On weekly visits to the library with my two-year-old son I often find myself browsing the periodicals in the children’s section. From there I can spy my busy toddler as he moves from the play kitchen to the dinosaur section to the puppet show.
Recently I found myself drawn to magazines geared for boys and threw a few in my bag to take home ans peruse: Boys’ Life, Sports Illustrated for Kids, and Ranger Rick.
When my brother was a kid, he used to hoard issues of Sports Illustrated for Kids. I remember a distant aunt sending us annual subscriptions to Ranger Rick. But I hadn’t seen these ancient periodicals in years. In fact, I was kind of surprised they were still in existence!
Turns out they supply some pretty decent mentor texts for our students, texts that may specifically be of interested to the boys and young men in our workshop. Below I take you on a tour of the three magazines I toted home and a few of their regular features to get you started.
Unfortunately a lot of the content I describe below is not accessible online…so get yourself to the nearest public library and fill your bag with the gorgeous slippery pages of these beloved childhood magazines!
Ranger Rick
What it is: A children’s nature magazine published by the US Wildlife Federation.
Target readers: Ages 7 and up
3 Features for Teaching Writing
- Ask Rick
A question-and-answer column featuring questions from real readers about science and nature. The answers present information in a kid-friendly, easy-to-understand tone and format.
How to use it:
- Mentor texts for a genre-driven study: Q&A Columns
- Summative writing assessment: At the beginning of a new unit, students might list wonderings they have in a KWL chart. At the end of the unit, students can study “Ask Rick” mentor texts and craft responses to their initial wonderings using the knowledge they gained during the study. Bonus: nwf.org/rangerrick offers an interactive Ask Rick feature on their website.
- The Buzz
A two-page spread featuring highly-visual blurbs about current science and nature events.
How to use it:
- Mentor texts for a genre-study: Science-y current events writing
- Mentor sentence study. Here are a few sentences culled from the September 2017 column–note the interesting use of colons and em-dashes!
Here’s a creepy way to think about it: Pound for pound, [spiders] could eat every person on the planet. (Page 13)
Now here’s the happy truth: Spiders don’t eat people (Page 13).
But next summer, [the wild bison] will be released to roam free–just like their ancestors once did! (Page 13)
- Ranger Rick Feature Article
The main feature in each Ranger Rick issue combines a multi-paragraph introduction with a strong hook and a two-to-three page visual spread presenting the rest of the content. For instance, in the September 2017 issue, the feature article looked at the “super (small) heroes” of the ocean: plankton (14). The two-page infographic spread showcased craft-ful facts printed on colorful shapes against a black background with images of different kinds of plankton floating around the word bubbles.
How to use it:
- Mentor texts for Genre Study: Infographics
- Mentor texts for Technique Study: Strong titles and captions
- Mentor Texts for Technique Study: Powerful leads. Here’s the lead from the September issue:
They’re not faster than a speeding bullet. And they could never leap tall buildings in a single bound. Yet all the living things you see here are superheroes, just the same (15).
- Ranger Rick Adventures
A cartoon strip that explores a hot-button environmental issue using the beloved characters Boomer Badger, Ranger Rick, and Scarlet Fox. The three-page cartoon closes with a helpful sidebar: Ranger Rick’s Field Notes (shown here as “More Facts”).
How to use it:
- Mentor Texts for Genre-Driven Study: Informational Cartoons
- Mentor Texts for Purpose-Driven Study: Writing Our Way Through Problems to Solutions
- For teaching a minilesson on using sidebars, pull-out quotes, and other text features
Boys’ Life
What it is: Magazine of the Boy Scouts of America.
Target readers: Ages 6-18
3 Features for Teaching Writing
- Heads Up: Fast Facts
A vibrant one-page infographic presenting facts on a simple concept like “The Human Body” or “Golf.”
How to use it:
- Mentor Texts for Genre-Driven Study: Infographics
- Mentor Texts for Technique-Driven Study: Presenting Numbers and Facts in an Engaging Way
- Summative writing assessment: Students present information learned in a conceptual unit in a highly visual and engaging way.
2. BL Workshop
A two-page how-to spread, featuring a range of DIY crafts and projects. Recent examples include “How to Make a Shoebox Solar Viewer” (August 2017, Page 44-45)) and “How to Make a Twig Number Sign” (September 2017, Page 56-57).
How to use it:
- Mentor Texts for Genre Study: How-To Pieces
- Mentor Texts for Technique Study: Presenting information in a list
3. Gear Guy Update
A semi-regular column that offers short, blurb-y reviews of gear readers’ might want to take on their next backpacking trip, paddle boarding adventure, fishing excursion, and so forth. This column has an online version, but doesn’t have the same impact as the visually engaging two-spread spread in the actual magazine.
How to use it:
- Mentor texts for Genre-Driven study: Short Critical Reviews of Products
- Mentor texts for Technique-Driven study: Persuasive, concise language
Sports Illustrated for Kids
What it is: A monthly kid-version of the sports magazine for adults.
Target readers: 8-15
3 Features for Teaching Writing
1. Prime Time
A medium-length profile of an athlete with section headers and images.
How to use it:
- Mentor texts for Genre-Driven study: Profiles
- For teaching a mini-lesson on using section headers to break up a longer piece of writing into meaningful chunks
2. Freeze Frame
A hot-off-the-press news-worthy image, accompanied by a caption and super-short paragraph explaining the photo.
How to use it:
- Notebook Time invitation: Project a relevant, engaging sporty image, and invite students to caption it with bold, concise language.
- For teaching a mini-lesson on strong caption writing
- For writing about images
3. From the pages of Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated for Kids used to print a multi-page insert with bonus material for older readers. In 2010, they scrapped this insert and replaced it with a carefully selected full-length feature article from Sports Illustrated.
How to use it:
- For differentiating reading and writing in your classroom — inside this magazine, there’s something for everyone, including your more experienced readers and writers
- Mentor texts for Genre-Driven studies: Feature Articles & Profiles
With the ubiquity of digital texts, we may rarely finding ourselves looking for mentor texts inside books and magazines. But these gems are surely worth a trip to the library. Do you study magazine writing with your students? If so, which magazines have you found particularly helpful and inspiring? Which regular columns do you turn to for writing instruction? Tweet me @allisonmarchett.
moving writers 
This blog does so much good for so many teachers, but I’m incredibly disappointed in this entry. Reading is for readers. Gendering our reading creates a classroom community of children who believe some things aren’t for them or that their interests are abnormal. Teachers should be at the forefront of combatting these heteronormative, sexist ideologies, not reinforcing them
I’m sorry this post disappointed. I agree with you completely in that reading is not gendered, and all students in my classroom are encouraged to use these magazines. My purpose here was to point out a few resources that may be of interest to students whose passions may not be engaged by the texts we tend to use on a regular basis. These magazines target boys in their mission statements, hence the title of my post; however, they are wonderful resources for all students. Thanks for reading, and let me know if you have any additional questions.