Mentor Text Tip Tuesday: Use Non-Book Resources
Tip:
Use examples from non-book sources like newspapers and magazines. I tend to focus a lot of my energy on fictional mentor texts. However, much of what students will have to write and read in their school career will be non-fiction. So I’m working on incorporating more non-fiction into my lessons.
1) Use sports articles for excellent word choice.
A non-fiction book might be intimidating to a reluctant reader, but a short sports article might be just the ticket to word choice mentors. In the sample above, I circled some really interesting word choices: oft-groaning, miscues, double play-producing, rawness.
I also started making a list of specific vocabulary pertaining to baseball. This would be a great example of specific word choice. This article couldn’t be describing anything BUT baseball.
If students are struggling with ideas for writing, have them write about a recent game they saw or played in. They can describe it, like a sports writer would write it. But they MUST include specific vocabulary.
2. Use headlines from newspapers and magazines for good titles and word play.
So many titles use good word play. I clipped these out of my local paper and the SCBWI Bulletin. Students can use interesting titles as mentors for word play in their own titles.
3. Use comics for a fun exercise in dialogue.
I have used comics to teach students how to punctuation dialogue. We use the speech bubbles as what would go in the quotation marks. Then we practice adding dialogue tags and description using the pictures.
Conversely, you can white-out the speech bubbles to have students use the pictures to create their own dialogue.
4. Use weather columns to help students dig deeper in setting.
In a regional literature class I took this summer, we talked about weather in books. Kate Messner also featured a great weather blog post for Teachers Write. Use your local paper or you local news station’s website to see how weathermen describe the weather. Then students can use these images and words to help them write about weather in their own writing and create a more vivid setting.
Materials Needed:
* Newspapers
* Magazines
* News websites
* Highlighters or colored pens
More Mentor Texts
* Follow my mentor text Pinterest board.
* Mentor Text Lesson Plan Page
How do you use non-book resources as mentor texts?
