Integrate Varied Text with airSlate SignNow

Integrate assigned text

- Mentor text is a common facet of writing instruction. It's the portion of a mini-lesson where the teacher guides students through the reading of strong examples. In order to integrate mentor text, teachers need to know how and when to bring it into the lesson and what text is best to use. Kick off each 15-minute mini-lesson by first identifying what today's skill is. Tell the students what you're trying to teach them. Then, explain the purpose and function of today's writing skill. How and why would a writer use it? How does it impact a reader when this skill is used? With the foundation of the lesson set, now you're going to reveal the strong example. This is when you show students the mentor text and begin to break it down. Point out its characteristics, qualities. Really explain the skill in action in that mentor text. The goal is students eventually can emulate that same skill in their own writing. When choosing a text to use in a lesson, there is a cardinal rule. Students must be familiar with the text. Therefore, do not plan to read the text for the first time in your writing lesson. Students have to have heard, read, or seen that text first as a reader before they reread it as a writer. Okay, so the best text is familiar text. Here's the second rule. Do not plan to read the whole text in the mini-lesson. You have 10 to 15 minutes to teach a writing skill. Therefore, you don't have time to read a 24-page picture book for the second time. You need to identify the excerpts, the portions that would be best to teach today's skill. Now, don't just look for an example of that skill because pretty much every skill can be found in any text. The most ideal passages are a balance between the shortest excerpt that provides the most example of that one skill. This will allow students to see the skill in action numerous times while maximizing the minutes of your instruction. Let me show you. If I was teaching a conventions lesson on proper noun capitals, I might grab this page from Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse because on one page we have numerous examples of proper noun capitals. Or if it was a word choice lesson, I might use an excerpt from The Napping House. My lesson might be on adjectives. Every one of these nouns has an adjective in front of it. Look at all of those examples on one page. A fringe benefit to using only a portion or excerpt of a favorite and familiar text is you can utilize that same text over and over all year long. Choose a different excerpt, a different page for a different skill in writing. Now there is something to be aware of. If you're going to be utilizing the same book over and over this year, then you need regular access to it. So, you may...