Laura Purdie Salas

Writing the World for Kids

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“Calling All Readers” performance

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Seriously, nothing makes me happier than seeing teachers, librarians, or kids having fun with my books. Check out this awesome performance of “Calling All Readers” from BOOKSPEAK!, posted on Twitter by teacher Liz Evans. Thanks, Liz and you other wonderful readers!

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A Poem for Read Across America Day! #ClassroomConnections

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March 2 is Read Across America Day! Here’s a poem to start off your storytime. When I read this poem with kids, I act out the poem using simple motions that they can mimic. Give it a try! Calling All Readers I’ll tell you a story. I’ll spin you a rhyme. I’ll spill some ideas— […]

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When Life Hurts, a Book Can Help

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The most painful part of being a teacher was seeing kids hurting from something I could do nothing about. Kids who were abused–that was the worst. Kids who came from homes of alcohol and drug abuse. Kids who had a family member dying a slow, ugly, painful death. Though I only taught for two years, […]

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BookSpeak, Old-School!

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Last week, school librarian Karen Bentall shared a wonderful photo of a BookSpeak display in the Oak Ridge Elementary School library in Arlington, VA. Wow! It’s beautiful! I asked if I could share this cool artwork here and if she could tell me a little more about it.     Here’s what Karen said: Smart […]

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License Plate Poetry

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Yesterday, I was sharing the opening poem of BookSpeak! and how it came to be the opening poem. Well, last week was my birthday, and Randy, my husband, and I were spending a few days up on the North Shore of Lake Superior–one of my favorite places in the whole world! We had just parked […]

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Writing Openings

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A couple of weeks ago, I posted about working on the opening to my next picture book. I still haven’t heard if the opening I submitted will fly or not, but I thought I’d follow up here and share a couple of openings written after the fact. A lot of times, the meat of the […]

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Tip #16: Add Sound Effects [Poetry Tips for Teachers]

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Welcome to today’s tip in my month-long Poetry Tips for Teachers series. Tip #16: Add sound effects. Have kids make sound effects appropriate to the poem. Kids love being sound effects experts, and it give pre-readers, especially, a great way to be part of a poem reading when they don’t actually know the poem yet. […]

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New Ways to Perform Poetry

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I had a lovely surprise when the presenters at an IRA session performed one of my poems! The session was The Power of Poetry to Provide Teachable Moments, and the presenters had no idea I was in the audience (until my friend Janet Fagal told them afterward). Here they are: Diane Bottomley, Ph.D,? plays the […]

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IRA – Saturday

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[See yesterday’s post for my Friday at IRA.] Saturday at IRA, I went to a fantastic session called The Power of Poetry to Provide Teachable Moments (I’m going to do a separate post on that soon). I was with Janet Fagal, and we had a blast–and the presenters performed “The Middle’s Lament,” from BookSpeak! I […]

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“Ocean Tales,” by Laura Purdie Salas, pt. 2

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Usually in this feature, I share my process as a reader reading a poem someone else wrote. But for this one, I’m sharing the writing process behind a poem I shared last week on Poetry Friday, “Ocean Tales.” I was working on a set of poems that eventually became BOOKSPEAK! POEMS ABOUT BOOKS (Clarion, 2011), […]

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