyder
Subtitle: Reading motivation and skill building for secondary students who failed a state reading test, an author’s perspective.
Recently, I spent the day in a high school reading classroom with a wonderful teacher and all of her 11th and 12th grade students. I was there because that teacher, Kathy Snyder, was using a class set of one of my young adult novels, Sliding Beneath the Surface with all of her kids.
What a delight it was to see an expert educator getting teenagers deeply involved in a book when many of them truly hated reading and quite a few had little use for school in general. After having spent many years in the classroom, and working with at risk students full-time, I knew how difficult her task was.
I was there because Kathy’s students wanted to meet me after this fantastic teacher had been so successful in motivating her students to read my book. Finally, at the end of the day, we chatted about what else besides her own tremendous skills, and the value of the book itself, got those kids so fired up.
One of the main things, we concluded, was the early use of a Youtube video and digital photographs to convey a dynamic sense of the book’s setting, St. Augustine, Florida. See the video below and photos:
Pirates often parade in the streets
You see, well before Kathy introduced the book to her students, she and I collaborated by phone and email about how to best get her kids thoroughly involved even before they started the book and how to keep that interest going. We finally decided to do two things:
Show the fan produce book trailer to kick things off and
Make good use of all the digital photos I have on my website, most of which are of St. Augustine and reenactment events pertaining to that city.
The Castillo de San Marcos,
completed in 1695
Well, the book trailer was a big hit. It got the kids geared up for the characters, the plot and the location. They loved it because that kind of quick action really got them wanting more.
Now, about all those photos.
Since the book is part of The St. Augustine Trilogy, the location of the plot was obviously of prime importance. Only 100 miles from where I live in Florida, that city is one of my all time favorites and where I used to take students on field trips back when I was teaching.
The St. Augustine
National Cemetery
As the oldest and most haunted city in the United States, Kathy and I hoped all those pictures might make the place really come alive for students. And with the sub-genres of the book being the paranormal and the historical, selecting the right pictures proved to be a fun task.
The Bridge of Lions
In the end, I sent Kathy a disk containing over 100 photos, each containing its own unique file name and an accompanying alphabetical list of all the pictures.
And when she used some of the photos with her students before they started reading, in addition to having them do some research on the city and its history, she had them truly primed for getting into the story.
Reenactment of the Dade battle, the trigger
that started the Second Seminole War
Soon after, Kathy either had students read out loud, or she read to them as the rest followed along. And in the process, she used the remaining photos that fit the corresponding text, including photos of an actual neighborhood where I fictionally placed the characters homes.
The Nights of Lights
during the Winter Holidays
All of that worked like a charm. The kids ate it up and by the time I arrived, after they finished the book, they were more than ready for all my extra stories about St. Augustine, its history and its ghosts. Kathy couldn’t believe how attentive her students were and she was amazed at how much more those kids got out of the book when I started asking them questions.
Mysterious pyramids in the
St. Augustine National Cemetery
At the end of that day, Kathy and I were both exhausted, but we agreed that it had been the best day we had ever spent in a classroom. Amazing.
Kathy and I are now working together to create a teacher guide to go along with the book so that other educators can follow along in her footsteps. If you would like to read more about our work together on the project, the link below will take you there.
Reading Motivation that Worked
Matanzas Bay looking
towards downtown
And if you are a reading or language arts teacher, or you’re working on become one of those, maybe you can put together your own photo gallery to accompany a novel you might use in the classroom.
Good luck!
October 29, 2013
Using Art to Teach Reading 7-12
Kathy Snyder
Subtitle: Reading motivation and skill building for secondary students who failed a state reading test, an author’s perspective.
Recently, I spent the day in a high school reading classroom with a wonderful teacher and all of her 11th and 12th grade students. I was there because that teacher, Kathy Snyder, was using a class set of one of my young adult novels, Sliding Beneath the Surface with all of her kids.
What a delight it was to see an expert educator getting teenagers deeply involved in a book when many of them truly hated reading and quite a few had little use for school in general. After having spent many years in the classroom, and working with at risk students full-time, I quickly realized I had walked into an astounding success story. Those young people couldn’t wait to discuss my book with me. Incredible!
