Friends, we are getting so excited to share Writing With Mentors with you on September 3. Do you remember Oprah’s Favorite Things episodes? Hysterical audience members would load up on exotic goodies gifted to them by Oprah. Invariably, by the end of the episode, the group would hear Oprah’s signature bombastic yawp: “You get a […]
Category: writing with mentors
Summer Mentor Text Countdown Week 8: Mentor Texts for Literary Analysis
Before Allison and I each began using the writing workshop approach in our classrooms, one of our biggest concerns was the same concern we hear again and again from teachers around the country: we are high school teachers. We must teach literary analysis and the writing of literary analysis. How can writing workshop accommodate this? We […]
Summer Mentor Text Countdown Week 7: Ways to End (or Begin) a Year of Writing with Mentor Texts
We have been sharing Moving Writers’ most popular posts about mentor texts as we move toward the September release of our book, Writing With Mentors. (Want a tiny sneak peek at the contents of Writing With Mentors? Check out our Table of Contents and a couple of reviews on the Heinemann site!) Last week in our Summer Mentor […]
Summer Mentor Text Countdown Week 6 – Mentor Texts for the First Week of School
Are you ready to start planning for the first week of school? We use mentor texts in our classes from the very first day of school. We want to lay down a strong foundation and also some strong expectations that mentor texts will be our go-to source for inspiring our work, giving us how-tos, and […]
Summer Mentor Text Countdown Week 5 – Mentor Sentences to Boost Student Writing
As you saw two weeks ago with our post about using mentor texts for Notebook Time, mentor texts can be large or small. Even a tiny mentor text can have spectacular results for student writing. Mentor sentences can be a great way for both you and your students to wade into the waters of mentor text study! […]
Summer Mentor Text Countdown: Week 4
We are sure that Flannery O’Connor would agree that like a good man, a good mentor text is hard to find. And, like you, we don’t have hours and hours to devote to the search. We need a short-hand, a fast protocol, some never-let-you-down sources. In Writing With Mentors, we devote all of chapter two to how […]
Summer Mentor Text Countdown — Week 3
Our students use multiple mentor texts constantly throughout the writing process — from planning all the way through publication. But our students also encounter daily mentor texts as they play with words and ideas in notebook time, our amped-up, mentor-text-based bell ringer. These mentor texts are very different from the ones we use in our […]
Moving Writer’s Mentor Text Countdown: Week 2
Over the next few weeks, we are preparing for the publication of our book, Writing with Mentors, by sharing our most popular mentor text-related posts over the last two years. This week, we are sharing “Questions to Help You Choose Mentor Texts”. Finding the right mentor texts can be daunting in a world full of words, but […]
Writing with Mentors: How to Reach Every Writer in the Room using Current, Engaging Mentor Texts
Coming in September! (Are we the luckiest girls in the world, or what?)
moving writers 