I love presenting to groups of teachers about mentor texts. It is such an amazingly fun topic, upon which one can set so many personal and professional goals.

And yet...alas, I can only present so many times in any given year and still teach full-time Language Arts. There is, however, an alternative solution: I invite you to consider purchasing any of the PowerPoints and Workshop materials I sell at my Products Page here at Always Write. When I create slideshows and a booklets for all my teacher trainings, I try to do something unique: I go out of my way to design both in such a way that any teacher could independently read through the slides at their own pace, perform the activities in the booklets, and learn independently from my materials. I know face-to-face is much more effective, but this is an alternative for those of you who are interested in some self-paced learning.

Which of my Products focus on Mentor Texts? Between 2006-2008, I designed one of my most ambitious two-day workshops ever; I wanted to combine all the best techniques I'd learned about authentic writing instruction with the best things I'd learned about differentiated instruction. The result of this synthesis of best practices became my "7 Elements of a Differentiated Writing Lesson" Workshop. Over two days, we examine seven different elements that--when applied well and with a differentiated philosophy--could strengthen any writing lesson to work with a wider variety of students and learners. Mentor texts are one of the seven elements we explore with great detail during that workshop.

If you'd like to acquire my PowerPoints on all seven elements as well as the booklet used by participants during that two-day workshop, please know that they are available. Click here for details.

Mentor Texts about Using
Mentor Texts:

If you appreciate the lessons I am posting here at my website, kindly consider using the links below to purchase any mentor texts I am recommending; a very small percentage of each sale from Amazon helps me keep this website free and on-line for all to use. Thanks in advance in helping me out!

Nonfiction Mentor Texts
by Lynne Dorfman & Rose Capelli

My boss (thanks to Common Core State Standards) is forever asking, "What are you having them read that's non-fiction?" This collection of ideas is truly a blessing to have!

I am always on the look-out for what I call the perfect mentor text. My criteria for "perfection" has become the following: 1) the mentor text is well-written and engaging; 2) the author of the mentor text directly speaks about skills that a real writer uses; and 3) the mentor text can be re-read multiple times in the same school year without become boring or repetitive.

Below are the four mentor texts I would never part with; they serve so many purposes in my classroom and fit so nicely into my instruction. My students know these mentor texts well.

Roni Schotter's Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street starts out as a tale about over-coming writer's block but then blossoms into so much more. When young Eva, stuck without an idea for completing an assignment, receives four pieces of pretty solid advice about writing from four neighbors, she applies the advice and an amazingly well-written story starts unfolding in her writer's notebook. At tale's end, Eva proudly announces how much better her story will be when she has the chance to revise it once more.	Ralph Fletcher, probably my favorite author of mentor texts, wrote these two books as companions to each other. How to Write Your Life Story offers sound, student-friendly advice and fun exercises for any young person who thinks the things that happen to him/her aren't worthy of being written down. With strong writing skills, anything that happens to anyone has the potential to become a worthy narrative piece of writing. To prove his own point, Fletcher then shares his own life story: Marshfield Dreams...When I Was a Kid. Here is an autobiography that often describes the simplest, day-to-day occurrences from Ralph's own childhood in a way that exemplifies high-quality writing. Each chapter of the memoir is short and engaging, and the chapters can be read all at once or in complete isolation of each other. Your boy writers will eat both of these texts up; Fletcher just has that knack. You won't catch me teaching the narrative genre without having these two books in hand. The best part of all; in Marshfield, Fletcher follows every piece of advice offered in his "How To..." guide, which your students will pick up on.		Wow, talk about the power of WritingFix. In March of 2011, when we decided Josephine Nobisso's Show; Don't Tell! Secrets of Writing would be our "Mentor Text of the Year," Amazon had plenty of new copies available for purchase at less than $22 a copy. Eight months later, there are only used copies available anywhere, and they are all going for over $100 per copy. Keep your eyes open for deals, friends, and cherish your copy, if you ordered yours. There are so many writing lessons waiting to be discovered on this gem's colorful pages.
Just a Few Classroom Application Suggestions Based on these Four Excellent Mentor Texts:
Using 90th Street's Advice--a lesson housed at WritingFix The "Four Corners" of 90th Street--a technique for revision	Heart Maps & Writing Topics--inspired by How to Write Your Life Story Exploring "Writing Prompts in Reverse" with Ralph Fletcher--inspired by the "First Pen" Chapter in Marshfield Dreams. Bizarre Foods with Ralph Fletcher--inspired by the "Eating the World Chapter"		Showing Riddles--a writer's notebook lesson I created to honor this book. Imagery versus Showing--an exercise for writers! (Coming soon!)

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We all have those favorite books we love to read out loud to our students. When I start discussing mentor texts at my teacher workshops, I always begin by asking my participants, "What are your best read-alouds?" Teachers love to share the story titles that captivate their students the most. I usually have to pry teachers away from that discussion question with my metaphorical crow-bar so we can proceed with the training.

