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Picture Book Month Day 7: Picture Books as Mentor Texts Featuring TWILIGHT COMES TWICE
TWILIGHT COMES TWICE By Ralph Fletcher Illustrated by Kate Kiesler Clarion, 1997 Summary: Full of concrete imagery, this poem lets the reader bask in dawn and dusk–the two times we have twilight. Mentor Text Writing Skills: * Imagery * Specificity * Word Choice * Vivid Verbs For…
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Picture Book Month Day 2: Picture Books as Writing Mentor Texts Featuring A ZEAL OF ZEBRAS
A ZEAL OF ZEBRAS: AN ALPHABET OF COLLECTIVE NOUNS by Woop Studios Chronicle Books, 2011 Summary: This nonfiction text features a collective noun for every letter of the alphabet. A paragraph featuring interesting facts about each group of animals is also on each page. Mentor Text Writing…
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10 for 10: Top 10 Favorite Picture Books to Use as Mentor Texts for Word Choice
UPDATE OCTOBER 2014: This post has become so popular that I expanded it and turned it into a downloadable PDF. You can get the downloadable PDF for free when you sign up for my teacher newsletter (sign up is on the right-hand sidebar). This year, I’m participating in…
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Mentor Text Tip Tuesday: One Thing at a Time
Tip: Revise one thing at a time. If you are working on describing the setting, then only work on composing and revising the setting. As a writer myself, revising a whole host of things at one time can be overwhelming. Many professional writers I know do several passes of…
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Mentor Text Tip Tuesday: Make a Chart
Tip When I’m introducing a mentor text to students for the first time, we talk together about the things we admire about the writing. One way to do this is by making a chart. It gives us a chance to color-code phrases or words and talk about it in…
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Mentor Text Lesson: Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner
By day, I’m a teacher. The thing I love to teach the most is writing (no surprise there). I love using mentor texts–really awesome literature to serve as a model for student writing. In the next few months, there will be more to come on mentor texts including some…