literary essay mentor texts 4th grade

Note: This article doesn’t cover how to teach using mentor texts. Read how to use mentor texts here .

Help make this article a more powerful resource for teachers by sharing your favorite mentor texts in the comments at the end.

Table of Contents:

Personal Narrative Memoir Fiction Informative Literary Analysis Argumentative Speech

Personal Narrative

Eleven   by Sandra Cisneros Best for 6th Grade

It’s Rachel’s eleventh birthday but she doesn’t feel eleven. On this day she feels more like one. Her insensitive teacher wants to find the owner of a red sweater that’s been sitting in the coatroom for a very, very long time. No one in Rachel’s class wants to claim it. When Rachel is accused she doesn’t speak up for herself. The following writing skills are beautifully done in this short story:

• Descriptive Language
• Figurative Language
• Inner Thinking

Everything Will be Okay   by James Howe Appropriate for Grades 6-8 (very sad though)

James finds a sick kitten in the woods and tells the kitten everything will be okay. He takes it home hoping his his family will help. His mother says, “we’ll see…”. His brother Paul, who works for Dr. Milk, comes home and knows what to do. They drive the sickly kitten over to the vet’s office and the scenes that follow are heart wrenching. This story flows back and forth between the events of this day and memories involving James’s family. These components of narrative writing stand out most in the story:

• Building Tension
• Character Development
• Past and Present Transitions

First French Kiss by Adam Bagdasarian Best for 8th Grade

Will is in sixth grade and invited to Maggie’s party. He and Maggie have been exchanging notes in class. She confessed she liked him better than two other boys. Will gets ready for the party and has high hopes for the night. He and Maggie slow dance and afterward Will gets pressure from his friends to french kiss Maggie. When I read this story out loud to my students they are anything but disengaged. This story is related in so many ways. The following writing skills could easily be taught using this mentor text:

Out of Bounds by Amanda Werner Appropriate for Grades 6-8

My husband and I lived in Salt Lake City, Utah for five years and bought season ski passes every year we were there. We spent most weekends in the Wasatch mountains skiing the greatest snow on Earth. As fantastic as this sounds, things went very wrong one day. Erik, my husband wanted to ski out of bounds. We’d done so before and nothing had gone wrong but every time we did it I struggled with a decision, follow my husband out of bounds or stick to the groomers. On this day, I chose to follow and things went seriously wrong. The following writing skills could be taught using this short story:

What’s the difference between memoir and personal narrative? Memoirs are usually centered on a time period in a person’s life, or a theme, whereas personal narratives are about one important event. The memoirs below are powerful stories about facing both small issues and huge. Your students will find connections and ideas from reading these:

Fish Cheeks   by Amy Tan Best for 8th Grade

Amy Tan is in love at the age of 14 with a boy named Robert. He doesn’t know it. To her horror, his family is invited over to dinner for Thanksgiving. Amy is mortified by her family and their traditional Chinese ways. This story is so short but is packed with wonderful writing lessons about the following topics:

• Setting Description
• Reflective Ending

The Jacket by Gary Soto Appropriate for Grades 6-8

Gary needs a new coat. He describes a super cool biker jacket to his mom and is excited by the potential this new piece of clothing could have on his identity. The next day he finds a guacamole colored, too large coat hanging from is bedpost. His mom says it’s for him. He wears the ugly thing for years and describes in sad detail the negative impact it had on his life and his eventual acceptance of the thing and his situation.

Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie Best for 8th Grade

Alexie describes his love of reading from the age of three to adulthood. He knows this love of reading saved him from the poverty and struggles of life on an Indian Reservation. But he doesn’t just want to save his own life, he wants to save others’ lives too, through books and writing.

Two Kinds by Amy Tan Best for 8th Grade

Jing-mei’s mom has big plans for her daughter. She wants her daughter to be a prodigy. But as time goes on and Jing-mei fails her mother’s expectations over and over, Jing-mei begins to resent her mother and fail on purpose. She and her mother eventually face off and Jing-mei wins. Her mother backs off, but eventually Jing-mei regrets what she did and the things she said to her mother that day.

• Transitions

I believe that most teachers neglect teaching fiction writing because it is a beast! Fiction includes many, many genres and trying to teach how to write all those genres seems daunting. It is daunting! Here’s what I suggest…let students choose the genre and teach core writing skills that apply to all of them. Those core skills might be: plot, character development, setting, tone, mood, point of view, description, dialogue, theme, figurative language, transitions, organization and the writing process.

But what about mentor texts? You can do one of two things: use short excerpts from your favorite fictional books or use short stories. Below are some of my favorite fictional short stories. I think most English teachers use these stories to teach reading analysis, but fictional writing skills can be taught with these stories too!

All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury Appropriate for Grades 6-8

Margot is from planet Earth and just moved to Venus. Most children in her class have never seen the sun, because on Venus it rains for seven years straight. On the day that the rain is finally supposed to stop the kids in Margot’s class make a horrendously cruel decision. The following fictional writing skills are very obvious in this classic sci-fi story:

Thank You Ma’am by Langston Hughes Appropriate for Grades 6-8

Mrs. Jones is walking through the street at night when suddenly a young boy tries to take her purse. She is a strong women and grabs a hold of the boy and doesn’t let go. Instead she brings him to her house, feeds him and talks to him. She learns his name is Roger and soon they begin to develop an understanding. This very short story is packed with writing lessons, here are some of the more obvious ones:

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu Best for 8th Grade (has mature content)

Jack or “Kan-kan”, as his mother likes to call him, has a magical, paper lion named Laohu. Jack’s mother made it for him. She has an incredible talent for making origami creatures come to life. Jack loves all his “pets”, but when another boy comes over with his Star Wars toys, Jack realizes he is different…and even more so…his mother is different. He begins to keep his distance from his mother and wants her to be more American by learning English. Jack stops speaking Chinese with her and as time goes on he discovers the story behind his mother’s past. This story is worth a read by you and your students! Here are some writing skills you could teach using it:

• Dialogue & Inner Thinking
• Integrating Historical Time Periods & Events into Stories
• Formats/Letters as Part of Stories

The Veldt by Ray Bradbury Appropriate for Grades 6-8

George and Lydia Hadley just purchased the HappyLife Home. This house does absolutely everything you can think of for them and their two children. It even has a playroom that can turn into the African savannah for their children’s entertainment. Lack of discipline and too much reliance on technology leads to a treacherous end. There are so many awesome writing techniques used in this story:

• Ending with a Twist

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson Appropriate for 8th Grade

Members of a small village gather for many events throughout the year, square dances, teen club, the Halloween fair and other civic activities. And now all the members of this small town, men, women and children gather for the annual lottery. This dark story has many writing techniques that students can emulate in their own fictional stories:

• Foreshadowing

Informative

It is fairly easy to find information mentor texts, they are all over the internet in the form of blog posts and news articles. Tween Tribune and Dogo News are my favorite free websites for informational writing mentor texts. They always have articles that interest students. Kelly Gallagher also has a comprehensive list of both information and argumentative articles all formatted to use in your classroom: Articles of the Week . Gallagher uses these articles in his high School English classes, so they are more advanced, however, access to all of these articles in one place can be super helpful for an 8th grade teacher like myself and maybe you too.

Teens and adults say they feel tethered to their phones from Tween Tribune Appropriate for Grades 6-8

Parents are depicted as a bit hypocritical in this article (students will love it). They say they want their children to use their devices less. Yet, parents seem to be on their devices just as much, if not more than their children!

• Citing Studies
• Quoting Sources

How Online Gaming Platform Roblox is Helping Teenagers Become Millionaires  from Dogo News Appropriate for Grades 6-8

Kids can become developers for games like Roblox. The company pays 30% in royalties and this has made some millionaires! Students will love reading about how to make money through what they are most passionate about…video games!

• Citing Data
• Organization

Homework and Tests Stressing You Out? Consider Moving to Sweden  from Dogo News Appropriate for Grades 6-8

A school in Sweden decided to do an experiment…no homework or tests for a whole month. If stress is reduced in these students’ lives they may never have to do homework again! Other countries are experimenting with this idea too. Students will love learning about the negative impacts of homework in this article. Here are some of the features of this article students could emulate in their own informational writing:

• Bias (this article is a bit one-sided)
• Summarizing Studies
• Embedding Video

Giant boom hopes to corral Pacific Ocean’s plastic trash from Tween Tribune Appropriate for Grades 6-8

Between Hawaii and California there floats a patch of trash twice the size of Texas! It is disgusting. Boyan Slat, a 23 year old, has taken it upon himself to find a solution. This article talks about his invention and how he is working toward a solution to this very large and concerning problem. Here are some writing skills students can glean from reading this informative article:

• Embedding Quotes from Interviews
• Providing Differing Viewpoints
• Providing Statistics
• Use of Commas to Add Detail

Literary Analysis

Ever wonder why it is so difficult to find mentor texts to teach literary essays? It’s because people don’t write literary essays in the real world! The only time this type of writing is done is in school. This worries me a bit because I believe students should be writing what people in the real world write. Then, I came across this article called, Thinking About Mentor Texts for Literary Analysis , and was convinced that yes we should definitely still teach literary essays. Not because it is what we’ve always done in English classes, our reason should be to help students develop their analysis skills so that they can think critically about world events, business, politics, books and even their own lives! The mentor texts below are about a wide range of topics but can still be used to teach literary essay writing skills.

Picture Books Tell Children the Harsh Story of Refugee Picture Books by Monica Edingar Appropriate for 8th Grade (advanced writing)

Edingar starts off arguing how important it is that we talk about the experiences of migrants and refugees, especially to our children. She then goes on to beautifully summarize and analyze six children’s books about people from places ranging from Chile to Greece to Mexico. Students could learn these writing techniques from reading all or part of this article:

• Quoting Individuals
• Summarizing

YA Thrillers to Give You Chills This Summer   by Elisabeth Egan Appropriate for 8th Grade

Three thriller YA novels are discussed in this well written article. Not only will students learn the writing techniques listed below, they’ll also learn about some high interest YA novels too.

