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Baseball Books as Mentor Texts: BARBED WIRE BASEBALL by Marissa Moss
Barbed Wire Baseball By Marissa Moss Illustrated by Yuko Shimizu Abrams, 2013 Kenichi Zenimura loved to play baseball. He play baseball for years. Until World War II, when he and other Japanese families lived their lives in internment camps. But inside that bleak camp, Zeni made a baseball field.…
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Baseball Books as Mentor Texts: MIGHTY JACKIE by Marissa Moss
Mighty Jackie: The Strikeout Queen By Marissa Moss Illustrated by C.F. Payne Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster, 2004 Jackie had been pitching her whole life, even getting coaching and encouragement from a former Brooklyn Dodger pitcher. But girls couldn’t play major league baseball. Her team played an exhibition game against…
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SHE SANG PROMISE by Jan Godown Annino, Mentor Text Lesson Plan
SHE SANG PROMISE: THE STORY OF BETTY MAE JUMPER by Jan Godown Annino Illustrated by Lisa Desimini A few weeks ago, I featured SHE SANG PROMISE as a mentor text on the Grog site. This week, I’m debuting the full length lesson plan. SHE SANG PROMISE MENTOR TEXT LESSON…
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Baseball Books as Mentor Texts: Miracle Mud
This month, I will be featuring baseball books as mentor texts. Using sports-related books is a great way to get reluctant readers and writers interested in the story and the story structure. There are so many wonderful picture book baseball books that I couldn’t fit them all in. But…
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Poetry Mentor Texts: When Thunder Comes by J. Patrick Lewis
WHEN THUNDER COMES: POEMS FOR CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS by J. Patrick Lewis Illustrated by Jim Burke, R. Gregory Christie, Tonya Engel, John Parra, and Meilo So Chronicle Books, 2013 J. Patrick Lewis has captured fifteen international civil rights leaders’ struggles in this poetry collection. This would be an amazing…
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Hi, Koo! by Jon J. Muth, Poetry Mentor Text
Hi, Koo! A Year of Seasons Written and illustrated by Jon J. Muth Scholastic Press, 2014 I’m a huge fan of haiku books, and I have a huge collection of haiku picture books. For an annotated haiku book list, click here. This particular book follows Koo, a panda, through…
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Nonfiction Picture Books about Virginia History as Writing Mentor Texts
We all know that students need to become more comfortable reading and writing non-fiction. Last fall, I did a post on 10 of my favorite fiction picture book writing mentor texts. For this post, I’m focusing on some non-fiction mentor texts–with a bent toward history, specifically American history, as…
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Writing Wednesday: Using MOONSHOT as a Mentor Text for Writing
Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 By Brian Floca Atheneum, 2009 This narrative nonfiction text tells the story of the Apollo 11 mission from Earth to the moon and back again. It is a very poetic but very informative text of this landmark event in history. It’s not…
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Writing Wednesday: Using MARTIN AND MAHALIA as a Writing Mentor Text
MARTIN AND MAHALIA: HIS WORDS, HER SONG By Andrea Davis Pinkney Illustrated by Brian Pinkney Little, Brown 2013 This book moves me to tears every time I read it. The beauty of the words and the illustrations feel like a song and celebration. The Pinkneys have woven two…
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Writing Wednesday: Using SNOWFLAKE BENTLEY as a Writing Mentor Text
SNOWFLAKE BENTLEY By Jacqueline Briggs Martin Illustrated by Mary Azarian Houghton Mifflin, 1998 I use this book for many things in the classroom. It’s a favorite we return to again and again. It’s a picture book biography of Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley, who lived on a farm but was…
