Finding mentor texts can be hard. And time consuming. This, we know. Even after years of making mentor texts the fulcrum on which the rest of my writing instruction pivots, finding the right set of texts for the students in front of me can be a challenge. In Writing With Mentors, Allison and I share […]
The beauty of Jay’s Mentor Text Wednesday posts is that they give us an instant idea — something to take back into our classrooms immediately, something to tinker with and fit to our students’ needs, and something to expand the way we think about mentor texts and the possibilities for our students’ writing. It’s easy […]
Remember that Family Guy bit where Stewie is begging to get Lois’s attention by doing that lovable and annoying and relentless thing children do? “Lois! Lois! Lois! Lois! Lois! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mama! Mama! Mama! Ma! Ma! Ma! Ma! Mum! Mum! Mum! Mum! Mummy! Mummy! Mumma! Mumma! Mumma!” Of course, Lois replies, […]
Early March is Optimist Club Oratorical Contest season in the freshman English classes at my school. Since our local Optimist Club chapter hosts its regional meet at our school in April, my department decided long ago to make the annual oratorical contest a component of our freshman speech unit. The prompts for the oratorical […]
We had so much fun talking to Anna E. Baldwin (@annaebaldwin), a professor at the University of Montana, about writing workshop, mentor texts, and our new project!
Your students will love this wintry mentor text about a first experience by Australian writer Mim Kempson.
Today, we are thrilled to bring back an old friend, Mentor Text Wednesday, and a new friend, Jay Nickerson. Jay is something of a mentor text Jedi — magically and mysteriously finding amazing, current, engaging mentor texts and pairing them with oodles of ideas for uses in lots of different classroom contexts. We are […]
2015 was a momentous year for us at Moving Writers: we published a book with Heinemann, and collected over 52,000 views on our blog! This is all thanks to you, dear readers, for your support, your questions, and your continued interest and enthusiasm in our work. As a thank you, we are reposting our top […]
I have a hard time narrowing down the list of mentor texts I want to use in each writing study. There always seems to be just one more amazing text that I think can instruct and inspire my students. In Writing With Mentors, Allison and I recommend 3-6 mentor texts as the ideal cluster for […]
Last week, we shared our four fundamental beliefs about teaching with mentor texts — beliefs that apply to any students in any classroom, from kindergarten to senior year. We believe that: Real writing is the result of studying real writing Students benefit from studying hot-off-the-presses mentor texts Students need to study multiple mentor texts in […]
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