• Comparing Literature
• Making Connections
• Narrative Hook
• Providing Details in Parentheses

10 Benefits of Reading Everyday  by Lana Winter-Hebert Appropriate for Grades 6-8

This article discusses some excellent reasons why we should be reading everyday. Many important points are brought up such as how reading helps you become a better writer and develop analytical skills! The following writing techniques could be taught using this article:

• Hooking Reader with Questions about Their Life
• Providing Photo Credit

Movie theaters fight streaming by assaulting the senses Appropriate for Grades 6-8

Movie theaters are struggling to compete with the streaming television services Netflix and Amazon Prime. So, they are adding many creative features to keep movie goers coming back.  Reclining seats, food service and even augmented reality! There are many things to learn from this article:

• Using Dashes to Add Extra Detail
• Word Choice

Argumentative

Finding age appropriate argumentative writing samples that are at the middle school level is tricky. I rely heavily on newspaper editorials. This is real life argumentative writing at its finest. However, newspapers are often written above our students’ reading levels. Because of this fact I read these articles out loud with students first read then I have them reread and annotate. It is more likely students will retain the information and the writing skills you teach when you read it out loud first. Then, on a different day during your argumentative writing unit, analyze parts of the articles pointing out skills you want to teach that day. 

Attention, Students: Put Your Laptops Away   by James Doubek Appropriate for Grades 7-8 (article is a bit advanced)

Doubek argues that taking notes by hand is actually better than taking notes on a laptop. When you take notes by hand you synthesize information into memorable chunks because you can’t write absolutely everything down when a teacher is lecturing. When you take notes using a laptop you tend to type word for word what you hear, skipping the important synthesis and thinking process. Not only is this an important article for students to read, you can also teach the below writing skills using the article too.

• Connecting to Audience in Hook
• Making Counterarguments
• Quoting Interviews

The Big Myth About Teenage Anxiety by Richard A. Friedman Appropriate for 8th Grade (term sex is used)

Friedman is a psychiatrist and argues that screens are not causing a rise in psychological disorders like anxiety and depression. Studies done about the impact on screens to our mental health only show correlations and not causation. He argues that anxiety and stress are a normal part of everyday life and parents need to stop assuming it is psychological trauma. This article has all sorts of argumentative writing techniques students can learn from:

• Counterarguments
• Dashes to Include More Detail

An Open Letter About Female Coaches by Pau Gasol Best for 8th Grade (some locker room talk)

Pau Gasol is an NBA basketball player who has been coached by Becky Hammon, the first and only female to ever coach in the NBA. Paul writes this letter to question societal norms and assumptions about women in positions that are dominated by men. It is an excellent read. Here are some skills you could teach using this article:

• Setting Sentences off to Emphasize

Is it Actually Smart to Sit Still? by Hannah Amell

Hannah Amell is a 15 year old New York Times Learning Network essay finalist. Find out more about the contests here: Learning Network Contests.  She wrote her editorial arguing against block schedules. She thinks schools need to start incorporating more movement in their classrooms. Here are some writing techniques she used:

• Connecting with Audience in Hook
• Incorporating Interviews
• Sentence Variety
• Ending with a Question

Thanks to TED Talks (and the transcripts that are provided right beneath them), there are tons and tons of examples of speeches available online for our students. I believe this is why so many teachers are shifting from having students give speeches to having their own TED Talks! If you do this have students watch some talks, read the transcripts and then begin planning their own. Here are my favorite TED Talks to show students:

Overcoming Obstacles  [ Transcript ] by Stephen Claunch Appropriate for All Grades

Stephen Claunch was born with many health issues. But these issues have not stopped him from reaching his goals. Stephen explains that obstacles can be overcome with hard work, not excuses. There are multiple heartwarming stories and lessons students need to learn in this talk!

• Weaving Multiple Stories Together

How to Start a Movement   [ Transcript ] by Derek Sivers Appropriate for All Grades

This humorous talk analyzes the process of creating a movement. Sivers points out that leaders are important but followers might be more important to making a movement. Here are some speech writing topics you can cover with this talk:

• Summary of Lessons to End Speech
• Using Humor
• Video Analysis in a Speech

8 Secrets to Success [ Transcript ] by Richard St. John Appropriate for Grade 8 (the words damn and assholes are used)

This super concise and funny talk gives students advice for how to be successful in life. Here are some speech writing techniques you can teach with this talk:

• Acronyms to Teach
• Listing as a Way to Organize a Speech
• Slideshow Graphics

How to Tie Your Shoes [ Transcript ] by Terry Moore Appropriate for All Grades

This short talk teaches us that we’ve been tying our shoes wrong! It is eye-opening in the simplest way. Here are a few speech writing techniques you can teach with this talk:

• Connecting with the Audience
• Doing a Demonstration During a Speech
• Using a Quote to End a Speech

Type your favorite mentor texts in the comments below…

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11 Comments

This is soooo helpful! Thank you so much for sharing!

Thanks Lyndsey! I’m so happy that you found this article helpful! I appreciate you taking the time to let me know:)

This post is absolute gold, Amanda! Finding good mentor texts is the biggest time-suck, and this post saves sooo much time. Thank you so much for putting it together!

Thank you so much for the wonderful feedback on this article Jeanne! It means so much to me:)

Thank you! This is so helpful! I just shared this page w/teachers in a Twitter chat about mentor texts. I appreciate it! 🙂

Tara, thanks for taking the time to comment and share:) I appreciate YOU!

Thanks you so much for all of the valuable resources and information! Can you please advise/ explain how you incorporate grammar lessons? Thank you SO much!

Hi Gina, I teach grammar as needed during conferences to students who need specific instruction because of glaring mistakes they are making over and over again. I rarely teach grammar lessons to the whole class because I honestly don’t feel my students benefit from knowing grammar terms. Their writing improves the more they read and write not the more they do grammar exercises. I hope that answers your question:)

I wish there was a section with historical fiction. I find historical fiction very interesting and it’d be very helpful right now for my assignment from class.

Great idea! My favorites are Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson, Blood on the River by Elisa Carbone, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr and I could go on. Historical Fiction is probably my favorite genre to read. Writing historical fiction brings a whole other challenge! What are your favorite historical fiction books?

The Lorax is great for teaching argument.

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Professional Development

Mentor texts for teaching theme in literature.

As every good elementary teacher knows, using mentor texts for teaching reading skills is not only fun, but important!  Mentor texts bring a level of experience, examples, and modeling that regular ‘lessons’ just can’t do!  One of the best skills to use mentor texts with is theme in literature!  I’ve gathered some of my favorite mentor texts for teaching theme in literature just for you!  I hope you find a new favorite to add to your classroom library!

Want to watch the video instead?  Check it out below!  Make sure to subscribe to get updates on all new content!

(This post contains Amazon affiliate links.  This means that Amazon sends me a little pocket change, at no cost to you, if you purchase through on of these links.  This helps keep my site running and funds giveaways for you!)

Teaching theme using picture books is truly the way to go!  I hope you find some new classroom favorites in my recommendations.  Feel free to click on the titles to take you right to Amazon to grab any of the books that you need!  You can also check out this blog post on tips for teaching theme in the classroom !

Theme of Confidence

This is perfect book for teaching the theme of confidence .  There is so much evidence throughout the story to support the theme.  Students should have no issues identifying and discussing the them which makes this the perfect book for helping introducing the process of identifying theme.

Theme of Acceptance

This book is perfect for teaching the theme of acceptance .  Not necessarily acceptance of others, but of yourself and finding your purpose!  This book is relatable in so many ways and I hope you love it as much as I do!

Want to snag these differentiated theme graphic organizers?  They can be yours for FREE just by adding your email address below!  Snag them for your classroom today!

Theme of Honesty

This book is perfect for teaching the theme of honesty !  This character does the right thing and is honest to the emperor when so many others around him were not.  And by doing so he gets rewarded in return!  Definitely give this book a find and use it ASAP!

Theme of Happiness

This book is perfect for teaching the theme of happiness !  The main character exudes happiness but in a less obvious way.  It’s not about smiling and bragging, but being comfortable in your own skin and being who you were meant to be.

Theme of Respect

The theme of this book is respect .  We don’t know what it’s like for others.  We don’t know the ins and outs of the demands of their jobs and their life and sometimes we judge too quickly.

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• Read more about: Mentor Texts , Picture Books , Reading , Reading Comprehension

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40 Best Mentor Texts for Narrative Writing in Elementary School

These will be your new go-to titles.

Kids love to tell you all their stories—especially when you’re trying to talk about something else!—but teaching them how to effectively write down their narratives takes work. Mentor texts for narrative writing are a teacher’s best friend when it comes to showing students how to write engaging and powerful stories. These are the books you pore over together both to get familiar with the narrative genre and to give kids examples when introducing new writing craft moves.

Your writing curriculum probably includes some reliable favorites, but updated titles can bring fresh energy. We’ve done the work for you to find recent, appealing, diverse, (mostly) first-person mentor texts for narrative writing to add to your collection. You’re welcome!

1. & 2. Together We Ride and Together We Swim by Valerie Bolling

This pair of books takes telling the stories of the classic experiences of learning to ride a bike and learning to swim to the next level. A sister and brother persevere through fears and challenges with the help of their parents. Add these to your mentor texts for narrative writing for younger students who use mostly pictures and a few words. There are so many small visual details to notice that can encourage students to add more to their own drawings.

Buy it: Together We Ride and Together We Swim

3. New Shoes by Chris Raschka

A child discovers his old shoes are too tight and heads to the shoe store to pick out new ones. Use this to show new writers how they can tell a great story with just a few sentences. You can also introduce new techniques for illustrations—all these pictures are delightfully zoomed in.

