Small Reads for Brighters Days
When I was poetry-touring the Arrowhead region of Minnesota last April, a kindergarten or 1st-grade girl tugged on my arm on her way out of a session. “Can I give you these?” she asked. She held out a few papers to me. I took them, told her I couldn’t wait to read them, and off […]
I Skyped with Leigh Anne Eck’s 4th- and 5th-grade students recently as part of their SPARK Camp. The students had been writing wordplay poems based on the lesson plan I shared here. Besides talking with them a bit about where my ideas come from and what my writing process looks like, I also got to […]
Last week, I shared my wordplay lesson plan based on Nikki Grimes’ poetry prompt and then day 1 and day 2 of student poems. Those were from the last two days of the Young Authors Conference. The first two days, I had tried something else, something I planned to do all week: zenos! I love […]
One more day of wordplay poems here! Monday, I shared the lesson plan. Yesterday, I shared a gallery of poems. And today, here’s a gallery of the rest of the poems! Thank you, students! Teachers, please note: Most of these are their notebook version, not copied over neatly yet. That’s because these students spent time […]
Today and tomorrow, I’m sharing student poems from my sessions at Success Beyond the Classroom’s Young Authors Conference at Bethel University. I shared the process/lesson plan yesterday, and I’m excited to share student work here. Teachers, I know you’ll find some awesome poems here to use as mentor texts/examples if you do wordplay poems in […]
Last week, I taught all week at Success Beyond the Classroom‘s Young Authors Conference in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. I love this event every year. It’s an opportunity for me to lead the same writing workshop 12 times in a row with 4th-8th graders, mostly kids who are strong, enthusiastic writers. This year, I […]
Thank you notes from kids are the best! Recently, I got three thank you envelopes in just a couple of days. I had so much fun reading through each note. Jen Britten’s 2nd graders at Warren E. Sooy, Jr. Elementary School in NJ sent a huge package of notes after I did a short Skype […]
I had a great time at the Sheboygan Children’s Book Festival! Will share stories and photos this week or next:>)
What did I do this summer? I spent three weeks with K-5 summer school students in a local school district. It was the most intense visiting author program I’ve ever done. Three weeks, four sites, 1700 students. Whew! It was hard work and incredibly rewarding. I shared this process in my Salas Snippets e-letter for […]
I had a blast recently doing an evening storytime at the Mounds View Public Library here in Minnesota.?A group of kids ages 2-6 and I?whirled like a tornado, swung like monkeys, buzzed like bees, measured out wingspans and other animal size-related things, read Water Can Be…, and generally just made lots of noise and had […]
