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You are here: Home / Literacy Resources / Mentor Texts as the Foundation For Powerful Instruction

Mentor Texts as the Foundation For Powerful Instruction

in Literacy Resources on

Inside: Picture books are not just for preschoolers, they are for everyone! Find the power in using mentor texts to model foundational concepts. Small books, big impact! 

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Why Mentor Texts Work:

Marketing experts have caught on to the idea of storytelling. Rather than sell consumers individual products or ingredients, they configure an image or commercial that tells a compelling story. Why go through the trouble? They get it – the combination of telling stories with images helps people understand, connect, and remember.

Harvard Business Review explains the science behind it by suggesting that people sympathize and relate to stories, almost becoming part of the narrative themselves. It’s like their brains can’t help but pay attention. Isn’t that what we need, in our classrooms? Yes, please – sign me up!

There are times that I’ve put a stellar lesson together, but when I present it to my students, it flops. After familiarizing myself with more brain-based research, I often wonder if my students would be more engaged if I were to have framed the lesson with a narrative.

While I don’t always have time to frame every lesson with an amazing narrative, I am confident that someone has written a mentor text that connect to it. In fact, this started because I would read picture books to my little boys at home and think – I could totally use this in the classroom! And I could!

We rent at least 30 picture books from the library every few weeks, and I am impressed with how meaningful and well-written picture books are. They aren’t just for little ones. Combine quality texts with how much our brains are compelled by storytelling, and you’ve got a winning combination for how to engage students in big ideas.

Application:

Mentor Text to Model Theme:

  • Theme
    •  Getting 6th graders to infer a meaningful life lesson is a challenge. It’s even more difficult when they are also balancing comprehending a grade-level text.  Picture books to be a simple way to introduce and or reinforce the skill. They are meaningful enough to teach a lesson and short enough to include often. Use my free topic/theme chart to help structure your lesson!
  • After reading, you can guide your child by asking questions like:
    • What lesson can readers learn from this book?
    • What lesson do you think ________ learned from this book.
    • What message is this book trying to teach us about life?
  • If your child is younger, try  giving them a topic in your question stem.
    • What did this book teach us about being a good friend, honesty, bullying etc… The answer to the stem will lead to a quality theme statement.
    • Ex: Yoko Writers Her Name teaches us that being different from others allows you the chance to teach them about your culture.
    • Poetry is another meaningful mentor text to review theme with.
  • Theme Suggestions:


Mentor Text for Social Emotional Development

  • With the increasing rates of events like cyber bullying and suicide, parents and teachers are always looking for opportunities to build our children’s social emotional wellness. Mentor texts provide opportunities for students to learn acceptance of others, compassion, and self-confidence.
  • These text make great starting points for class discussions about character traits,  Growth Mindset, and many other social emotional topics.


Mentor Text to Teach Biographies

  • What better way to find your life’s path than to explore the path of others? Picture book biographies teach the steps that well-known people have taken to pursue their passions. They model all of the above mentioned habits, and reinforce life lessons, all while building historical background knowledge. Biographical suggestions (See Starry Messenger and Martin’s Big Words, listed above)



Mentor Texts as a model for Writing

Picture books can be used in countless ways as an anchor for writing instruction. Each one of the suggestions on this list could easily become their own post, so please feel free to email me if you want more details.

  • Pre-writing ideas: Read the book aloud and then have your students write in response to the book. My favorite titles are Hey Little Ant by Hannah and Philip Hoose, Courage by Bernard Waber, I Wanna Iguana by Karen Orlof, If I Build a Car by Chris Van Dusen
  • Grammar Mini-Lessons: Choose any book that has a grammar pattern that you need to teach. One example is If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, or any other book in that series, models the Subordinating Conjunction sentence structure. You can use it to introduce commas, punctuation marks etc
  • Elaboration and details: Choose a highly descriptive picture book and use it to illustrate how  author's add detail. One example is Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street By Roni Schotter and If I Built a Car by Chris Van Dusen.


Overall, picture books pack a big punch for such short text. They are useful to teach life skills and build prior knowledge. You can use them as mentor text for reading skills, a focal point for a project, to connect to history or science etc. THe possibilities really are endless.

Their power comes in the fact that they do two things that our brain loves: They tell stories and show us images. If you can't tell, I'm obsessed and will more than likely find a way to sneak in another post about picture books!

Never underestimate the value of amazing visuals or an amazing mentor text. If you decide to try it, and like mentor texts, consider also trying poems for mentor texts.


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