Buy it: New Shoes

4. One Day, the End: Short, Very Short, Shorter-Than-Ever Stories by Rebecca Kai Dotlich

“One day, I lost my dog. I found him. The end.” This collection of tiny tales is one of the most perfect mentor texts for narrative writing to introduce kids to the idea that a story is when something happens. Use it with your littles to teach them how to add a sentence or two to their illustrations that tell a story from their lives.

Buy it: One Day, the End: Short, Very Short, Shorter-Than-Ever Stories

5. Our Pool by Lucy Ruth Cummins

From the moment the narrator wakes up to the sun streaming into her apartment windows, it’s clear that it’s a pool day! Everyone’s at the city pool, stowing their stuff in the lockers with a CLANK and a CACHUNK, coating themselves in” slippery, slimy sunblock,” and cooling off in “an ice-cold bowl of “City People Soup.” We’re definitely adding this energetic book to our list of mentor texts for narrative writing that show kids how to use interesting language and details to bring a story to life.

Buy it: Our Pool

6. Granny and Bean by Karen Hesse

Granny and Bean go for a walk on a cloudy day. They enjoy all the simple pleasures of the beach, like waves, shells, sand, petting dogs, and seaside snacks. Use this to share an attainable example of a strong narrative for younger writers. Each page has only a short sentence or two, but they manage to tell a beautiful story.

Buy it: Granny and Bean

7. Bábo: A Tale of Armenian Rug-Washing Day by Astrid Kamalyan

We love this story of the author’s favorite summer chore—helping her grandmother clean the family’s rugs—to help kids see stories in their daily lives. From dancing in soap bubbles to scrubbing, sliding, and mopping, the author stretches the experience into a delightful tale. Help kids notice the mix of sentence lengths and unexpected details that give the story its fun energy.

Buy it: Bábo: A Tale of Armenian Rug-Washing Day

8. Do You Remember? by Sydney Smith

This unique read-aloud stars a mother and child snuggled up at bedtime, trading favorite memories of picnics, special birthdays, and thunderstorms. As the story goes on, it becomes clear they’ve just experienced a sad move to a new city. The happy memories help them feel strong. While the text is written as a conversation, you can add this to your stack of excellent mentor texts for narrative writing that get kids talking and thinking about their own meaningful memories.

Buy it: Do You Remember?

9. Not Little by Maya Myers

Dot is the smallest person in her family, but she doesn’t hesitate to stand up for the new kid when he’s bullied in the cafeteria. (Clearly, she is NOT LITTLE!) Use this to teach about strong, impactful sentences. Plus, introduce the technique of using a repeating line to show readers what’s important in your story.

Buy it: Not Little

10. Not Perfect by Maya Myers

Dot from Not Little is back in this endearing follow-up story. She has an experience that will be familiar to many kids: She has an amazing vision for a project that turns out to be hard to execute. Even though this story stars younger students, it has endless potential as part of a collection of mentor texts for narrative writing across elementary school. Use it to discuss describing characters, varying sentence lengths, conveying emotions, and engaging readers throughout a problem-resolution narrative arc.

Buy it: Not Perfect

11. Climbing the Volcano: A Journey in Haiku by Curtis Manley

We love showing kids how reading a variety of genres can strengthen their personal narrative writing skills. This series of haiku tells the story of one family’s volcano hike with so many helpful examples of bringing a story to life with rich details. Classrooms could practice retelling the book in traditional narrative form, or try out creating their own collection of personal narrative haiku.

Buy it: Climbing the Volcano: A Journey in Haiku

12. Cape by Kevin Johnson

This poignant story shares how a young boy uses a special cape to help him cope with his grief on the day of his loved one’s funeral. It will be a supportive mentor text for students trying to write about their own challenging experiences. It’s also a masterful example for all writers about how a few carefully chosen words and details can make a big impact on readers.

Buy it: Cape

13. Just Like Millie by Lauren Castillo

If you have kids eager to write “how I got my pet” stories, you’ll definitely want to include this one in your collection of mentor texts for narrative writing. When a girl moves to a new city, making new friends feels overwhelming—until she and her mom go to the animal shelter and meet Millie. Use this as an example of how to string together different significant events that tie to a powerful theme.

Buy it: Just Like Millie

14. Mamá’s Magnificent Dancing Plantitas by Jesús Trejo

This story about Little Jesús’ efforts to take good care of his mother’s precious plants—and his ensuing panic when he knocks one over—makes for an extra-entertaining read-aloud. It’s especially great for modeling how to write in your own unique voice. We also love it for a fun lesson on incorporating speech bubbles into personal narrative stories, or a lesson about strong beginnings and endings. It’s also available in Spanish .

Buy it: Mamá’s Magnificent Dancing Plantitas

15. Marley’s Pride by Joëlle Retener

For years, Marley has wanted to attend their local Pride celebration with their grandparent Zsa Zsa, but the thought of all the noise, people, and chaos has always felt too scary. This year, though, Zsa Zsa’s getting a special award for their work in the transgender community, and Marley works hard to build up the courage to go. This personal narrative is a fantastic example for student writers of how to explain complex emotions within a story.

Buy it: Marley’s Pride

16. Grandad’s Camper by Harry Woodgate

A granddaughter explains all the reasons she loves visiting her grandad’s house—most of all, it’s because of the stories he tells about the many adventures he and Gramps had in their camper. It hasn’t felt the same since Gramps died, but a granddaughter-grandfather camping trip to the beach turns out to be just what everyone needs. This story is lovely for studying how to establish setting in a narrative, and how to include flashback moments effectively.

Buy it: Grandad’s Camper

17. The Secret Fawn by Kallie George and Elly MacKay

As the youngest sibling, a girl feels like she misses everything—including the deer her family saw in the yard. She heads outdoors to try to see it for herself and ends up having an even more special experience. Use this quiet little story to show kids how to focus their narrative on a small but significant event.

Buy it: The Secret Fawn

18. Hiking Day by Anne Rockwell

A girl and her parents take a local hike to enjoy all the sights and sounds of fall. Use this to teach about adding more to a narrative by including details, thoughts, sounds, and dialogue.

Buy it: Hiking Day

19. City Moon by Rachael Cole and Blanca Gómez

A boy and his mom take a walk in the city at night to look for the moon. Add this to the mentor texts for narrative writing you use to teach about bringing the setting to life. Also, show students how to stretch one brief experience into a story that feels important.

Buy it: City Moon

20. A-Train Allen by Lesley Younge

Race along with the main character as he dashes to the train station. (Spoiler: At the end, we discover it’s so he can be on time to chivalrously meet his grandmother.) This is one of the few mentor texts for narrative writing included on this list that isn’t written in the first-person, but it made the cut because it’s such a relatable title for showing kids how to bring a small moment to life using impactful verbs. Verbs are conveniently capitalized on every page!

Buy it: A-Train Allen

21. My Baba’s Garden by Jordan Scott

A boy spends time before and after school with his grandmother each day. He describes his Baba, her tiny house, and her actions with gorgeous precision. This will be one of your new favorite mentor texts for personal narrative writing to show students how carefully chosen words and details can be so powerful.

Buy it: My Baba’s Garden

22. Grandpa Is Here! by Tanya Rosie

Tap into the excitement so many kids feel about being reunited with a special family member. A girl and her parents meet her Iranian grandfather at the airport and bring him home for a family welcome dinner. Add this to your mentor texts for personal narrative writing that shows kids how to include their internal monologue and model “show, don’t tell.”

Buy it: Grandpa Is Here!

23. Abuelita and I Make Flan by Adriana Hernández Bergstrom

Anita is excited to help her grandmother make her birthday dessert—so excited that she breaks her grandmother’s special plate. Can she help enough to make up for it? Use this to show kids how to add flair to their narratives with speech bubbles, labels, and different types of text. Also use it to encourage kids to try to include the narrator’s internal monologue in their writing.

Buy it: Abuelita and I Make Flan

24. When Lola Visits by Michelle Sterling

With rich detail, a girl describes how summer smells, tastes, and feels when her grandmother visits from the Philippines. Use this to teach about adding sensory details to narrative writing.

Buy it: When Lola Visits

25. Oh No, the Aunts Are Here by Adam Rex

They arrive in a flurry of big purses and hugs, with their coconut scent, spit-polishing thumbs, and big dreams of seeing the Quilt Museum. This hilarious account of a visit from a kid’s over-the-top aunts is one of the most fun mentor texts for narrative writing you’ll find for teaching students how to bring characters to life in their stories.

Buy it: Oh No, the Aunts Are Here

26. The Camping Trip by Jennifer K. Mann

City-dweller Ernestine is so excited to go camping with her cousin. It turns out there are a few parts of the great outdoors that take some getting used to, though. Use this to teach about experimenting with speech bubbles and different page layouts as a way to add interest and detail to narrative pieces.

Buy it: The Camping Trip

27. Joy Ride by Sherri Duskey Rinker

Joy finds a beat-up bike and convinces her tinkering granddad to help her fix it up. But when her peers make fun of her new ride, she makes the impulsive decision to push the bike down a steep hill, and then must face the feelings that follow. Use this as a solid example of a more detailed personal narrative that includes dialogue, characters’ thoughts and feelings, and interesting language.

Buy it: Joy Ride

28. Powwow Day by Traci Sorell

It’s the day of the tribal powwow, but River is worried. She’s been sick and can’t join in as she usually does. The healing dance her friends and family perform inspires her to keep getting better. Use this to model the impact of using different sentence lengths. Intentional line breaks and onomatopoeia make the text feel almost like poetry too.

Buy it: Powwow Day

29. Love Birds by Jane Yolen

A boy who loves birds meets a girl who love birds in this sweet tale. When Jon calls out to the owls and gets a response, it’s not from an owl but from a girl named Janet. The two share tales of their bird-watching adventures in detail and bond over their love for birds.

