This month I am sharing stories from
classrooms in Berwyn South District 100.
Day 9: Mentor Sentences with Niki Campabello (4th at Pershing)
I had read the work of Jeff Anderson around mentor sentences, and had wanted to try it out in a classroom. I was at a team meeting, and they were talking about how they could incorporate language and grammar into their classrooms, and they were reading The Tiger Rising. It was the perfect combination for a mentor sentence experience!
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| Parts of Mentor Sentences: A Teacher's Guide (as used in D100) |
Mentor sentences are grammatically and structurally correct sentences that you pull from text that you are currently reading. You give the students opportunities to notice, revise and imitate the sentence. By the end of the week, students have practiced using structurally and grammatically correct sentences based on the work of their writing mentor. Who better to practice with than Kate DiCamillo, the author of The Tiger Rising?
Day 1:
We started with Niki reading aloud a chapter from The Tiger Rising as a read aloud, like she had already been doing. We then took a single sentence from the text, and gave it to table groups on a piece of paper. We told them that the purpose of a mentor text is to learn and borrow something from an author for when we write ourselves. Their challenge was to guess and mark up the reasons why we chose this particular sentence: He looked doubtfully at Sistene's bright dress and shiny black shoes.
SIDENOTE: When you read a lot of the work on Mentor Sentences, they have the students do this part independently. I, however, like inquiry and conversations, especially since this is new for our students. So, we switched it. :)
Day 2:
On Day 2, you focus on a specific language or grammar function and teach it, like parts of speech. Well, since the language and grammar pieces are new to our curriculum map this year, we reviewed nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and just marked the parts of speech in the sentence in more of a guided way. I used my iPad, and we annotated the sentence together using AirPlay, and we started with nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and then I added the adverb and the pronoun and talked through those a bit. I had 15 minutes, so that's the way I chose to spend the time.
The thing about Mentor Sentences is that it is a loooooooong game. This type of lesson will not "work" to fix students' language and grammar issues by doing it once. To be successful, you need to do it with regularity all year long. It's ok for Niki's class to start with nouns, because they won't END there. :)
Day 3:
On Day 3, we added some shared writing when they were revising. We gave each table group a large post it, and they re-wrote the sentence, this time revising even a single word to make it better. We used the annotations we had made the day before, and switched out a verb for a different verb, etc. When revising, we keep the intended meaning the same, so we had to keep it about Sistine and Rob and what they were doing. However, by making small revisions, like changing "bright dress" to "lacy pink dress" we enhanced the sentence but kept the meaning the same.
At the end of this day, we read aloud all 7 sentences aloud, and decided that we may have just written a better sentence than Kate DiCamillo! The kids were pretty proud of themselves.
Day 4:
On Day 4, they are authors! They take the structure of the sentences and imitate it. Instead of being about Sistene and Rob, it could be about any 2 people, like Mrs. Campabello and Mr. Lovero.
For example:
Original:
He looked doubtfully at Sistene's bright dress and shiny black shoes.
Imitated:
Mrs. Reckley looked doubtfully at Mr. Reckley's polka dot tie and plaid shirt.
(Mrs. Reckley was in the room with us for this lesson, too!)
This time, the kids got their own post it note, and they wrote their own version of the sentence using the author's structure. When they were done, they put it on the wall by our group revisions and read other students's sentences.
What did some students write, as authors like Kate DiCamillo?
Alondra looked happily at the puppy store decorated with stars.
Penny stared creepily at Georges yellow raincoat.
Mrs. Camp looked happily at Paula's homework and read books.
Charlie looked confused at the homework Mrs. Campabello gave us.
As you can see, they are still working on things like apostrophes to show possession, and adverbs, but they are playing with language even on week 1! I had originally picked the sentence for those two teaching points, but when I realized that nouns and verbs still needed some teaching, I switched my objective. And that's OK. Look at the students' writing samples, start where they are at, and move them along. By the end of the year, their writing will be different.
Where could you put this in your day? Niki put it after her read aloud this week, but talked about possibly starting writing workshop each day with mentor sentences. You could put it in morning work/ breakfast time. I've talked to some teachers about doing the 4 parts in a few longer chunks across a day or two as well. Once you get the routine going, each part should only take about 10-15 minutes, max. But those 15 minutes will be worth it if your student struggle with writing at the sentence level, or the craft level. (I think that may just cover all of our students.)
Thank you so much, Niki, for letting me come in. Not only did I love hearing your read aloud every day, but I enjoyed coteaching with you! Mr. Lovero and Mrs. Reckley, thanks for being a part of it, too. :)
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