10 Ways to Use One Mentor Text
BUZZ WORDS COME AND GO IN EDUCATION. ONE OF THE LATEST IS MENTOR TEXT.
Using a mentor text is not a new idea. Using books and other texts to teach has just been given a fancy name. Teachers have been using texts to illustrate and teach concepts and connect ideas and subjects for as long as I have been teaching - a very long time. =)
MENTOR TEXTS = SMART TEACHING
Regardless what we call it, using carefully chosen books and other texts to enhance our teaching is just plain smart. I know I have chosen a text well when I can use it all week long across several subjects. So, what do we use a mentor text for? How many ways can we use one text?
LET ME COUNT THE WAYS....
1. Read Aloud - teach skills like: predicting, making connections, inferencing...
2. Use the text to teach story elements like: main idea, plot... or non-fiction elements like: captions, author's purpose...
3. Teach writing traits like: voice, word choice, organization...
4. Texts can be used to teach begining reading skills like: figuring out an unknown word, directionality, return sweep, using punctuation as clues to how to read the text...
5. Choose a text that will work for language arts and pair with another subject: science, math, social studies...
6. Pair with another text to teach: compare and contrast, point of view, to tie subjects together...
7. Use the setting to talk about geography or map skills and visualizing- make a map of the place being described, draw out a setting based on the clues in the story, find the actual place on a map...
8. Pull out the math in the text to talk about the importance of numbers, patterns and/or shapes in stories and real life.
9. Teach about timelines. Create a timeline of events in the story. Talk about time and how it is used in the story. Compare that to how things work in real life - same or different?
10. Use the text to teach about and discuss character and life skills. Who do we want to be? What can we learn (good or bad) from the people or characters in the text?
This just a taste of the possibilites. Get a FREE printable idea sheet using The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant.
How many ways do you use one mentor text?