Buy it: Love Birds

30. Soul Food Sunday by Winsome Bingham

Every Sunday the whole extended family gathers at Granny’s for a big meal. Today, Granny invites her grandson to help prepare the family’s favorite dishes for the first time. From grating the cheese to washing the grit from the greens, he learns about each crucial step. Use this to model how to break down an experience into small parts and describe them in more detail.

Buy it: Soul Food Sunday

31. The Electric Slide and Kai by Kelly J. Baptist

As his family prepares to attend a big wedding, Kai desperately wants to impress his granddad with his dance moves so that he’ll give him a “dance nickname” like other members of the family. Use this to teach students to add their thoughts, goals, and emotions to their narrative writing, and to show, not tell, using dialogue and characters’ actions.

Buy it: The Electric Slide and Kai

32. A Thousand White Butterflies by Jessica Betancourt-Perez and Karen Lynn Williams

Isabella recently immigrated to the United States from Colombia and is eager to start school and make friends. But an unexpected snow day changes her big plans. Use this to model writing precise sentences and to show how a character’s emotions change during a story. If you have bilingual students, this is also a nice one to show how to weave in words from another language.

Buy it: A Thousand White Butterflies

33. A Bed of Stars by Jessica Love

This is one of our new favorite mentor texts for personal narrative writing to share when we’re encouraging students to write stories about problems or challenges. When a child feels too anxious to sleep, their dad plans a camping trip in the family pickup truck. Their conversations under the stars help ease bedtime worries. Study excerpts to talk about the power of weaving dialogue into narrative writing.

Buy it: A Bed of Stars

34. Heart Berry Bling by Jenny Kay Dupuis

This story of a girl’s afternoon spent with her grandmother is ideal for nudging upper elementary students to extend their narrative writing. From Granny’s phone chatter to the colors of the beads to the smells and tastes of their fry bread lunch, the sensory details bring Maggie’s time beading and chatting to life. Maggie’s experience making beaded earrings—including her frustration and, eventually, pride—is a helpful example for kids about how to describe a process within a narrative so readers can imagine it.

Buy it: Heart Berry Bling

35. A Space for Me by Cathryn Falwell

An older brother gets tired of sharing his room with his annoying little bro, so he decides to build his own space in his yard. Both brothers learn from the experience and end up finding common ground together. Use this to teach about sticking close to a meaningful theme to write a focused narrative.

Buy it: A Space for Me

36. My Papi Has a Motorcycle by Isabel Quintero

A young girl tells the tale of a motorcycle ride around her neighborhood with her Papi. Use this to model ways to characterize an important person throughout a story. It’s also great for modeling how to use vibrant descriptions and for building energy across the arc of a narrative.

Buy it: My Papi Has a Motorcycle

37. Evelyn Del Ray Is Moving Away by Meg Medina

Two best friends spend a final day together before one of them moves away. This one is full of heart, with equal parts sadness and sweetness. Use this to teach … well, everything. Model strong leads and endings, how to use small details to create a mood, and how to do justice to a particularly emotional experience by telling it step-by-step.

Buy it: Evelyn Del Rey Is Moving Away

38. A Map Into the World by Kao Kalia Yang

A girl moves to a new house and welcomes twin baby brothers to her family. Next door, an elderly neighbor grieves the loss of his wife. Use this to show students how describing what each character does or says in a situation can help create a complete scene. Also explore strategies for conveying the passage of time.

Buy it: A Map Into the World

39. Watercress by Andrea Wang

When a girl’s parents spot watercress growing on the roadside, they pull over to pick it so they can make a meal reminiscent of their native China. The girl hates the whole experience but ends up appreciating it more as she learns what it means to her family. Add this to your mentor texts for narrative writing­ for when you work on revising for tighter, more precise language. Imagine how this narrative might have started out and compare that to its sparse but incredibly powerful final text. Also, share the author’s note, in which she describes the experience that led to this book, to teach about how to choose meaningful narrative topics.

Buy it: Watercress

40. On the Trapline by David A. Robertson and Julie Flett

A boy visits his grandfather’s old trapline in the northern wilderness, which is steeped in memories. Besides being a beautiful example of personal narrative, this is a fascinating exploration of Cree tradition for kids. Use this to model how to include details and dialogue to explain things to readers and for planning an interesting structure for your narrative. (In this case, it’s a repeating line at the end of each section that explains a Cree word.) It’s also a nice example of how to weave memories of the past into a present-tense narrative.

Buy it: On the Trapline

Plus, check out our favorite mentor texts for how-to or procedural writing and opinion writing .

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33 Mentor Texts for Opinion Writing

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• ELEMENTARY TEACHING , LITERACY

500+ Mentor Texts: A Comprehensive List for Elementary Teachers

Mentor texts are an essential component of best practice teaching of literacy skills. This post will explore what mentor texts are, why they are so important for elementary teachers to use, and how to select high quality ones and implement them in your classroom. Read below to learn more!

What is a Mentor Text?

A mentor text, also known as an anchor text, is a book (or other piece of literature) that students can learn from. Teachers use them to model what good readers and writers do. They also use these books to provide real world examples of what authors do, as well as use them as a way to model what good readers do when working with texts. Teachers often reread the story multiple times and spend time exploring specific parts of it with particular goals in mind. The purpose is to study these texts and imitate them or how the teacher interacts with them to improve reading and writing skills.

Why are Mentor Texts Important?

Mentor texts are important because they help students confidently practice new reading and writing skills by giving them a real world example to base their future work off of. They also give teachers the opportunity to expose students to a variety of high quality literature that allow students to see themselves represented, as well as others who are different from them.

How to Choose a Mentor Text

Choosing mentor texts is simple with the help of our Starts With a Story Collection . We selected over 500 high quality picture books to pick from. We also identified which reading strategies, grammar skills, and SEL topics the books best lend themselves to. In each of our book companions, you’ll also find that we wrote a book summary to share with students and 30 writing prompts based on the book, as well as pulled key vocabulary and focus sentences directly from the story. Read below for simple steps for how to choose a mentor text.

1. Open the Starts With a Story Inventory and Alignment Guide

The first step is to open the Starts With a Story Inventory and Alignment Guide . You can get a better view of the list of books by clicking “view larger version” in the bottom right hand corner of the resource below.

2. Select a Strategy, Skill or Topic

Select a specific strategy, skill, or topic you are seeking to teach your students. You can scroll through the Starts With a Story Alignment Guide to get inspiration. Check out some examples below!

Reading Strategy Examples

• Summarizing
• Analyzing Character
• Identifying Author’s Purpose
• Making Predictions
• Visualizing
• Synthesizing
• Comparing and Contrasting

Grammar Skill Examples

• Proper Nouns
• Compound Words
• Contractions
• Interjections
• Alliteration

SEL Topic Examples

• Taking Ownership
• Problem Solving
• Growth Mindset
• Goal Setting
• Conflict Resolution

3. Filter the Starts With a Story Inventory and Alignment Guide

Use the filter tool located in the top left corner of the Starts With a Story Inventory and Alignment Guide to have a list generated of book titles that lend themselves to teaching the specific strategy, skill, or topic you are focusing on.

How to Use the Alignment Guide

How to use mentor texts.

Here are the steps for how to use mentor texts to deliver high quality literacy lessons:

1. Pick a Strategy, Skill or Topic

Select a specific strategy, skill, or topic you are seeking to teach your students. You can scroll through the Starts With a Story Alignment Guide to get inspiration.

2. Select a Book

Find a book that lends itself to teaching the strategy, skill or topic you chose (using our FREE Starts With a Story Inventory and Alignment Guide ). Use the filter tool located in the top left corner of the alignment guide to have a list generated of book titles that lend themselves to teaching the specific strategy, skill, or topic you are focusing on.

3. Plan or Download Lessons

Plan a series of mini lessons based on the mentor text and strategy, skill, or topic you selected. Better yet, save yourself tons of time and scoop up our Starts With a Story book companion based on the book. Each book companion is packed with resources and activities to help you deliver excellent interactive read aloud lessons.

4. Implement the Lessons

The next step is to implement the lessons you created or downloaded from our Starts With a Story Collection . You may find delivering these types of lessons to be best suited for having your students sit in a whole group area with you in front of them.

The last step is to reflect on the experience. How did it go? What worked well? What are ways to improve your lesson?

In closing, we hope you found this post about using mentor texts in your elementary classroom helpful! If you did, then you may also be interested in these posts:

• What Teachers Need to Know about Starts With a Story
• How to Create an Ideal Class Meeting Area for Read Alouds
• How to Do a Read Aloud in Your Elementary Classroom

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Selecting Mentor Texts With Academic, Linguistic, Cultural, and Social-Emotional Responsiveness

While writing personal narratives in fall 2020, Kelsey’s class studied a mentor text: Do Like Kyla (Scholastic) , written by Angela Johnson and illustrated by James Ransome. Johnson’s text includes repetition, dialogue, and sentence structures that students could approximate in their own writing. Additionally, the storyline was one that many children could connect with during the pandemic—siblings spending time together and going on a walk to the store.

Young writers were particularly drawn to the illustrations. During Zoom meetings, they watched a series of instructional art videos with Ransome on KitLit TV. They turned shapes into people, tried a technique with watercolors called “glazing,” and illustrated their own stories. Students prepared artwork, books, and questions to share with the illustrator during a virtual school visit.

Many authors and illustrators—like Ransome—have provided access to their work and engaged with children remotely, allowing deeper connections to form between creator and mentor, child and text. Through recorded read-alouds, students can listen to authors read their own texts. Through virtual visits to schools and recorded interviews, authors and illustrators give students an opportunity to ask questions about the texts they are studying, writerly processes, and craft moves. With growing access to texts and their creators across multiple platforms, mentor texts can be selected with responsiveness to students and their communities.