At the secondary level, teachers also have favorite chapters/passages that we love to read aloud too. I guarantee you will not find anyone who reads the first chapter of Animal Farm out loud better than I do; I have the best 'Old Major voice,' and when I sing the song Old Major teaches the animals, I actually achieve vibrato! Also, for an inservice class my wife and I co-taught for many years, I also wrote this writing lesson based on chapter four of Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo. On the drive home from class, she once said, "I don't know what it is about that chapter, but when you read it out loud, it's like you become the author's voice." I don't argue when my wife compliments me, but it's amazing how--even after you've shared something aloud dozens of times--if you love the words and the way the author put them down, you can still make it come alive for others.

Now I must stress something here: a good read-aloud text and a mentor text for writing are not necessarily the same thing. They might be, but there's no guarantee that just because your kids enjoy hearing the story read aloud that it will make a strong mentor text for writing. From experience, I have to warn teachers of this. Too many times I have seen my workshop participants really struggle to build a writing lesson from a story that makes a better read aloud than it does a text for teaching/inspiring writing.

A mentor text should ultimately be discussed by students for one of two purposes: 1) to showcase a writing skill found in the text that you want students to practice in their own writing; 2) to motivate students to write something different-yet-similar that was inspired by the mentor text's idea.

In 2006, when I made the decision to learn even more about mentor texts and how they affected my writing instruction, I spread out 15-20 of my very favorite mentor texts from my very best writing lessons on the carpet in front of my bookshelf. In Language Arts, I require my students do "sorts" all the time with words and sentences and quotes, and so I was immediately inspired to attempt to sort my mentor texts interestingly. I sorted them first by genre. I sorted them next by reading level. Neither of these sorts did much to challenge my thinking. However, when I asked myself, "How are you specifically using these mentor texts to teach writing?" something really interesting happened. I made a discovery that became very meaningful to me. The sort I ended up doing showed me that I had three distinctly different ways I was using mentor texts to inspire student writing. I was using some of my texts as idea mentor texts, some as structure mentor texts, and others as craft mentor texts. You can read about these three different categories I created by viewing my PowerPoint slideshow, which you can access by clicking here or on the picture of my opening slide, which is at right. In my PowerPoint slides, I define each category, and I share a purposefully diverse selection of mentor texts that I have personally used while teaching writing to K-16 writers. I carefully explain how it's the writing task I have students complete after being exposed to the mentor text that determines in which category I place the mentor text. This is a pretty important concept to understand before you can start sharpening your own use of mentor texts.

I find a lot of my teacher workshop participants expect the incorporation of mentor texts into writing instruction to be easy, but it isn't. Just because you have a well-written or engaging text to discuss before students begin writing does not guarantee you have a better writing lesson. Allow me to explain this with an example mentor text that I know many already teachers know about: The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg.

Now, I'm being serious here...if ever there was a perfect idea mentor text, it's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. An idea mentor text--and I say this assuming you've already watched my explanatory PowerPoint slideshow from above--is one whose purpose is to inspire students to brainstorm and pursue an original idea inspired by an author's original idea. What Van Allsburg creates so beautifully with this picture book is an imaginary story that there are these dozen or so "lost stories" that were created by this fictional illustrator/writer named Harris Burdick; all that currently remains of each story is a single (and beautiful!) captioned illustration and a story title. The book's twelve illustrations, captions, and story titles, when shown to student writers, genuinely excite them to want to create what they believe one of the lost stories must have been. See how this author--Van Allsburg--had this original idea that launches original ideas from student writers? That's an idea mentor text, and as I said, this one is pretty much perfect.

Genuine excitement from writers is good, and mentor texts often provide this type of excitement. But my "Seven Elements of a Differentiated Writing Lesson" Workshop isn't simply about exciting students to write, it's about exciting them and then providing them with high-quality instruction so that writing their Harris Burdick-inspired tales teach them some genuine skills that writers know about and practice and perfect as they go through a writer's workshop inspired by the story they are writing. Over the years, I have seen some pretty mediocre (as well as some dreadful) pieces of writing inspired by The Mysteries of Harris Burdick; it takes a great mentor text and a great writing lesson to help students excel past mediocrity.

I'll conclude this section on this resource page by reiterating what I said a few paragraphs back again. Good writing instruction is never easy; it involves many purposeful elements (seven, according to my popular workshop) coming together as the writing process unfolds, and use of mentor texts is but one of those elements. If what I've said on this page intrigues you, I invite you to purchase the entire set of materials from my "7 Elements of a Differentiated Writing Lesson" Workshop and begin categorizing your mentor texts for writing. Or--better yet--have your school or district's professional development coordinator contact me about coming and presenting the idea to your staff in the future.

I also invite you to send me the names of favorite mentor texts you use in your classroom that fall into one of my three categories of mentor texts: idea, structure, or craft: corbett@corbettharrison.com.

