Back in the "olden days" as my students would say (aka when I was in school), we used to look at language time as a time to look at different parts of speech (nouns, adj., verbs, etc.), punctuation, and grammar independently of each other. Admittedly, when I first began teaching I taught this way. Every time language time rolled around in my classroom I could see the glazed look roll over my student's eyes. "Thre must be a better way to teach this stuff!" I thought to myself. Enter Mentor Text! After attending a few Teachers Leading Teacher conferences, me and my grade level partners decided to give "mentor text" a shot. This was a completely new way to look at language...and it made so much sense!
Instead of giving students bad examples of writing they needed to fix, we gave them a book a week that we focused on as an exemplary example of writing. We'd read it and then zoom in on a sentence from the story for the week. We'd break it apart, have lively discussions about how the author used grammar, punctuation, and spelling to create an awesome sentence!
Students FAVORITE part of the week is always getting to the point where they could create their own mentor sentence modeled after the authors. I find myself really enjoying their creativity and now they are understanding the way different parts of speech work together!
The PROBLEM is though, we don't have the funds for all of the mentor texts. We usually resort to YouTube videos of the book read alouds because I can't afford the books myself. We have 3 third grade classrooms in need of 3 sets of mentor texts. Help us bring language instruction out of the dark ages!
About my class
Back in the "olden days" as my students would say (aka when I was in school), we used to look at language time as a time to look at different parts of speech (nouns, adj., verbs, etc.), punctuation, and grammar independently of each other. Admittedly, when I first began teaching I taught this way. Every time language time rolled around in my classroom I could see the glazed look roll over my student's eyes. "Thre must be a better way to teach this stuff!" I thought to myself. Enter Mentor Text! After attending a few Teachers Leading Teacher conferences, me and my grade level partners decided to give "mentor text" a shot. This was a completely new way to look at language...and it made so much sense!
Instead of giving students bad examples of writing they needed to fix, we gave them a book a week that we focused on as an exemplary example of writing. We'd read it and then zoom in on a sentence from the story for the week. We'd break it apart, have lively discussions about how the author used grammar, punctuation, and spelling to create an awesome sentence!
Students FAVORITE part of the week is always getting to the point where they could create their own mentor sentence modeled after the authors. I find myself really enjoying their creativity and now they are understanding the way different parts of speech work together!
The PROBLEM is though, we don't have the funds for all of the mentor texts. We usually resort to YouTube videos of the book read alouds because I can't afford the books myself. We have 3 third grade classrooms in need of 3 sets of mentor texts. Help us bring language instruction out of the dark ages!
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