What is responsive writing instruction?

Responsive writing instruction activates an asset-based mind-set when making modifications to instruction. It requires that teachers see students and answer these questions:

• How do we meet students where they are?
• …with what they have?
• …in ways that celebrate who they are?

• Academic responsiveness : ensuring new skills and content match students’ abilities and goals 
• Linguistic responsiveness : ensuring language(s) used in instruction and in the classroom environment are accessible and inclusive of home language(s)
• Cultural responsiveness : ensuring a diverse and authentic representation of authorship, characters, and content within the texts and resources
• Social-emotional responsiveness : ensuring a safe, supportive, and engaging environment for taking risks and overcoming challenges in the writing process

Responsive instruction within these domains centers students—establishing an evolving and deepening understanding of them as writers and community members and people. 

Knowing and honoring the skills, languages, cultures, perspectives, and interests that students contribute to a classroom community opens up possibilities for planning and teaching with abundance. Planning and teaching that is inclusive. Planning and teaching that is engaging. Planning and teaching that is equitable. 

Responsive mentor text selection across the domains

To evaluate a mentor text for academic responsiveness, consider the following questions: 

• Does the text model many of the genre-specific elements and craft moves that students will learn to include in their writing?
• Will students be able to approximate such text features?    

To evaluate a mentor text for linguistic responsiveness, consider the following questions:

• Is there accessible vocabulary and vocabulary supports (e.g., illustrations, labels, captions, glossary) that develop background knowledge?
• Are there grammatical structures that are at a level at which students can note, emulate, and approximate?
• Does the text feature languages that students speak or immerse students in new languages/dialects?

To evaluate a mentor text for cultural responsiveness, we recommend using this chart, inspired by a presentation from Sonja Cherry-Paul:

Chart adapted from the NCTE presentation “ Building Better Readers Through Book Clubs” by Sonja Cherry-Paul

Because there is no one-size-fits-all curriculum; students’ skills, languages, identities, and interests are diverse; and constraints continue to drive creativity, responsiveness—which has always been essential—is critical now more than ever. For us, the four domains have become a way of thinking, analyzing, and acting, as we continue to ask: How do we meet students where they are, with what they have, in a way that celebrates who they are? Melanie Meehan and Kelsey Sorum will be leading a free webinar, “Responding to Writers, Responding to the World: Instruction That Centers, Celebrates, and Empowers Students,” on March 17, 2021, 5:00–6:00 p.m. ET. Register now to reserve your spot.

Melanie and Kelsey's book,  The Responsive Writing Teacher : A Hands-on Guide to Child-Centered, Equitable Instruction , is available now from Corwin Literacy. Use the discount code  ILA25  for a 25% discount plus free shipping on purchases from corwin.com.

Melanie Meehan  has been the elementary writing and social studies coordinator in Simsbury, Connecticut since 2012. She is a coauthor of Two Writing Teachers , a blog dedicated to the teaching of writing, as well as a regular contributor to Choice Literacy . Her book, Every Child Can Write, was published by Corwin Press in October 2019. Follow her on Twitter at @MelanieMeehan1 .

Kelsey Sorum  spends each day coconstructing joyful, integrated literacy experiences alongside nearly 30 kindergartners at a progressive public school in the Brooklyn neighborhood of New York City where she lives. Kelsey’s work is featured She presents at local and national literacy conferences as an advocate for early childhood education. The Responsive Writing Teacher: A Hands-on Guide to Child-Centered, Equitable Instruction , is her first published book. Connect with her on Twitter at @KelseySorum .

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Curating Mentor Texts That Inspire Student Writers

Mentor texts that reflect the breadth and depth of student experiences not only get students enthusiastic about writing but also help build a sense of belonging at school.

Writing is a complex process that encompasses everything from forming solid ideas to expressing them with creativity and coherence—as well as discovering new insights along the way. And whether your students are mastering the basics or looking to expand their writing abilities, mentor texts can be a useful, “show-don’t-tell” tool that helps them achieve their goals.

Traditionally, mentor texts are exemplary books or essays that you use to model good writing for students as they read, deconstruct, and analyze various facets of the works. These texts aren’t meant to just guide students to develop their vocabulary, sentence structure, and grammar—they also play an essential role in influencing students’ reading comprehension, critical thinking, and imagination . “When the content of learning about the structure of a narrative eventually fades in a student’s rearview mirror, what’s left is the thinking they gained,” writes Kara Douma , a supervisor of English language arts, describing the value of mentor texts.

To make sure the mentor texts in your classroom are engaging, up-to-date, and relevant to an increasingly diverse body of students across the nation, consider implementing a few of the strategies below as you curate your collection of mentor texts.

Broaden the Definition of Writing

Books, magazines, and essay collections aren’t the only places where you can find examples of good writing, as teachers have long known. Good writing exists in an abundance of formats, from songs and poems to comics. Aside from including a variety of formats, your go-to set of mentor texts should reflect a range of writing modes—such as narrative, informational, and opinion—and writing levels, from student work on up to polished texts by professional writers.

Content from genres such as comics and graphic novels is appealing to students since “the fusion of words with images supports literacy development in all learners,” writes Dan Ryder , a former teacher and education director at Mount Blue Campus in Farmington, Maine. Try looking for comics that have a strong narrative arc and let students talk about the texts in pairs or small groups. In Ryder’s high school classroom, students also learn how to create their own comics by interviewing people around them or collecting icons and objects from old magazines.

Teachers also tell us they have used song lyrics or poems to help guide student writing in their classrooms. High school English teacher Elizabeth Jorgensen, for example, uses exemplary poems written by young authors to help her students ease into writing their own. Jorgensen identifies contemporary poets through literary journals and poetry competitions, and she finds that her students relate to these poems more than those from the traditional canon because they allow students “to see themselves in poetry, to realize that they too can write successfully.”

And other educators, like high school English teacher Jori Krulder , have tapped into the ever-growing world of podcasts, letting students do research and present their findings in the form of a podcast instead of a traditional paper. Throughout this process, Krulder’s students listen to professional podcasts as mentor texts, and analyze them using questions such as, “What do the creators do at the beginning, at the end, and during transitions?” or “What is the main idea or insight that this podcast is illuminating?”

While learning the technological ropes can take some time, in the end her students “worked harder on the analysis and synthesis—and did far more thinking—than they would have done if I were the only audience,” Krulder writes.

Connecting to Student Experiences

While good writing takes a lot of practice, you want to send the message that it is within students’ reach by showing how young writers have been successful, so your students see they can learn a lot from their peers.

It’s intuitive to search for mentor texts in prestigious publications that feature established authors, but showing students texts by someone close to their age or writing experience can encourage them to “have greater confidence in their abilities to implement in their own writing the techniques that a peer used,” write Sean Thompson and Deborah K. Reed , researchers at the Iowa Reading Research Center. They suggest supplementing your lessons with works from student publications whenever possible, such as using exemplary poems produced by poetry club members—or you can use poems from student competitions, as Jorgensen does—or movie reviews from the school’s art and culture magazine.

If you haven’t already, begin building an archive of your students’ exemplary work, and let the writers know that their work will be shared—anonymously if preferred—with students in subsequent years. It’s likely that students will work on similar assignments from year to year, and it can be helpful to learn from the collective wisdom of previous peers. Having done this in her elementary classroom, writing teacher Kathleen Neagle Sokolowski explains at Two Writing Teachers that her students are able to “see a model that is closer to what they can approximate and the gap doesn’t feel as wide as it might when comparing their writing to a professional, published piece.”

Effective mentor texts inspire students to experiment with new writing techniques, structure, or plotlines, but they should also provide windows and mirrors—in the metaphor popularized by Rudine Sims Bishop —for students to see both themselves and their peers represented in the texts and their writers. Literacy consultant Stacey Schubitz recommends doing an audit of your mentor texts to ensure that you include books written about and by people from all walks of life, both in your community and around the world.

Realistic Expectations

To help students have realistic expectations of themselves as writers, it will help if your archive of mentor texts—by both students and more experienced writers—includes revisions, so they can see that those stellar essays didn’t start out as stellar. Another way to approach this, writes David Cutler , a history and journalism teacher, is to do your own quick writes for your assignments as students watch, so they can observe your writing process and the kinds of revisions you make even as you’re working on a first draft.

Students see “how I constantly refine my work, moving often between paragraphs to tweak structure and narrative flow. Meanwhile, I field questions about my thought process, such as why I have decided to tweak a clause or reconsider my syntax,” Cutler explains. And “to deter students from feeling deflated by my productivity,” he adds, “I remind them that I’ve had much longer to think about their assignment and that I’ve been teaching these skills for a dozen years.”

Another helpful way to encourage students to use mentor texts as models is to scaffold more advanced, jargon-rich texts, which may prompt students who are often frustrated by difficult vocabulary to “[give] up as soon as they come across an unfamiliar word,” writes former teacher Christina Gil . She recommends spending a few minutes going over any words that they might find discouraging, as well as being patient as students attempt to understand and implement the techniques they learn from mentor texts.

Mentor texts that reflect the breadth and depth of student experiences not only get students enthusiastic about writing but also help build a sense of belonging at school. The more students see themselves in what they're trying to emulate, the more engaged they will be as aspiring writers.

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What Is a Mentor Text? Everything Teachers Need to Know + Handy Book Lists

Written by Hilary Dorr

If you haven’t started using mentor texts in your classroom yet, grab a coffee and pull up a chair. There’s a lot to cover! The teacher team at Teach Starter has pulled together their best advice, tips and mentor texts you can use with your elementary students to enhance their learning.

You do not have to be an English teacher to benefit from the helpfulness of mentor texts. Whether you’re teaching a specific writing style, a mathematical concept or poetry , these texts are great for all subject areas. Be sure to scroll to the bottom for some book titles you can add to your teacher wishlist or check out from the school library.

