Mentor Texts to Teach Writing Standards

I am excited to be linking up with Carla (and Emily) from The Reading Tutor/OG.  It is Mentor Monday.

 

This week it is all about mentor text to support writing.  This is totally, completely, EXACTLY what Maria does (all...day...long) in her writing class.  She really helps our firsties to analyze the writer's craft.  She uses author studies to teach writing.  And it is pretty amazing to watch.  Here are some examples:

 

Author study of Mo Willems to teach narrative writing

•  analyzing text and illustration features
• narrative planning guide (freebie)

Fancy Nancy book study to teach how-to writing

• planning guide, shades of meaning (freebie)
• celebration
• how-to checklist and rubric (freebie)

Informational Texts--this year we used leveled readers to help our students analyze the types of questions/answers that writer's use.  This was really effective.  We created a chart to help them organize all this learning.

• examples of the leveled readers used 

 Currently, our firsties are doing research on individually chosen animals.  They are using leveled readers, National Geographics, and PebbleGo to do their research.  They are really engaged and interested in this writing.  We look forward to sharing it with you!