Focus
How to use mentor texts to develop writing skills.
Learning Outcomes
- Show students to make the connection between reading and writing
- Understand the three ways we can use mentor texts to support writing
- Use mentor texts effectively in a writer’s workshop/lesson
In this session you’ll learn three ways to use a mentor text:
1. IDEAS:
Help students come up with new and creative IDEAS. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, two characters describe the exact same setting differently; one sees it as a dangerous place, the other thinks it’s interesting and beautiful. Students can use this example to describe two different character perspectives (point of view) about a place or person.
2. STRUCTURE:
Students emulate the organisational STRUCTURE or interesting pattern of ideas. In Stephen Kramer’s introductory two pages to his non-fiction picture book, Caves, he begins with a paragraph that shares things you would never find in a cave; then he describes what you would see in a limestone cavern. Students can borrow this two-part, subtle structure to describe any setting.
3. CRAFT:
Learn CRAFT SKILLS by studying the skills, techniques and styles of good writers. In All the Places to Love, Patricia MacLachlan describes settings by starting sentences with a variety of prepositional phrases.