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I am really in to being unique as a personal goal.

I want my students to remember unique things about me, like how I am probably the only teacher who ever showed them pages from his own writer's notebook, or how I am probably the only teacher who sang Emily Dickinson poems aloud to them to the tune of "Gilligan's Island."

I want my teaching colleagues to remember my uniqueness too. If you are one of those teachers that I really like, I will burn you a classroom-appropriate CDs based on silly grammatical terms. I have, for example, an entire CD called "Imperative Commands," and each song title is--indeed--an imperative command: Walk Like an Egyptian and Bang the Gong are just two examples from that amazing album! I'm working on my latest album; it's going to be called "Gerunds or Participles with Direct Objects." The first song is Billy Joel's Keeping the Faith, and the last song is the Talk Heads' Burning Down the House. I am pretty sure I am the only teacher you'll ever meet who does weird, unqiue things like these.

I mentioned Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick above as a superb idea mentor text, which it is. That book was first recommended to me by a college professor, and I used it (albeit badly) my very first of teaching based on the recommendation. Over the years, I became better at using it as a mentor text, so I am always grateful for that professor who first made me aware of this amazing book to use to enhance my writing instruction. Because that book has been around for so long, I know that well-over 75% of the teachers using this webpage have already heard of it. I know it's not the most unique idea mentor text I could share.

I also know that Margaret Wise Brown's The Important Book is not the most unique title I could share as a structure mentor text. I certainly hope 95% of you already own this little gem and are using it as a structure mentor text. Same thing with me trying to recommend anything by John Steinbeck as a unique craft mentor text, right?

So here is what I am attempting to do with the following three recommendations: I am attempting to share with you the most unique mentor text title I've thought of for the three types of mentor texts. I doubt any other teacher out there would have ever thought to recommend these titles to you!

I hope you appreciate this; it's my gift of uniqueness to you. If you want to share back a unique title with me...you may: corbett@corbettharrison.com.

My Unique Idea Mentor Text: Homer Price by Robert McCloskey	My Unique Structure Mentor Text: Caves by Stephen Kramer	My Unique Craft Mentor Text: All the Places to Love by Patricia MacLachlan
So I expect most of you have likely heard of this classic chapter book, but I'm now throwing it to you as a unique idea mentor text. Enjoy that famous donut chapter by reading it again. Then, a few days later, use it to inspire the following unique writing idea from your students: invent and write about an automated machine that you wish existed to make your life easier. If they like the machines they "invent," they can go further, and tell the tale of their original machine going haywire, as it does in the mentor text. Click here to access this lesson at WritingFix.	Don't make the mistake a lot of teacher I work with do by thinking structure mentor texts have to be as obvious as Margaret Wise Brown's The Important Book. Structure can and should, in fact, be so subtle you almost miss it sometimes. Good writing has structure, but it doesn't sound formulaic. That's the case with Stephen Kramer's introductory two pages to his non-fiction picture book, Caves. Kramer begins with a paragraph that shares things you would never find in a cave; then he describes what you would see in a limestone cavern. Borrow this two-part, subtle structure to describe any setting: your bedroom, your classroom, your refrigeratorr. Your students can/will produce some interesting writing by focusing on what isn't there before they focus on what is. Trust me. Click here to access this lesson at WritingFix.	Some authors have the ability to write what sounds like poetry even though they're writing prose; it's a craft skill. Jane Yolen does it. Angela Johnson does too. MacLachlan is a master at it, as evidenced in this beautiful book. What I love about MacLachlan is that students notice crafty things she does that they can impersonate. In this text, have them note how often she begins sentences with prepositions, and have them discover her "sets of three." They're there. When they write about a special to love, have them impersonate these craft tricks. It works! Click here to access this lesson at WritingFix.

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My work with the Northern Nevada Writing Project, which began for me in 1996, has inspired me to create and teach somewhere between forty and fifty in-service classes and teacher workshops over the years. Some of these classes I designed with fellow NNWP colleagues; my wife--Dena--remains my favorite collaborator when designing a new class. Other workshops I designed on my own.

I often base any new inservice workshops on a brand new professional book for teachers that I've recently discovered, but I've just as often based new classes upon discovering a new technique or two I have "re-discovered" in a favorite older book that I've recently looked through. Below, I share the four mentor texts that I have used when designing some of my most successful inservice classes for teachers and administrators.

When our economy has been good for education in the past, the NNWP has been generous enough to purchase copies of these books for all class participants. Over my many years of designing and delivering teacher workshops, I feel confident in saying that I have put well-over two or three hundred copies of each title below in the hands of my fellow Nevada educators. I'm proud of that fact; these four titles are books that I believe have the power to transform non-writing teachers into writing teachers, or to at least begin a colleague's journey down that path.

Do you have copies of these books on your teacher bookshelf? If so, start mining them for great new ideas to bring to your classroom.

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