What Is a Mentor Text?

First and foremost, what is a mentor text? Simply put, a mentor text is a piece of literature students can read and reread for specific learning purposes. Mentor texts are normally short and engaging and provide context that students can relate to.

Other characteristics and uses of mentor texts include:

• Teaching life lessons and skills such as compassion and inclusion
• Teaching students to read with a writer’s eye (e.g., sentence structure or word choice)
• Acting as a foundation to learn or imitate a specific writing form
• Demonstrating what good writers do
• Helping students take risks in their writing and develop their skills

Mentor texts should be at a level that students can read independently or with some support. They can come in many forms, such as:

So is it proven that mentor texts actually help students? Yes! A study from the Journal of Research in Childhood Education found that students ages 7-11 improved their quality of writing from pretest to post-test when teachers used mentor texts .

How to Use Mentor Texts

Now that you know these handy teaching tools, let’s look at how to use them.

There are many ways to use mentor texts with your students, depending on your classroom goals. They can be the focus of your next writing or reading workshop or a theme for a week of reading activities and exercises.

Here are some ideas to use in your own teaching:

Understand Different Writing Structures

Mentor texts can help students understand the structure of different writing styles. Have your students read your chosen mentor texts, and then discuss how the author introduced the topic, developed the main idea , concluded the text etc.

Teach Specific Writing Skills

Pair students together with a mentor text to teach specific writing skills such as descriptive language, sensory details or dialogue. Have your kids use sticky notes to identify examples of these skills, and discuss how the author’s choices affected the reader’s experience.

Use as a Model for Student Writing

Use a mentor text as a guide for students to write their own text using the author’s structure and different craft techniques.

Introduce a New Type of Writing

Want to introduce a new type of writing, such as persuasive essays , personal narratives or informational texts? Grab a mentor text to help! Multiple text examples will help students make connections and identify characteristics of the particular genre you’re covering in class.

If you work with younger students, picture books can serve as helpful mentor texts in your lessons — from learning how to make predictions and inferences to learning about how characters change over the course of a book.

Tips to Keep in Mind When Using Mentor Texts

When choosing and using mentor texts in your classes, keep these tips in mind:

• Use a morning meeting to review any new vocabulary words or definitions that will pop up in your mentor texts. This will give your students a jump start in understanding the text and help them feel more confident.
• Present the mentor text by reading aloud in addition to having students read the text themselves. Students who struggle with reading may benefit more from hearing it told aloud.
• Don’t be afraid to use multiple examples! There are handfuls of books and mentor texts that can fulfill your goals, whether you want to teach point of view or text structures .

Questions Students Should Ask

Before reading or reading aloud, discuss with your students what they should be listening or looking for as they absorb the story or the text. Here are some examples of questions you can either write on the board or discuss as a group after reading:

• What is the genre of the mentor text?
• What is the main idea or topic of the mentor text?
• What is the author’s purpose for writing this piece?
• How is the text organized or structured?
• What writing techniques or strategies does the author use to engage the reader?
• What impact do these techniques have on the reader?
• How could the author improve this piece?
• How can I use the mentor text as a model for my own writing?

Examples of Mentor Texts

Ready to dive into some teacher-favorite titles you can add to your classroom library or ask the school librarian to pull aside for your students? We’ve made it easy and categorized them for you depending on your lesson’s goals! Read on for books you can use in a variety of ELA lessons and even your math class.

Mentor Texts for Point of View:

• Ruby Bridges: Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges
• The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt
• Trombone Shorty by Troy Andrews
• The Sandwich Swap by Queen Rania of Jordan Al Abdullah
• The Tree Lady by H. Joseph Hopkins
• Three Hens and a Peacock by Lester L. Laminack
• When Marian Sang: The True Recital of Marian Anderson by Pam Muñoz Ryan
• Creepy Carrots! by Aaron Reynolds
• Believe Me, Goldilocks Rocks! by Nancy Loewen
• Ivan: The Remarkable True Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla by Katherine Applegate
• Grace for President by Kelly DiPucchio

Mentor Texts for Making Connections:

• Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson
• Fred Stays With Me! by Nancy Coffelt
• Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst
• The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig
• Ira Sleeps Over by Bernard Waber
• Enemy Pie by Derek Munson
• The Stray Dog by Marc Simont
• The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant
• Evelyn Del Ray is Moving Away by Meg Medina
• The Thing Lou Couldn’t Do by Ashley Spires

Mentor Texts for Making Inferences:

• Stellaluna by Janell Cannon
• The Boy Who Grew Flowers by Jen Wojtowicz
• The Stranger by Chris Van Allsburg
• The Memory Coat by Elvira Woodruff
• Tuesday by David Wiesner
• The Bracelet by Yoshiko Uchida
• Rosie’s Glasses by Dave Whamond
• City Dog, Country Frog by Mo Willems
• The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg
• The Bear Ate Your Sandwich by Julia Sarcone-Roach
• Two Bad Ants by Chris Van Allsburg
• Where Are You Going Manyoni? by Catherine Stock
• Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold

Mentor Texts for Visualizing

• Twilight Comes Twice by Ralph Fletcher
• The Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña
• A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon
• Fireflies by Julie Brinckloe
• Where Butterflies Grow by Joanne Ryder
• Bedhead by Margie Palatini
• Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett
• The Storm Book by Charlotte Zolotow
• The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires
• Owl Moon by Jane Yolen

Mentor Texts for Teaching Character Traits

• The Smart Cookie by Jory John
• Not Norman: A Goldfish Story by Kelly Bennett
• The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson
• Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
• Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco
• Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes
• Julius, the Baby of the World by Kevin Henkes
• The Recess Queen by Alexis O’Neill
• Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts
• Beatrice Doesn’t Want To by Laura Numeroff
• Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon by Patty Lovell and Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
• Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China by Ai-Ling Louie
• Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman

Mentor Text for Text Structures

• Hurricanes! by Gail Gibbons
• Give Bees a Chance by Bethany Barton
• Sincerely, Emerson: A Girl, Her Letter, and the Helpers All Around Us by Emerson Weber
• The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, a Young Civil Rights Activist by Cynthia Levinson
• Henry’s Freedom Box: A True Story From the Underground Railroad by Ellen Levine
• So You Want to be President? by Judith St. George
• What Do You Do When Something Wants to Eat You? by Steve Jenkins
• Buzzing With Questions: The Inquisitive Mind of Charles Henry Turner by Janice N. Harrington
• What’s the Difference Between a Turtle and a Tortoise? by Trisha Sue Speed Shaskan
• A Place for Butterflies by Melissa Stewart
• What if You Had an Animal Tail? by Sandra Markle
• Milk: From Cow to Carton by Aliki
• She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World by Chelsea Clinton
• Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade by Melissa Sweet

Picture Book Mentor Texts to Teach Math

• How Much is a Million? by David M Schwartz
• 100 Bugs! by Kate Narita
• Inch by Inch by Leo Lionni
• 1, 2, 3, to the Zoo by Eric Carle
• Ten on a Twig by Lo Cole
• Spaghetti and Meatballs for All! by Marilyn Burns
• Sir Cumference and the First Round Table by Cindy Neuschwander
• Math Potatoes: Mind-Stretching Brain Food by Greg Tang
• Monster Math by Anne Miranda
• Billions of Bricks: A Counting Book About Building by Kurt Cyrus
• On the Launch Pad: A Counting Book About Rockets by Michael Dahl

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Make Learning Fun

The Best Mentor Texts For Teaching Personal Narratives

Are you looking for picture book ideas for your next writing unit? Perhaps you’re about to teach personal narrative writing to your students and you’re in dire need of ideas and recommendations for story books. Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered with the best mentor texts for teaching personal narratives!

Why use personal narrative mentor texts?

First up, let’s just acknowledge the importance of using mentor texts when teaching writing. The simple truth is that WE know what we expect our students to do, but our students have no idea! Students need to be exposed to examples of the writing genre that we teach.

Mentor texts aren’t just great for exposing students to the genre, they are also powerful for explicitly teaching the structure and features. For example, we can show examples of characterization, setting, problems and solutions. We can show an author’s use of dialogue or transition words. Overall, mentor texts can be really powerful.

Let’s dive in to my recommendations! FYI, if you’re looking for a personal narrative wriitng unit, check out my second grade unit here or my third grade unit here.

Here’s some pictures of my 2nd grade personal narrative s writing unit.

Here’s some pictures of my 3rd grade personal narratives writing unit!

Let’s take a look at the best mentor texts for teaching personal narratives. Please note that this blog post features Amazon affiliate links (if you purchase, I make a small commission, at no cost to you).

‘Saturday’ by Oge Mora

In this heartfelt story, a mother and daughter look forward to their special Saturday routine together every single week. But this Saturday, one thing after another goes wrong – ruining story time, salon time, picnic time and the puppet show they’d been looking forward to going to all week. Mom is nearing a meltdown…until her loving daughter reminds her that being together is the most important thing of all.

Teaching idea – A weekend recount pairs well with this storybook. Ask your students to write a personal narrative about what they did last Saturday.

You can check out the storybook here .

‘Ralph Tells A Story’ By Abby Hanlon

Nothing ever happens to Ralph. So every day when it’s time to write stories, Ralph thinks really hard. He stares at his paper. He stares at the ceiling. But he has no stories! With the help of his classmates, Ralph realizes that a great story can be about something very little . . . and that maybe he really does have some stories to tell.

Teaching idea – If you are tired of your students wailing, ‘I don’t know what to write about!”, this story book is what you need. It’s great for when your students are stuck for writing ideas. It can accompany your lesson about brainstorming narrative ideas.

You can check out the story book here .

‘A Moment In Time’ By Jennifer Butenas

A fun loving story in rhythm and rhyme about a family of four and their moment in time. It’s a balmy, summer Cape Cod day and this visiting family is savoring every moment. Experience the delight, the joy and exhilaration a mindful moment can bring!

