Chances are, the first time you wrote a business letter or resumé, you looked at an example. We study exemplars. We learn new dance moves by watching other dancers and practicing what we see. We search for decoration ideas on Pinterest. We learn by observing the greats, mimicking what we observe, and then finding our own style.
So it is with writing. When we share a text with our students, and then give them the opportunity to try writing in that style or format, we are providing a mentor text (Gallagher, 2011). One way to encourage reluctant writers is through the use of picture books as mentor texts. Middle-school students created remixes based on the pattern in the picture book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (Numeroff, 1985):
If you give my grandma rice, she will ask for beans.
When you give her beans, she will ask for a tortilla.
When she’s done, she will ask for whiskey.
Then she will want to walk in a line, to see if she’s drunk.
When she walks, she falls on her dog.
So, she’ll need to take him to the vet.
When they get back, she’s going to have to get food ready.
So she will start cooking.
She might get carried away with the tamale.
She may even end up cooking soup, too!
When she is done, she will serve and eat.
She will probably want dessert.
So she will go get some ice cream from the freezer.
When she is done, she’s going to take a nap.
She will wake up and make some beans.
With her beans, she will want some rice.
—Sean P. (8th Grade)
A third-grade writer responded to I Am Every Good Thing (Barnes, 2020):
Mentor texts can provide a liberating place to start for writers who might not know where to begin on their own.
References
Barnes, D. (2020). I Am Every Good Thing. New York, NY: Nancy Paulsen.
Gallagher, K. (2011). Write Like This: Teaching Real-World Writing Through Modeling and Mentor Texts. Portsmouth, NH: Stenhouse.
Numeroff, L. (1985). If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. New York, NY: Harper and Row.
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Dr. Hoffman has 15 years of education experience and has taught in urban, rural, suburban, and alternative schools in Illinois. She earned her Doctorate of Education in literacy from Judson University in 2018. Julie values literature as a means to resistance, resilience, and hope. She is a literacy coach for Springfield Public Schools in Illinois and an adjunct professor in the Teacher Education Program at University of Illinois Springfield. She is a member of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and is an active member of the Illinois Reading Council (IRC), currently president-elect and conference chair. Her research interests include urban education, social–emotional learning, children’s literature, and empathy. She is an advocate for the underserved and unheard. She believes that children’s literature is a message of perseverance and hope. Her passion is to help students who have experienced trauma find healing, resilience, and empowerment through their own writing and the writing of others.
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