5 Great Mentor Texts

Picture from Goodreads

The Cake, written by Dorotheé de Manfreid tells the story of several animals who want to make a cake.  They only problem, they can't agree on what type of cake to make!  From there the story, told only through dialogue bubbles appearing over the characters' heads, becomes strange and absurd as the characters argue and never come to an agreement.  Because the story is told solely though dialogue it could be a fun introduction to the topic.  You could read the story to your students using different voices, or have them take roles and read it together, and then ask them to write their own dialogue driven stories in the same style.

Picture from Goodreads

Beekle begins on a magical island where imaginary friends wait to be paired with a human child.  Dan Santat's tale of friendship shows us the journey from feeling alone in the world to the warm fuzzy emotions you experience when you finally find your person.  One of my favorite parts of this book are the beautiful illustrations rich with color and emotion.  Often Santat does not come right out and say what a character is thinking or how they feel, but shows it in the way they are drawn.  This would be a great book for making inferences.  You could ask students how they feel a certain character is reacting or what they think the general mood of an illustration is.

Picture from GoodReads

I first discovered Little Elliot, Big City last year when I got the opportunity to interview Mike Curato and I have been in love ever since.  Little Elliot is an elephant who has to navigate himself through his life in the big city, 1940's New York to be exact.  The illustrations of Elliot's city are full of detail and could be the start of a great discussion on setting.  Students could read Little Elliot, Big City and then write their own pieces on a particular place, real or made up.

Picture from GoodReads

Dear Zoo, by Rod Campbell, is a story based heavily on illustrations.  On each page there is one sentence that is finished with an illustration of an animal, in place of the animal's name written in text.  Dear Zoo could be a great tool for developing vocabulary with younger students.  For early writing pieces, you could have students write pieces in the same style using illustrations to move the story along.

Picture from GoodReads

With his birthday so close, it seems appropriate to include a read from the Doctor himself.  My Many Colored Days has been one of my favorite books for a long time.  It does a great job of describing abstract emotions in ways that are tangible and easy to understand.  This book would be a great read aloud. Students could act out the different emotions and colors.  Using the colors could also be a great way to occasionally check in and see how your students are feeling throughout the year.  Every month or so in Writer's Workshop you could ask them to write about their feelings using the colors as descriptions.

Variety of Genres

The NCTE believes it is important that students read a variety of different genres.  When my sister was in the fifth grade, she was working her way through the Goosebumps series.  After a while her teacher told her she was no longer allowed to read Goosebumps, she had to choose something else.  Suddenly, something she found fun and exciting (reading) was a chore to be completed for twenty minutes each day.  How do you make sure a child is varying genres without diminishing a love for reading?

Writing's Relationship with Talk

"Writing has a complex relationship to talk"--NCTE Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing

While working with third graders writing fictional narratives, I found the students told their stories more naturally when speaking than with writing.  I wonder if there was a way they could record themselves telling their stories and listen back to their ideas.  How could you bring conversation/talking into a writing lesson?

"Get young children to tell their stories, write it down, the child can read it."

I love the idea of teaching a child to read with their own words.  Last summer, I met a first grade teacher who allowed her children to write their own picture books which were kept in the classroom library.  Her students loved getting to read each others works and the authors loved sharing their writing with their peers.

I've always loved the idea of ending a writing unit with a reading.  Inviting parents into the classroom and letting each student share their work.

The NCTE Beliefs about the Teaching of Writing state that "Conventions of finished and edited texts are important to readers and therefore to writers."  This inspired a conversation in class as to whether or not writing that didn't follow the conventional rules could be read, understood, or enjoyed.  Personally, I disagree with this statement.  I believe students should experience writing in many different voices and have the opportunity to write in the voice they feel comfortable writing in, while still learning about the standard conventions of writing.  And besides, The Color Purple is one of the most beautiful books I have ever ready and no one can or will tell me it is not to be understood or enjoyed.

Writer's Workshop: Fable Writing

Writer's Workshop is a time to write without abandon, especially in the early stages of brainstorming and free write before we get into the revising and editing stages.  This is one of my favorite ways to write and the pieces I will share in this series reflect that.  That's write, run ons and spelling errors are ahead.  

This piece comes to us from a prompt for writing short fables.  The prompt is meant to be read aloud as the student writes their fable.

For the 1st paragraph, write what the horse says to the bear.

"Woah-a-ah, I didn't see you there" said the horse to the bear.

For the 2nd paragraph, write what the bear says to the horse.

"It gets pretty dark out here, you must be from the city," the bear responded.

For the 3rd paragraph, write what the horse says to the bear.

"Sure am!" the horse beamed proudly.

ll of a sudden a huge storm breaks out: wind, rain, thunder, lightning.  Write a stenence or two about all the weather for your 4th paragraph.

All of a sudden a HUGE storm breaks out!  Thunder claps!  Lightning strikes!  Silos and barns are swept up in the flood.

For the 5th paragraph, write what the bear says to the horse.

The horse trembled, "We don't have storms like this in the city!"

For the 6th paragraph write what the horse says to the bear.

The bear gallantly jumped to his hind legs, "Hop on my back!  I'll swim us to safety!"

Now, skip a couple of lines and write "The more of the fable is:"  Take a few minutes to write a good one.

The moral of this story is: Strong swimmers make excellent friends.

Writer's Workshop: A Bad Experience You've Had With Writing

Writer's Workshop is a time to write without abandon, especially in the early stages of brainstorming and free write before we get into the revising and editing stages.  This is one of my favorite ways to write and the pieces I will share in this series reflect that.  That's write, run ons and spelling errors are ahead.  

I wrote this piece in class after given the prompt: "Write about a bad experience you've had with writing."

My sophomore year of college I took a literature and film class.  After each piece of writing read or movie watched, we were asked to turn in a one page essay on a prompt assigned by the professor.  I got an A on every one.  Now, I enjoy writing and even consider myself a good writer.  But I ain’t that good. (Example: I just used the word (nonword?) ‘ain’t.’  I wrote it out without a second thought.)  Being repeatedly rewarded with high marks did not make me want to try my hardest.  In fact, it had the opposite effect.  I threw each essay together an hour before class met Wednesday (usually after a regular Tuesday night of karaoke) knowing it was good enough.  Now, I don’t want to get holier than thou on you, but I am not that person I LOVE to write.  Letters, journal entries, the playlist to  mix CD,  I will hand write it every time.  But it doesn’t stop there!  I like the feeling of putting pen to paper, but I also love the sound of typing on a keyboard.  I have kept a journal since I was in middle school and as blogging platforms like Tumblr became popular, I put my high school voice out there for all to hear.   My writing is something I’m proud of, not something I only want to be good enough.

    I’ll never forget the moment I first valued myself as a writer.  A couple years ago I got the opportunity to write for a two very different blogs.  I loved both of my experiences, but I was right out of college looking for my “big girl job” (whatever that means) and neither of them paid and I really needed to go to grad school and what on earth was I even doing with my life?  I was visiting a friend of mine from undergrad and met her parents for the first time.  They were asking what I did and I began to ramble, “Oh I live with my parents and I got a degree in psych and really gotta go to grad school but I don’t know what in…”  My friend stopped me, “Taylor’s a writer.”  I was stunned.  Oh. My. Gosh.  I am a writer.  I told them all about my experiences working as a writer, and I was proud.  I want my writing to always give myself that feeling, I don’t want it to be just good enough.