Mining Mentor Texts for Craft Moves
I’ve been teaching graduate courses on the “teaching of writing” for a few years. Each semester, I assign a mentor texts project so my students can see the power of using children’s literature when teaching writing. This past spring, I drastically changed the mentor texts assignment. I asked my students to select two picture books — one fiction and one nonfiction — for which they would write lesson sets (similar to the ones I shared in Craft Moves: Lesson Sets for Teaching Writing with Mentor Texts).
I asked my students to create lesson sets using the process I described in Chapter 1, Choosing Picture Books for Mentor Texts. (Since this assignment was new and because their work rested upon something of my own creation, I scheduled a couple of check-ins prior to the due date to make sure each partnership was on track.) My students’ final mentor texts projects were due last month. I was pleased with the teaching tools they created.
Two of my students, who worked together on their project, gave me permission to share their final mentor text project in this forum. I hope it’ll serve as inspiration for you to mine picture books you love for craft moves this summer.
Click on the link below to download lesson sets for A Bike Like Sergio’s by Maribeth Boelts and Noah Z. Jones and Tiny Creatures by Nicola Davies. These lesson sets were written by Katherine Fowler, who is a digital learning specialist at West Elementary School in Andover, MA and Shannon Harwood, a curriculum coordinator in Edmonton, AB. Many thanks to Candlewick Press who granted permission to share text from these books in this forum.
Fowler and Harwood – Final Mentor Text Project
Wow! This is amazing! Now I want to dog into my favorite books to share with students! A Bike Like Sergio’s and Those Shoes are two of my faves!
Thank you so much for sharing this. It is an excellent example of how mentor texts can assist with teaching key ideas. Plus I love that half of the team is an Alberta teacher.
I teach for Lesley Univ. so the majority of my students are from Boston. However, this semester, I had two Canadian students. (I teach an online course.)
Ummm…these are awesome!! I teach grade 4 language arts and can’t wait to use these! Thank you for sharing.
You already know I love your book, now I also love seeing the work others are doing with it! It really shows how transferable what you teach in this book is. I used it this year and can’t wait to dig in more over the summer with some additional mentor texts.
Thanks for your kind words, Erika.
I worried a bit when I assigned this. What if my students couldn’t transfer the work? Thankfully, that worry was just a worry. In reality, they rose to the occasion.
Love it! Thanks for getting my summer planning juices flowing.
Both lesson sets are exemplary. I suspect these students have a mighty good teacher. Mmm.
You’re too kind, Jackie. They were exemplary students too. 😊
Thanks for sharing this and all the the links! Lovely project.