Mentor Text Tip Tuesday: Laminate the Text

I’m starting a new summer series for teachers called “Mentor Text Tip Tuesdays.” These will be practical tips on using mentor texts in the classroom. If you follow my blog, you know that I’ve been posting mentor text lesson plans. I hope these tips will help you visualize how easy it is to use mentor texts in the classroom. If you want more information on mentor texts, please read through this introduction.

Tip: Laminate the Text

Just reading a text is often not enough for a young writer (or an old writer) to really learn from the text. Writing on it, or interacting with the text, can help the young writer really glean new writing skills. However, we don’t want kids to write in the books because we want to use them from year to year, or because we borrowed them from the library.

Try photocopying the page or paragraph you want to use. Laminate it. Then provide overhead projector markers (Vis A Vis) for students to write with.

In this example, I circled the rhyming words that formed couplets, boxed vivid verbs, and wrote other specific words in red. This was a sample at looking at word choice. I located all of them at once, but you might have students only look for one of these things at a time.

When students are finished with the text, they can squirt the laminated paper with a bit of water from a squirt bottle, and wipe it clean with a tissue or paper towel.

Materials Needed:

* Text to photocopy and laminate

* Vis a Vis Markers

* Squirt water bottle

* Tissues or paper towels

Lesson Plan

I used GONE FISHING by Tamera Will Wissinger in this example. For more ways to use this book as a mentor text, see my full lesson plan that includes poetry stations.

More Mentor Texts

* Follow my mentor text Pinterest board.

* Mentor Text Tip Page

* Mentor Text Lesson Plan Page