Megan-
What a great organization system you have. The skills of self-selection of reading materials, organization and knowledge about authors and genre you are facilitating within your students are a strong foundation upon which continued literacy learning will be built. I'd love to know more about how your kids use the mentor texts in your 6 traits library.
Great job!
Charlene,
Thank you so much. I feel as a teacher we are forever organizing to help our students. When I do mini lessons or individual writing conferences I always use mentor texts. This helps students to understand the purpose and reasoning as well as gives them examples of how other writers do things. For example, when looking at the word choice writing trait students can relook at stories such as Fancy Nancy to see how the author adds better word choice. I might have a student in an individual conference that is ready to add onamonapia so I can pull out a book from the word choice basket and use it as an example. That student now has a resource in the classroom library they can go back to whenever they need an example of that skill. Another example is for conventions, either as a mini lesson or writing conference, using the story Beach Day by Patricia Lakin. It is a great way to show the use of quotations for dialogue. Students always have this a a reference to go back and see how the author did it.
I have found that by having these books out and using them as mentor texts for minilessons or writing conferences students pick up so much. I love when students start adding "About the Author" or dedication pages because they see it in other books. Mentor texts really helps them to see that they are writing just like the authors in our library. It is wonderful and magical to watch!
Thank you for your comment and I hope you continue to contribute to our blog!
Megan-
What a great organization system you have. The skills of self-selection of reading materials, organization and knowledge about authors and genre you are facilitating within your students are a strong foundation upon which continued literacy learning will be built. I'd love to know more about how your kids use the mentor texts in your 6 traits library.
Great job!
Charlene,
Thank you so much. I feel as a teacher we are forever organizing to help our students. When I do mini lessons or individual writing conferences I always use mentor texts. This helps students to understand the purpose and reasoning as well as gives them examples of how other writers do things. For example, when looking at the word choice writing trait students can relook at stories such as Fancy Nancy to see how the author adds better word choice. I might have a student in an individual conference that is ready to add onamonapia so I can pull out a book from the word choice basket and use it as an example. That student now has a resource in the classroom library they can go back to whenever they need an example of that skill. Another example is for conventions, either as a mini lesson or writing conference, using the story Beach Day by Patricia Lakin. It is a great way to show the use of quotations for dialogue. Students always have this a a reference to go back and see how the author did it.
I have found that by having these books out and using them as mentor texts for minilessons or writing conferences students pick up so much. I love when students start adding "About the Author" or dedication pages because they see it in other books. Mentor texts really helps them to see that they are writing just like the authors in our library. It is wonderful and magical to watch!
Thank you for your comment and I hope you continue to contribute to our blog!
Sending smiles,
Megan Power