Mentor Text Tip Tuesday: Type Up the Text
Using Mentor Texts Myself
I learned a lot of tips by writing myself and knowing what helps me. In one class I took at Hollins, Lisa Rowe Fraustino encouraged us to read like writers. We took a look at Katherine Paterson’s BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA. She made us find a copy that we could WRITE in. Yes, we wrote in the book. I had notes marked all over that copy. I marked favorite word choice, pacing, dialogue and more. This was a great idea for this class, but as a teacher, I know this may not be feasible to write in the actual books.
In another class I took at Hollins with Candice Ransom, Candice encouraged us to type up the text of our favorite picture books. It was a picture book class and we were trying to see what worked and what didn’t work in picture books. Seeing the book printed out as it might look as a manuscript page helped me to understand more of how the writing works. It has single-handedly been the best thing to help me understand picture book writing.
Mentor Text Tip
So how can you apply this to your classroom?
Type up a short excerpt of a text for your students. They can tape it into their writer’s notebooks and actually write on it, making notes.
You can color-code, highlight, write in the margins. You can direct what you’d like students to look for OR give them free reign to notice things in the writing that they’d like to emulate.
The key is to help them figure out what they can learn about writing from reading the text.
Here is a sample of a poem I typed up from a RED SINGS FROM TREETOPS by Joyce Sidman, illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski. One of the first things my students noticed was my typo on the title (they were paying attention and becoming excellent at catching my typos). They corrected it on their own copies before taping it into their writer’s notebooks. We used this particular sample to study word choice.
One Warning
Please do not do this as a substitute for having the actual book. Students need to see the book in its published form and the authors need to make a living. Plus, while we want to be able to utilize a text for educational purposes, we do NOT want to violate copyright laws. I only use this for the sole purpose of giving the students the opportunity to really study a snippet of text.
Materials Needed:
* Mentor text of your choice
* Typed up snippet of the text
* Markers or colored pencils to write on the text
More Mentor Texts
* Follow my mentor text Pinterest board.