If you would like more details on that project, there is a link at the bottom of this post for you to follow.
But what I particularly wanted to share here was the simple technique Kathy used of having her students draw a picture to describe one chapter, and then add in a few lines of text from the chapter that impressed them the most
When Kathy told me ahead of time what she was going to have her students do, I have to admit, I was a little skeptical. 11th and 12th graders were going to draw pictures like elementary school kids?
Well, I tell you what. When I got to her classroom, there were 100 full color pictures with text all over her walls. Every student had done the assignment and those kids were eager to point out their work to me, especially the 19-year-old 11th grader who wrote more text than anyone else and wanted to discus it in detailed during a class break.
Of course, using art was just one of the many things Kathy did to guarantee success while having her kids read my book, but it was a vital one. She really made excellent use of multiple learning styles, hooking into the visual and tactile senses that captured her students’ imaginations like nothing else could.
So if you are a reading or language arts teacher, or you are preparing to become one, you just might want to keep this technique in mind.
As you can see, I’ve included some of those pictures in this post. They will give you a good sense of what those kids produced and what they got out of reading my book.
And as I promised at the start of this post, below you will find the link to the initial article I did about Kathy and her work on that entire project. Kathy and I are now working together to create a teacher guide to help others who would like to follow in her footsteps.
Reading Motivation that Worked
October 27, 2013
Haunted St. Augustine for Teens
The St. Augustine National Cemetery
at night
Paranormal & historical for young adults and school reading classes.
The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book I - Sliding Beneath the Surface
Author Doug Dillon’s many years of working with teens, teaching history and experiencing the paranormal make for a very realistic and exciting book.
See the fan created book trailer below:
A new resident of America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida, fifteen-year-old Jeff Golden suddenly finds himself up to his eyeballs in frightening paranormal experiences. At the end of his rope in trying to figure out what is happening to him, Jeff decides to rely on his girlfriend Carla Rodriguez, and Lobo, an old Native American shaman, for help.
Despite this guidance, things get even worse. Jeff’s spine-tingling encounters increase in number and intensity at an alarming rate, scaring him even more. Eventually, he makes the startling discovery that unresolved circumstances involving a bloody event directly out of Florida’s distant past threatens his sanity and possibly his life.
Overwhelmed by forces he cannot understand or control, Jeff’s world radically shifts again from frightening to downright terrifying. In desperation, and on Lobo’s advice, he leaps headlong into the unknown in order to save himself. What Jeff discovers though is that he has entered a level of reality he is completely unprepared to handle while unwittingly dragging Carla with him.
Like all the books in THE ST. AUGUSTINE TRILOGY, the premise for Sliding Beneath the Surface is simply this: You create your own reality.
Click here to see the reviews for sliding on Amazon.com.
Click on the article title below to see how this book is now being used in reading classrooms.
Reading Motivation that Worked
Click here for the book Doug and his wife wrote about their actual paranormal experiences.
October 26, 2013
Haunting Tales for Teen
Paranormal & historical for young adults and school reading classes.
Author Doug Dillon’s many years of working with teens, teaching history and experiencing the paranormal make for a very realistic and exciting book.
The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book I - Sliding Beneath the Surface
See the fan created book trailer below:
A new resident of America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida, fifteen-year-old Jeff Golden suddenly finds himself up to his eyeballs in frightening paranormal experiences. At the end of his rope in trying to figure out what is happening to him, Jeff decides to rely on his girlfriend Carla Rodriguez, and Lobo, an old Native American shaman, for help.
Despite this guidance, things get even worse. Jeff’s spine-tingling encounters increase in number and intensity at an alarming rate, scaring him even more. Eventually, he makes the startling discovery that unresolved circumstances involving a bloody event directly out of Florida’s distant past threatens his sanity and possibly his life.
