How do children's book authors create the wonder that we feel when reading our favorite books? What can students and teachers learn from these authors and books if we let them serve as writing mentors? In Mentor Texts, Lynne Dorfman and Rose Cappelli show teachers how to help students become confident, accomplished writers, using literature as their foundation.
The book is organized around the characteristics of good writing—focus, content, organization, style, and conventions—and includes:mentor texts that can be used to scaffold student work;student writing examples to demonstrate how students take risks as writers;teacher writing examples to show the power of teacher as writer;a comprehensive annotated list of children's literature that includes specific suggestions for teaching points;“Your Turn” lessons at the end of each chapter that show how to put the ideas into practice.
Rose and Lynne write in a friendly and conversational style, employing numerous anecdotes to help teachers visualize the process, and offer strategies that can be immediately implemented in the classroom. Each “Your Turn” lesson is built around the gradual release of responsibility model, offering suggestions for demonstrations and shared or guided writing. Reflection is emphasized as a necessary component to understanding why mentor authors chose certain strategies, literary devices, sentence structures, and words.
This practical resource demonstrates the power of learning to read like writers. It shows teachers and students how to discover the ways that authors make writing come alive, and how to use that knowledge to inspire and improve their own writing.

Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing Through Children's Literature, K-6

Cappelli, Rose

Dorfman, Lynne

Reference

Routledge

In their first book, Mentor Texts, Lynne Dorfman and Rose Cappelli demonstrated how teachers can use children’s literature to guide and inspire student writers of narrative fiction and poetry. Now, they have turned their focus to nonfiction, identifying a wide range of mentor texts and showing how these models illustrate the key features of good writing. Lynne and Rose guide teachers through a variety of projects, samples, and classroom anecdotes that demonstrate how teachers can help students become more effective writers of good nonfiction. The Your Turn lessons at the end of each chapter use the gradual release of responsibility model to guide and empower student writers. Teachers will find especially helpful the information on how to select appropriate mentor texts from among the sometimes overwhelming offerings of children’s literature. Each Your Turn lesson encourages reflection and motivates students to think about what they’ve learned, the purpose of learning and practicing a skill or strategy, and how they might use this technique in the future. Additionally, An Author’s Voice provides encouragement and advice from published authors of children’s nonfiction. One of the most valuable features of Nonfiction Mentor Texts is the treasure chest of books organized according to chapter. This list includes every title mentioned in the book, as well as a host of other titles that teachers can use to help students learn about quality nonfiction writing—building content, organizing text, developing voice, enhancing style, using punctuation effectively—and from which students can draw topic ideas. Lynne and Rose have either read or used all of the featured books in their classrooms and have selected titles that meet the needs of students at varying levels. Teachers will be able to find the just-right book for each student.

Nonfiction Mentor Texts: Teaching Informational Writing Through Children's Literature, K-8

Building on the success of Mentor Texts and Nonfiction Mentor Texts, authors Lynne R. Dorfman and Rose Cappelli now turn their attention to poetry. In Poetry Mentor Texts, Lynne and Rose show teachers how to use poems in both reading and writing workshops and across content areas. Written in a friendly, conversational tone, this practical book explores a variety of poetic forms, including poems that inspire response, list poems, acrostic poems, persona poems, and poems for two voices—versatile forms of poetry that can be used in every grade.
Each of these poetic forms has its own chapter featuring five poems with applications for both reading and writing classrooms. Reading connections present skills and strategies to move students forward as readers, helping them to build fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, phonemic awareness, and phonics. Writing connections help students and teachers discover their own voices and grow as poets and wordsmiths as they try out many poetic forms. Poems help students at all grade levels learn to better address complex reading texts, offering them a chance to dig deeper and use higher-order thinking skills. Additionally, Your Turn writing lessons provide a scaffold for seamlessly moving from modeling to the shared or guided experience and the transfer to independent work. The Treasure Chest offers a brief annotation of the poems discussed in each chapter as well as companion pieces that extend and enhance the work of the reading and writing classroom.
Poetry Mentor Texts helps teachers across the curriculum guide their students to become not only skilled readers and writers but also more empathetic human beings.

Poetry Mentor Texts: Making Reading and Writing Connections, K-8

Education & Teaching

Schools & Teaching

If you are a teacher of grades K-6, you might be asking, "Shoud I teach grammar in my class on a daily basis? How would I go about doing this? And how can I teach grammar so it isn't boring to my kids?" In Grammar Matters, Lynne Dofman and Diane Dougherty answer these questions and more. Using mentor texts as the cornerstone for how best to teach grammar, this book provides teachers with almost everything they need to get kids not only engaged but excited about learning grammar. Divided into four parts--Narrative Writing, Informational Writing, Opinion Writing, and Grammar Conversations--this hand reference provides practical teaching tips, assessment ideas, grammar definitions, and specific mentor texts to help students learn about parts of speech, idoms, usage issues, and punctuation. Through "Your Turn Lessons," conversations, conferences, and drafting, revising, and editing exercies, students will learn not only specific concepts but also how to reflect upon and transfer what they have learned to other writing tasks, no matter the subject. The "Treasure Chest of Children's Books" provides an extensive list of both fiction and nonfiction books that fit naturally into grammar instruction. Eight appendices provide even more resources, including information on homophones, using mentor texts to teach grammar and conventions, checklists, comma rules, help for ELL students, and a glossary of ramar terms. Grammar Matters links instruction to the Common Core State Standards and features quality, classroom-tested tools that help teachers provide their students with the gifts of grammar and literacy.

Grammar Matters

Children's Books

Dougherty, Diane

Education & Reference

In A Closer Look, Lynne Dorfman and Diane Dougherty provide the tools and strategies you need to use formative assessment in writing workshop. Through Lynne and Diane’s ideas, you will be able to establish an environment where students will internalize ways that they can assess their own writing and become independent writers. Lynne and Diane share methods for collecting and managing information, and show practical, simple, and concise ways to document student thinking. In the accompanying online videos, they demonstrate conferences with individual writers, small groups, and whole groups. Quick, easy-to-manage assessment methods emphasize that formative assessment does not have to take a long time to be worthwhile and effective. Vignettes from classroom teachers, principals, and authors add a variety of perspectives and classroom experiences on this important topic. A Closer Look shows that when students are in charge of their own writing process and set and reach their own goals, writing becomes a vibrant, energetic part of the day.

A Closer Look

Stacey Shubitz and Lynne Dorfman warmly welcome you to experience writing workshop for the first time or in a new light with Welcome to Writing Workshop. Through strategic routines, tips, resources, and short focused video clips, teachers can create the sights and sounds of a thriving writing workshop where: • both students and teachers are working authors • students spend most of their time writing—not just learning about it • student choice is encouraged to help create engaged writers, not compliant ones • students are part of the formative assessment process • students will look forward to writing time—not dread it. From explanations of writing process and writing traits to small-group strategy lessons and minilessons, this book will provide the know-how to feel confident and comfortable in the teaching of writers.

Welcome to Writing Workshop

Shubitz, Stacey

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