Teaching idea – This picture book is ideal for teaching about small moments. Ask your students to share and write about small moments from their lives.

You can check out the picture book here .

‘Roller Coaster’ By Marla Frazee

This exhilarating amusement park visit begins with a line of prospective riders, eagerly awaiting their turn . . . with at least one person who has never done this before. Zooming, swerving, dipping, and diving, this delightful story featuring a breathtaking ride and a hilarious range of reactions, will help readers lose their roller coaster anxiety.

Teaching idea – This is the perfect mentor text for teaching small moments. Encourage your students to pick a small moment and really zoom in on the details, just like in the book!

You can check out the mentor text here .

‘The Snowy Day’ By Ezra Jack Keats

No book has captured the magic and sense of possibility of the first snowfall better than The Snowy Day. Universal in its appeal, the story has become a favorite of millions, as it reveals a child’s wonder at a new world, and the hope of capturing and keeping that wonder forever.

Teaching idea – This storybook pairs well with a lesson about positive memorable moments. Get your students to brainstorm happy small moments and share the details.

Psst! If you’re a 3rd grade teacher, I’ve got something extra special for you! Click here to grab a FREE lesson plan, graphic organizer, and poster that goes well with this book.

‘Knuffle Bunny’ By Mo Willems

Trixie, Daddy, and Knuffle Bunny take a trip to the neighborhood Laundromat. But the exciting adventure takes a dramatic turn when Trixie realizes somebunny was left behind…Using a combination of muted black-and-white photographs and expressive illustrations, this stunning book tells a brilliantly true-to-life tale about what happens when Daddy’s in charge and things go terribly, hilariously wrong.

Teaching idea – This story book pairs well with a lesson about negative memorable moments. Get your students to brainstorm sad or angry small moments and share the details.

‘Stella Tells Her Story’ By Janiel M. Wagstaff

Stella and her classmates were excitedly sharing stories before class, prompting Ms. Merkley to teach a lesson on how to write narratives, or stories. Ms. M tells explains that they have to choose a topic first, then organize their stories by telling what happened first, next, and last. Students will learn along with Stella as she goes through the writing process of brainstorming, planning, drafting, publishing, and finally sharing her story.

This is definitely one of the best mentor texts for teaching personal narratives!

Teaching idea – This picture book is great for teaching the structure of a narrative. You can introduce your students to the idea of writing a beginning, middle, and end.

‘Jabari Jumps’ By Gaia Cornwall

Jabari is definitely ready to jump off the diving board. He’s finished his swimming lessons and passed his swim test, and he’s a great jumper, so he’s not scared at all. “Looks easy,” says Jabari, watching the other kids take their turns. But when his dad squeezes his hand, Jabari squeezes back. In a sweetly appealing tale of overcoming your fears, newcomer Gaia Cornwall captures a moment between a patient and encouraging father and a determined little boy you can’t help but root for.

Teaching idea – This mentor text is about father and son, which is a great way to introduce characterization to your students.

‘Owl Moon’ By Jane Yolen

Late one winter night a little girl and her father go owling. The trees stand still as statues and the world is silent as a dream. Whoo-whoo-whoo, the father calls to the mysterious nighttime bird. Distinguished author Jane Yolen has created a gentle, poetic story that lovingly depicts the special companionship of a young child and her father as well as humankind’s close relationship to the natural world. 

Teaching idea – This storybook is a great accompaniment to a personal narrative lesson. It’s ideal for teaching students about setting and they can discuss the setting in the book.

‘Come On, Rain’ By Karen Hesse

Come on, rain! Tess pleads to the sky as listless vines and parched plants droop in the endless heat. Up and down the block, cats pant while heat wavers off tar patches in the broiling alleyway. More than anything, Tess hopes for rain. And when it comes, she and her friends are ready for a surprising joyous celebration.

Teaching idea – This story book is ideal as a lesson warm up when you are teaching about problems in a personal narrative. Ask your students about a time where they have had a problem, like getting hurt or losing something.

‘Fireflies’ By Julie Brinckloe

A young boy is proud of having caught a jar full of fireflies, which seems to him like owning a piece of moonlight, but as the light begins to dim he realizes he must set the insects free or they will die.

Teaching idea – This picture book is perfect for introducing the idea of solutions in a personal narrative. You can ask students to write about solutions to problems they’ve faced.

‘Nothing Ever Happens On 90th Street’ By Roni Schotter

Eva, a would-be writer, sits on her New York City stoop with her notebook, waiting for something to happen. She has been given a homework assignment to record goings-on in her Manhattan neighborhood. A hilarious sequence of happenings ensues and Eva learns that you can find inspiration for writing anywhere if you observe carefully enough.

Teaching idea – This mentor text pairs well with a brainstorming lesson. When your students are planning what to write about for their personal narrative, this book will be a great warm-up.

‘The Best Story’ By Eileen Spinelli

The library is having a contest for the best story, and the quirky narrator of this story just has to win that rollercoaster ride with her favourite author! But what makes a story the best?

Her brother Tim says the best stories have lots of action. Her father thinks the best stories are the funniest. And Aunt Jane tells her the best stories have to make people cry. A story that does all these things doesn’t seem quite right, though, and the one thing the whole family can agree on is that the best story has to be your own.

Teaching idea – As your students are planning their personal narratives, read them this storybook as a lesson warm-up. It opens up the discussion about what a ‘good’ story is.

‘Kate And Nate Are Running Late’ By Kate Egan

Being on time is an art–an art most of families have yet to master. From spilling coffee to misplacing keys, we’ve all dealt with the many things that can derail our morning routines. This humorous depiction of chaotic mornings is oh, so true. Kate and her two children, Nate, and his older sister, Maddie, have all overslept. How will they EVER make it to school and work on time dressed, fed, and organized?

Teaching idea – This story book pairs well with a lesson about endings/solutions/conclusions. Ask students what happened at the end of the story.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about the best mentor texts for teaching personal narratives!

If you’re a 2nd or 3rd grade teacher, be sure to check out my personal narrative writing units!

Click here to check out the 2nd grade unit.

Click here to check out the 3rd grade unit!

P.S. Click here to grab free activities from my free resource library!

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EL Education Curriculum

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• ELA G4:M4:U2:L11

Writing a Literary Essay: Drafting Proof Paragraph 1

In this lesson, daily learning targets, ongoing assessment.

• Technology and Multimedia

Supporting English Language Learners

Universal design for learning, closing & assessments, you are here:.

• ELA Grade 4
• ELA G4:M4:U2

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These are the CCS Standards addressed in this lesson:

• RL.4.1: Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
• RL.4.2: Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the text.
• W.4.2: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.
• W.4.2a: Introduce a topic clearly and group related information in paragraphs and sections; include formatting (e.g., headings), illustrations, and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.
• W.4.2b: Develop the topic with facts, definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples related to the topic.
• W.4.2c: Link ideas within categories of information using words and phrases (e.g., another, for example, also, because) .
• W.4.2d: Use precise language and domain-specific vocabulary to inform about or explain the topic.
• W.4.4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
• W.4.6: With some guidance and support from adults, use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing as well as to interact and collaborate with others; demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to type a minimum of one page in a single sitting.
• W.4.9: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
• W.4.9a: Apply grade 4 Reading standards to literature (e.g., "Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text [e.g., a character's thoughts, words, or actions].").
• I can write Proof Paragraph 1 of my literary essay, elaborating on evidence to support the theme I have identified. (RL.4.1, RL.4.2, W.4.2a, W.4.2b, W.4.2c, W.4.2d, W.4.4, W.4.6, W.4.9a) 
• Literary essay Proof Paragraph 1 (RL.4.1, RL.4.2, W.4.2a, W.4.2b, W.4.2c, W.4.2d, W.4.4, W.4.6, W.4.9a)

• Prepare technology necessary for students to word-process their essays (see Technology and Multimedia).
• Consider working with a technology teacher to help students word-process their essays.
• Post: Learning targets and applicable anchor charts (see materials list).

Tech and Multimedia

• Work Time A: Prepare technology and tools necessary for students to word-process their essays, one device per student.
• Continue to use the technology tools recommended throughout Modules 1-3 to create anchor charts to share with families; to record students as they participate in discussions and protocols to review with students later and to share with families; and for students to listen to and annotate text, record ideas on note-catchers, and word-process writing.

Supports guided in part by CA ELD Standards 4.I.B.6, 4.1.C.10, 4.1.C.11, 4.1.C.12, 4.II.A.1, 4.II.A.2, 4.II.C.6, and 4.II.C.7

Important points in the lesson itself

• The basic design of this lesson supports ELLs by following a similar routine of reading a chapter of The Hope Chest in triads and identifying new themes as in previous lessons, and providing opportunities to work closely with essay structure, building on their understanding one paragraph at a time. In this lesson, students focus exclusively on Proof Paragraph 1 for their literary essay. Students continue to benefit from the color-coding system established in prior lessons for visual support, and from building on the work in previous lessons of analyzing a model, planning an essay, and drafting an introductory paragraph.
• ELLs may find it challenging to keep pace with the class as they read a chapter of The Hope Chest , as well as plan and write their first proof paragraph. Additionally, they may find it challenging to determine the most relevant evidence and elaboration for each paragraph. Consider working with a small group after working with the class to help students find evidence and create their paragraph together. The group can begin writing as an interactive writing experience and finish independently.

Levels of support

For lighter support:

• Challenge students to vary the linking words and phrases they use to expand their sentences during Work Time B, connecting elaboration to evidence. Invite them to add new words to their Linking Words and Phrases sheet as they use them (e.g., for instance , additionally , furthermore ).

