Teaching Language Arts: Week 1

Week 1: Mentor Texts Within a Writer’s Notebook

As I sit staring at my screen, trying to find a way to sum up the articles and chapters that I read this week, I find myself so full of excitement about this class and the impact it will have on my future students.  In the past, I have read about writer’s notebooks like in Writer’s Notebook: A Place to Dream, Wonder, and Explore (Fletcher, 2001) in the past, so I am excited to get started again.  I had my first experience with a writer’s notebook as a sophomore; I was asked to start a writing journal in an art class.  I can still remember the feeling of anxiety I had when the professor assigned it, but by the end of the class I was so proud of my book full of ephemera, drawings, and most importantly WORDS.  As I think back to that first day, and what caused me so much anxiety in the first place, I realize it was because I wanted guidance and was given none.  Unfortunately, sometimes giving guidance to children in regards to writing can limit their creativity.  Therefore, I was searching for a way to give children a starting point, without limiting their creativity.  I FOUND IT!  Mentor texts.  Mentor texts are a great way for children to not only find topics or remind them of something that has happened in their lives, but also to find the writing style that works best for them.  I feel that I never found my writing style because I was never given the chance to study the way author’s write, and mimic that.  Dorfman and Cappelli state,

“Mentor texts are the ‘benchmarks.’ As mentor texts become part of the writing community, they inspire students and teachers to set goals that will help them continually reinvent themselves as writers. Picture books make great mentor texts because they can be read and reread many times within the course of a school year.” (Dorfman and Cappelli, 2007)

While I will have some chapter books in my classroom mentor text collection, I will make sure that those are books we have read as a class and that every student is familiar with.  As someone who will have her own classroom one year from now, I am making it my goal to start collecting high quality mentor texts for many different grade levels.

If you have not read Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal, go read it!  When I first received the book in the mail and began to flip through it, I wasn’t sure why we were asked to read it; now I do!  The author, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, writes what is on her mind.  She lets it all out, and creates a book of her thoughts.  This is a great example of a writer.  Not every writer has to write a full book.  I want my students to carry their notebooks around, as I have been encouraged to do, and write things that come to their mind.  For example, Rosenthal wrote on page 47 “It takes a snowflake two hours to fall from cloud to earth.  Can’t you just see its slow, peaceful descent?” (Rosenthal, 2016) I can imagine her sitting somewhere watching the snow with her writer’s notebook in hand when the thought occurred to her.

I want my students to write about their serendipitous moments, their fears, their excitements, and so much more (like Rosenthal did)!  As I finish up this blog post, I will leave you with my latest moment of serendipity.  This past weekend, I visited the Georgia Aquarium.  My fiancé and I both love penguins, and decided that next time we visit we are going to pay extra for the penguin encounter.  Just as we finished discussing it, we ran into two trainers walking two sweet little penguins in the back hallway of the “behind the seas” tour we were on!  It was so cool to be just a few feet from the waddling penguins, with them staring right at us.  While we still plan to pay for the encounter next time, it was incredible that we got to be as close as we did without even planning it!

Sources:

Dorfman, L. R., & Cappelli, R. (2007). Mentor texts: Teaching writing through children’s literature, K-6. Portland, Me.: Stenhouse.

Fletcher, R. (2001). Writer’s Notebook: A Place to Dream, Wonder, and Explore. Lee, NH.

Rosenthal, A. K. (2016). Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Penguin Group USA.