Laura Purdie Salas

Writing the World for Kids

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Things To Do If… Student Poems

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Last Friday, I was part of a literacy event in Stewartville, MN, called Hot Reads for Cold Nights. Wow. There were 500 or so people there, and organizer Renita Irvin had so many things going on: book exchanges, food, storytellers, silent auctions, and a ton of other stuff. What a logistical accomplishment! All these elementary […]

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Skyping with Leigh Anne Eck’s SPARK poets!

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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 […]

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Wordplay Poems from the Young Authors Conference, Part 2

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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 […]

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Wordplay Poems from the Young Authors Conference

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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 […]

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Wordplay Poems in Your Classroom

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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 […]

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Thank You Notes from Kids

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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 […]

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Why I Don’t Usually Share Press Clippings

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I had a great time at the Sheboygan Children’s Book Festival! Will share stories and photos this week or next:>)

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A Can Be… Nonfiction Project for Schools

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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 […]

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When Pencils Get Emotional [Writing a Mask Poem with Emotion]

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Last week,?I did?Young Authors Conferences all week with 4th-8th graders. I’ll be doing a poetry workshop I tried out in March, and the kids and I had lots of fun with it. The theme of the conference is making unforgettable characters, so we wrote mask poems as everyday objects. But then we rewrote them from […]

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Are You Ready for WRAD?

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Tomorrow is World Read Aloud Day! Are you ready? I am. I’m going to be Skyping with a bunch of classrooms tomorrow for 15 minutes or so each. I’ll introduce myself, read a bit from my books, and then take questions. I’m excited to travel across the country and meet these kids and their enthusiastic […]

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