Mentor Text: Little Red Pen by Janet Stevens
Want to boost your students’ reading comprehension with reading strategies? Want to provide a rich context to teach (boring) grammar and writing strategies? Enter MENTOR TEXTS!
I read aloud my favorite mentor texts to my third graders every single day!
I do cherish my classroom library!
And, every single day I find ways to use these texts to teach Grammar, Reading, and Writing.
But that’s not all, my friends!
Mentor Texts also are my besties in teaching new content and concepts in Math, Science and Social Studies. They are perfect tools to get my students to think deeply about the content and make connections between the and issues. Plus, they are so much fun! 🙂
And I am passionate about reading books that I love. When we teachers are intentional and purposeful in choosing the texts we read to our students, our lesson planning becomes easier and our days are filled with… JOY!
One such book is The Little Red Pen by Janet Stevens.
Mentor Text Mentor Sentence Love!
For me, my read aloud journey started with Mr. Manners, a stuffed moose I received as a holiday gift from a colleague during my first year teaching. Kindergarten! He was perfect! He came to life immediately, and he has been with me ever since – Kindergarten, preschool, 5th Grade, 3rd Grade. Mr. Manners’ personality has come to life with my imagination and visualization.
I get such delight “speaking” for him – ok, channeling him! 😉 – throughout our day. He joins us at:
- Circle Time
- Reading and Writing Workshops
- Math Talk & problem solving sessions
- grappling with the issues in Social Studies
- modeling the Scientific Process during a STEM activity.
He always “knows” what to say, and the children always listen to what he says.
But why am I telling you this to kick off this series on “Literature with Joy?”
What does Mr. Manners have to do with the mentor texts I choose for our Interactive Read Alouds?
Well… everything!
It IS Mr. Manners who has helped me bring to life all of the characters and problems we encounter in our Interactive Read Alouds. My Mr. Manners has made way for my pretending and visualizing the characters when I read, like…
- finding a character’s voice – pitch, tone, and velocity
- demonstrating a character’s gestures at different points throughout the text – face, head, hands, torso
- modeling the onomatopoeia I hear in the text – both explicit and inferred!
I have discovered the link between active pretending and visualizing while I read. And, this has been a key for me to help so many of my students develop the critical reading comprehension strategy of VISUALIZING!
How can we capitalize on a mentor text to deepen our students’ thinking and learning?
Enter… The Little Red Pen!
Do you struggle to get your students engaged in revising and their writing?
Yup. Me, too.
When it comes to writing, it seems students are hard wired to be DONE – “I’m done!” – rather than to work until they communicates their thoughts in a creative, effective way. And, without effort to revise and edit our writing, our first draft is not our best draft.
We love the Little Red Pen! Janet Stevens’s story celebrates the classroom and favorite school supplies. The dialogue shows the characters’ personalities, and just screams to be read aloud. Her Little Red Pen is a memorable, strong leader, responsible for grading students’ work and she likens this task to “saving the world!” All to the delight of my students year after year.
I love to capitalize on my students’ glee with a mentor text, and redirect it to the task of revising and editing our writing.
So, I read The Little Red Pen to…
kick off our Writer’s Workshop!
And, I give every writer…
their own Little Red Pen!
To begin, we use our pens to create a puppet, bringing our Little Red Pen to life – with voice and gestures. This visualization begins to build a relationship we have with our little red pens.
It allows my students to put the “burden” of revising and editing their writing on their new friend.
It makes a non-preferred and daunting task a little bit lighter and filled with creative possibility.
And I work to strengthen my students’ relationships with their Little Red Pen at every Workshop. Little Red Pens are even invited to our Share Circles at the end of Workshop!
Now, if that’s not joyful…
Another way I capitalize on my students’ love for their Little Red Pen is to work with a mentor sentence taken directly from the text. We use the mentor sentence to explore parts of speech, grammatical concepts, and writer’s craft.
It is amazing how a student’s love for the main character in a mentor text provides energy and motivation to grapple with grammar – a task that is typically less than desirable.
Mentor sentences are a game changer for me – and so I work to choose a mentor sentence from one of our beloved texts at least two times a month (or about 20 times a year).
Developing your own Mentor Sentences routine will catapult your grammar and writing instruction to the next level. It will provide you with an engaging platform that invites students to dig into hard work, and think more deeply about grammar, writing, and communicating their own ideas effectively.
Plus… mentor texts bring us all JOY!
If you’re interested in starting your own mentor text mentor sentence routine, check out these resources in my TPT shop.