Overwhelmed by forces he cannot understand or control, Jeff’s world radically shifts again from frightening to downright terrifying. In desperation, and on Lobo’s advice, he leaps headlong into the unknown in order to save himself. What Jeff discovers though is that he has entered a level of reality he is completely unprepared to handle while unwittingly dragging Carla with him.
Like all the books in THE ST. AUGUSTINE TRILOGY, the premise for Sliding Beneath the Surface is simply this: You create your own reality.
Click here to see the reviews for sliding on Amazon.com.
Click on the article title below to see how this book is now being used in reading classrooms.
Reading Motivation that Worked
Click here for the book Doug and his wife wrote about their actual paranormal experiences.
October 24, 2013
Ghost Story Mystery for Teens
Paranormal & historical for young adults and reading classes.
Author Doug Dillon’s many years of working with teens, teaching history and experiencing the paranormal make for a very realistic and exciting book.
The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book I - Sliding Beneath the Surface
See the book trailer below, created by a fan.
A new resident of America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida, fifteen-year-old Jeff Golden suddenly finds himself up to his eyeballs in frightening paranormal experiences. At the end of his rope in trying to figure out what is happening to him, Jeff decides to rely on his girlfriend Carla Rodriguez, and Lobo, an old Native American shaman, for help.
Despite this guidance, things get even worse. Jeff’s spine-tingling encounters increase in number and intensity at an alarming rate, scaring him even more. Eventually, he makes the startling discovery that unresolved circumstances involving a bloody event directly out of Florida’s distant past threatens his sanity and possibly his life.
Overwhelmed by forces he cannot understand or control, Jeff’s world radically shifts again from frightening to downright terrifying. In desperation, and on Lobo’s advice, he leaps headlong into the unknown in order to save himself. What Jeff discovers though is that he has entered a level of reality he is completely unprepared to handle while unwittingly dragging Carla with him.
Like all the books in THE ST. AUGUSTINE TRILOGY, the premise for Sliding Beneath the Surface is simply this: You create your own reality.
Click here to see the reviews for sliding on Amazon.com.
Click on the article title below to see how this book is now being used in reading classrooms.
Reading Motivation that Worked
Click here for the book Doug and his wife wrote about their actual paranormal experiences.
October 23, 2013
Ghost Story Thriller for Teens
Paranormal & historical for young adults and school reading classes.
The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book I - Sliding Beneath the Surface.
Author Doug Dillon’s many years of working with teens, teaching history and experiencing the paranormal make for a very realistic and exciting book.
See the book trailer below, created by a fan.
A new resident of America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida, fifteen-year-old Jeff Golden suddenly finds himself up to his eyeballs in frightening paranormal experiences. At the end of his rope in trying to figure out what is happening to him, Jeff decides to rely on his girlfriend Carla Rodriguez, and Lobo, an old Native American shaman, for help.
Despite this guidance, things get even worse. Jeff’s spine-tingling encounters increase in number and intensity at an alarming rate, scaring him even more. Eventually, he makes the startling discovery that unresolved circumstances involving a bloody event directly out of Florida’s distant past threatens his sanity and possibly his life.
Overwhelmed by forces he cannot understand or control, Jeff’s world radically shifts again from frightening to downright terrifying. In desperation, and on Lobo’s advice, he leaps headlong into the unknown in order to save himself. What Jeff discovers though is that he has entered a level of reality he is completely unprepared to handle while unwittingly dragging Carla with him.
Like all the books in THE ST. AUGUSTINE TRILOGY, the premise for Sliding Beneath the Surface is simply this: You create your own reality.
Click here to see the reviews for sliding on Amazon.com.
Click on the article title below to see how this book is now being used in reading classrooms.
Reading Motivation that Worked
Click here for the book Doug and his wife wrote about their actual paranormal experiences.
Experience the Possibilities: Past Lives
Reincarnation? Rebirth? Past lives?
Come and explore the possibilities in Orlando. I’ll be appearing with Diane Ross, hypnotist and meditation teacher.
Program Description:
Have you lived before? Take a virtual foray into the past during this group session and uncover one of your previous lifetimes.
