What Are We Reading?

This week we are reading Something Beautiful, Those Shoes, and Smoky Nights. These are three of our five mentor texts we will be revisiting over and over this year.

What is a mentor text? Here is a google definition: Mentor texts are pieces of literature that you can return to and reread for many different purposes. Mentor texts are to be studied and then imitated. Mentor texts help students make powerful connections to their own lives. Mentor texts help students take risks and try out new strategies.

We reread our mentor texts and try out the author's crafts and notice how they wrote their book. We notice and imitate their "good" writing. We discuss what makes good writing. We learn skills in the context of our mentor texts. We learn our sight words from these mentor texts. Mentor texts are so powerful. Once the students are familiar with the story, their brain is free to think more deeply. This is just like math facts, once students are fluent with their math facts, they are able to problem solve and move to deeper thinking.