A Teacher’s Guide to Mentor Texts, Grades 6-12

Reading my granddaughter her current mentor text, The Princess in Black

My 3-year-old granddaughter was lost in some story of her own spinning with superhero action figures and stuffed unicorns behind one of the living room chairs. I wasn’t really paying attention. Then I heard her narrate, “She brushed some crumbs from her frilly pink dress.” The line was lifted directly from a book I’d read to her earlier, The Princess in Black. That’s how we learn language—taking it in by reading or listening, then producing it in our own writing or speaking. 

The Princess in Black is currently my granddaughter’s mentor text. She’s heard it at least 6 times that I know of—once each from Mom, Dad, and Grandpa, and 3 times from me. She’s absorbing words, phrases, and even whole story patterns. 

While a 3-year-old uses mentor texts unconsciously, a conscious use of mentor texts is a powerful tool that adult writers use. The first time I had to write a college recommendation for a student, a eulogy for a family member, or an author bio for myself as a guest blogger, I first found other excellent examples of the genre for a pattern to follow. And I frequently start my own blog posts with a brief story because that is my favorite kind of professional reading—the books that start each chapter with a story of student learning, then spend the rest of the chapter explaining the strategy I can use with my students to get a similar result.

If mentor texts are effective for 3-year-olds and for adults, are they  good for students, too? Allison Marchetti and Rebekah O’Dell’s A Teacher’s Guide to Mentor Texts, Grades 6-12 would answer a resounding yes. Whether you are an old hand at using mentor texts with students, or wondering what exactly a mentor text is, I highly recommend this brief, practical book full of concrete teaching ideas and helpful examples of student work. 

The 7 chapters outline the benefits of using mentor texts, a process for reading like writers, 3 aspects of writing that mentor texts can inform, planning content and teaching strategies when teaching with mentor texts, and assessing students’ progress: 

• Ch. 1: Why Mentor Texts? describes what makes a good mentor text and how they help students.

• Ch. 2: Teaching Students to Read Like Writers articulates a helpful 4-step process of (1) noticing something interesting about a text, (2) making a theory about why the author made that choice, (3) naming the craft (a real name like “alliteration” or a made-up one like “drum-roll colon” so you can notice it other places and apply it yourself), and (4) thinking about using the move in your own writing.
• Ch. 3: Learning About Craft and Punctuation explains the 5 steps for studying a mentor text at the word, line, or sentence level. These steps can be done over the course of a week (especially initially) or all in one lesson (with more experienced groups). The steps (1) introduce the mentor sentence, (2) notice writer moves, (3) share with classmates, (4) try it, and (5) share again. (This protocol looks similar to the one in Patterns of Power which I’ve been using for the past year.)
• Ch. 4: Learning About Structure examines beginnings, endings, paragraphs, and transitions.
• Ch. 5: Learning About Genre provides ideas on 9 genres from personal essay to review to free verse poetry, with a list of additional bonus possibilities.
• Ch. 6: Planning Instruction with Mentor Texts includes how to choose content to teach and the strategies with which to teach it. 
• Ch. 7: Assessing Students’ Work with Mentor Texts provides a continuum for 5 stages students move through as they learn to work with mentor texts, from beginning to crafting independently, and a list of formative assessment tools from “mentor move exit ticket” to “draft highlighting.”  

Each chapter starts with asking the reader to get involved, reading a text and noticing authors’ moves. The authors provide many examples of mentor tests to use, ways to use them, and student responses to them. The publisher’s website makes even more available—17 video clips and 10 digital forms/documents. 

Other resources that have informed my use of mentor texts include the following books:

• Voice Lessons: Classroom Activities to Teach Diction, Detail, Imagery, Syntax, and Tone by Nancy Dean 
• Patterns of Power (now available for elementary, middle, and high school)
• Mechanically Inclined: Building Grammar, Usage, and Style into Writer’s Workshop, or anything else by Jeff Anderson (Everyday Editing or 10 Things Every Writer Needs to Know)

The following day, my granddaughter’s mom was reading a Berenstain Bears book to her. Her mom read, “Sister gulped.” My granddaughter burst out excitedly, “Princess Magnolia gulped, too!” (Princess Magnolia is the cover identity of the Princess in Black.)

If using some of the ideas in A Teacher’s Guide to Mentor Texts will help my students absorb into their own repertoire the moves made by the professional authors they read as effectively as my 3-year-old granddaughter accesses words and phrases from The Princess in Black, that will not only help them grow as writers this year, but empower them to continue growing as long as they are reading. 

How about you? How do you use mentor texts? What is your experience with using mentor texts with students?