Diane Ross
Join author Doug Dillon as he reveals his own past life connections and how they influenced his writing. Doug is author of the nonfiction book, An Explosion of Being: American Family’s Journey into the Psychic, and The St. Augustine Trilogy, paranormal fiction for young adult and adults young at heart.
Then let hypnotist and meditation teacher, Diane Ross, author of Meditations for Miracles, guide you into a state of deep relaxation whereby you can experience a previous lifetime for yourself. Don’t miss this exceptional opportunity to revisit your own past!
A book signing by both authors will follow the presentation.
Cost? FREE
When?
Saturday, January 25, 2014 from 2 – 4 p.m.
Where?
Orlando Public Library (Orange County Library System)
101 East Central Blvd., Orlando, Florida
407-835-7323
Click here to check out Diane’s other excellent workshops and services.
Ghost Story for Teens – a Paranormal Historical Explosion
The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book I - Sliding Beneath the Surface for young adults and reading classes.
Author Doug Dillon’s many years of working with teens, teaching history and experiencing the paranormal make for a very realistic and exciting book.
See the book trailer below, created by a fan.
A new resident of America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida, fifteen-year-old Jeff Golden suddenly finds himself up to his eyeballs in frightening paranormal experiences. At the end of his rope in trying to figure out what is happening to him, Jeff decides to rely on his girlfriend Carla Rodriguez, and Lobo, an old Native American shaman, for help.
Despite this guidance, things get even worse. Jeff’s spine-tingling encounters increase in number and intensity at an alarming rate, scaring him even more. Eventually, he makes the startling discovery that unresolved circumstances involving a bloody event directly out of Florida’s distant past threatens his sanity and possibly his life.
Overwhelmed by forces he cannot understand or control, Jeff’s world radically shifts again from frightening to downright terrifying. In desperation, and on Lobo’s advice, he leaps headlong into the unknown in order to save himself. What Jeff discovers though is that he has entered a level of reality he is completely unprepared to handle while unwittingly dragging Carla with him.
Like all the books in THE ST. AUGUSTINE TRILOGY, the premise for Sliding Beneath the Surface is simply this: You create your own reality.
Click here to see the reviews for sliding on Amazon.com.
Click on the article title below to see how this book is now being used in reading classrooms.
Reading Motivation that Worked
Click here for the book Doug and his wife wrote about their actual paranormal experiences.
October 22, 2013
Teacher Stirs Teens with Paranormal & Historical Mystery
For young adults and reading classes.
The St. Augustine Trilogy, Book I - Sliding Beneath the Surface for young adults and reading classes.
Doug Dillon’s many years of working with teens, teaching history and experiencing the paranormal make for a very realistic and exciting book.
See the book trailer below, created by a fan.
A new resident of America’s oldest and most haunted city, St. Augustine, Florida, fifteen-year-old Jeff Golden suddenly finds himself up to his eyeballs in frightening paranormal experiences. At the end of his rope in trying to figure out what is happening to him, Jeff decides to rely on his girlfriend Carla Rodriguez, and Lobo, an old Native American shaman, for help.
Despite this guidance, things get even worse. Jeff’s spine-tingling encounters increase in number and intensity at an alarming rate, scaring him even more. Eventually, he makes the startling discovery that unresolved circumstances involving a bloody event directly out of Florida’s distant past threatens his sanity and possibly his life.
Overwhelmed by forces he cannot understand or control, Jeff’s world radically shifts again from frightening to downright terrifying. In desperation, and on Lobo’s advice, he leaps headlong into the unknown in order to save himself. What Jeff discovers though is that he has entered a level of reality he is completely unprepared to handle while unwittingly dragging Carla with him.
Like all the books in THE ST. AUGUSTINE TRILOGY, the premise for Sliding Beneath the Surface is simply this: You create your own reality.
Click here to see the reviews for sliding on Amazon.com.
Click on the article title below to see how this book is now being used in reading classrooms.
Reading Motivation that Worked
Click here for the book Doug and his wife wrote about their actual paranormal experiences.