For heavier support:

• Consider reading Chapter 18 aloud to students before the lesson, and inviting students to practice reading aloud a section of the chapter that they can then be responsible for reading in their triads in Opening A.
• During Work Time A, consider providing an outline for students to organize their first proof paragraphs. (Example: [Introduction to Point 1] __________. [Evidence #1] _________.  [Elaboration #1] __________. [Evidence #2] _________.  [Elaboration #2] __________.)
• Multiple Means of Representation (MMR): Continue to reduce barriers to metacognition in this lesson by providing a visual reminder of the focus for each activity.
• Multiple Means of Action and Expression (MMAE): Continue to support students' ability to appropriately express knowledge about the content by varying the options for composition and communication. Match students' abilities and the demands of the writing task by offering alternatives for students to express their ideas (e.g., partial or full dictation during independent writing).
• Multiple Means of Engagement (MME): Continue to support students in limiting distractions during independent writing. Consider breaking independent writing time into parts and offering breaks at appropriate intervals.

Key:  Lesson-Specific Vocabulary (L); Text-Specific Vocabulary (T); Vocabulary Used in Writing (W)

• evidence, proof paragraph, elaborating (L)
• The Hope Chest (from Unit 1, Lesson 1; one per student)
• Working to Become Ethical People anchor chart (begun in Module 1)
• Close Readers Do These Things anchor chart (begun in Module 1)
• Vocabulary logs (from Module 1; one per student)
• Theme anchor charts (begun in Unit 1, Lesson 6; added to during Opening A; see supporting materials)
• Theme Anchor Charts: Chapter 18 (example, for teacher reference)
• Devices (one per student; used by students to type their essay in Work Time A)
• Literary essay (begun in Lesson 10; added to during Work Time A; one per student)
• Model Literary Essay: "Do Something Meaningful" (from Lesson 9; one per student and one to display)
• Painted Essay(r)template (from Module 1; one per student)
• Essay planners (from Lesson 10; one per student)
• Informative Writing Checklist (from Lesson 9; one per student)
• Informative Writing Checklist (from Lesson 10; example, for teacher reference)
• Linking Words and Phrases (from Module 1; one per student)

Each unit in the 3-5 Language Arts Curriculum has two standards-based assessments built in, one mid-unit assessment and one end of unit assessment. The module concludes with a performance task at the end of Unit 3 to synthesize their understanding of what they accomplished through supported, standards-based writing.

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Bell Ringers

Mentor texts: when and how to use them in your ela lessons.

I’m a huge fan of using mentor texts in the classroom because I’ve seen what they can do. Traditionally in the classroom, students are given the definition of a concept, and then they jump straight into applying it. This leads to a lot of students feeling lost and teachers feeling frustrated when students can’t work independently. Mentor texts and mentor sentences make learning more tangible and support students’ understanding of a concept, so they can better apply it on their own.

What Are Mentor Texts?

Mentor texts act as a model of a skill you want to teach students. They can be sentences or passages pulled from books and essays, or you can write them yourself. They also provide an example of a skill or strategy, so students can see the concept in action. 

For example, you could write an expository essay and use it as a mentor text when talking about how to write a thesis. Or you could use an excerpt from a book when talking about figurative language. 

Why You Should Use Mentor Texts

Using mentor texts can deepen students’ understanding and make it easier for them to apply their knowledge. These texts model the concept that you’re talking about and show students exactly what that concept looks like, which takes many skills from abstract to tangible. 

But it’s not just my opinion. Research has shown that teachers who used mentor texts saw improved quality of writing, like better word choice, sentence fluency, and grammar.

Always Start with a Mentor Text

Traditionally when planning your unit, you probably start with the skill and think about what students need to understand. But what if you started with the mentor text?

When you start with a mentor text, your instruction is led by modeling. You are forming your instruction around an example that students can analyze and emulate. It’s similar to watching a YouTube video because you commit to a DIY project. Students need to understand where they are going and how it looks before they can fully grasp a concept.

Once you’ve decided on the mentor text you want to use for a lesson, you can scaffold backward. For example, you might give students a mentor text that shows the proper use of commas in a series. First, students analyze the text and notice the commas. Then, they create a set of rules based on what they see. Then, you teach them what commas in a series are. And lastly, they create their own sentence using the mentor text as a model.

4 Examples of Starting with the Mentor Text

You can use mentor texts in so many ways in your classroom. They can be used when introducing a topic as a whole class, in small groups, or even in book clubs. I recommend using them when introducing any new skill and practicing concepts.

Here are a few examples of how I would start with mentor texts when planning. This might feel a little backward at first, but after some practice, it will feel natural.

#1 In a Writing Unit

I think mentor texts are particularly powerful when used before a writing unit. So often, students are taught about writing concepts in a very vague and general way. For example, giving them the definition of a thesis, but not actually showing them what it looks like. It can be hard for students to figure out how to apply the concepts to their own writing. 

When you start by choosing a mentor text, you are really asking yourself, “What do I want my students writing to look like? What am I expecting them to do?” You can then write your own essay or find one that is a good example of what students will write.

Next, look at your unit and decide how you’ll use the mentor text throughout. In the beginning, students will probably explore the essay as a whole. (What do you notice about this essay?) Then, students will look at specific sections depending on what you are teaching. (How do they use evidence in this paragraph?) If I was teaching a literary analysis unit , for example, I’d start by showing the essay I wrote and asking them to note the elements of literary analysis.

#2 When Teaching a Grammar Skill

Grammar skills are another example of when mentor texts can be extremely helpful. Often with grammar, mentor sentences are used to show the skill in action. You can share these mentor sentences when you introduce a new grammar concept and continue practicing with them during your warm-up.

Start by choosing a sentence that best demonstrates the grammar skill. Then, have students explore the sentence and construct their own knowledge. For example, ask students what they notice about the use of dialogue in terms of effectiveness and formatting. Then, have them apply their knowledge to their own writing.

#3 During a Poetry Unit

I also like using mentor texts during my poetry units. One of my favorite ways to do this was to show students a new type of poem, like an ode, without telling them exactly what it is. I have students read and discuss the poem and then draw conclusions about what an ode is. 

The same goes for figurative language. You could simply teach the definitions, or you could find mentor sentences that model the figurative language in action. Then, have students read these mentor texts and analyze the figurative language. (Why did the author use that? What does it mean?)

Of course, one of the most important aspects is having students apply this knowledge. Using the mentor texts and sentences as an example, they can write their own poem using figurative language.

#4 With a Book Tasting

If you haven’t tried a book tasting yet, maybe this will convince you. When teaching a genre-specific unit or elements, set our various examples of mentor texts within that genre and have students note the things these books have in common. This way, students have to do some critical thinking and use their analytical skills to uncover the elements of a genre – as opposed to simply telling them what to expect from the genre.

In short, mentor texts are critical to ELA classrooms. They provide a roadmap to understanding different writing styles, let students see various skills in action, and help students craft their own writing. Mentor texts can be found online, inside novels, or you can create them. We are surrounded by high-quality writing every day, and the more we call our students’ attention to it, the more natural it will be for them to apply ELA skills independently.

• Read more about: Middle School Writing

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Trending Post : Books Made Into Movies

100+ Children’s Book Mentor Texts

What is a mentor text.

Mentor texts are books that model for students what good readers and writers do — the craft and skills involved in reading and writing.

Mentor texts give children authentic, real-world examples of different kinds of writing from which they can learn. Or they can provide examples of reading structures and skills.

Teachers focus on any specific craft moves in writing or any specific strategies and skills in reading.

Mentor texts can be almost any piece of writing  including picture books, chapter books, articles, nonfiction books, magazines, and poems.

The experts at the National Writing Project say, “ Mentor texts are pieces of literature that you — both teacher and student — can return to and reread for many different purposes.  They are texts to be studied and imitated… Mentor texts help students to take risks and be different writers tomorrow than they are today. It helps them to try out new strategies and formats. They should be [texts] that students can relate to and can even read independently or with some support. “

Get more information on using mentor texts here.

When we ask children to read published books and articles, it gives them examples they can learn from. When we read critically / metacognitively, we can notice how other writers write and the specific craft techniques that writers use.

I’m continuing to make lists for teachers and homeschoolers to use for different topics.

How to Use Mentor Texts in the Classroom

How To Use Mentor Texts in the Classroom

Read mentor texts to study things like genre or text structure such as problem and solution as well as practice reading strategies and skills such as inference.

Most authors will tell you that the NUMBER ONE thing you can do to become a better writer is  to be a READER. What’s even more powerful is LEARNING TO READ LIKE A WRITER. That’s where mentor texts benefit our students.

We can use picture books, chapter books, nonfiction, middle-grade books, and so forth to show growing writers examples of writing craft.

First, we find exceptionally written children’s books that are  mentor texts for a writing concept. You might want to teach thinking of interesting IDEAS, describing with VIVID VERBS, writing with SENSORY DETAILS, or concluding with SATISFYING endings. You’ll read the book, notice the craft strategy, and label where you see it. Explicitly.  (Where are the vivid verbs, for example?)

And finally, you will help kids apply the strategies from the mentor text to their own writing.

Mentor Text Book Lists for Elementary Classrooms

Each list focuses on one important text structure, craft move, literacy strategy, or reading skill.

Cause and Effect

Character Arc

Character Traits

Compare and Contrast

Description (Sensory Details)

How-To / Procedural Writing

Letter Writing

Onomatopoeia

Perspective

Personal Narrative

Personification

Point of View

Problem / Solution

Positive Character Traits

Reading Workshop Launch

Sequencing (Beginning, Middle, End)

Similes & Metaphors (Figurative Language)

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Writing a Story (Ideas, Plot, Setting, Characters, Drafting, etc.)

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“Keep A Poem In Your Pocket”

In her first two stanzas, Beatrice Schenk de Regniers writes:

Keep a poem in your pocket 

And a picture in your head 

And you’ll never feel lonely 

At night when you’re in bed. 

The little poem will sing to you 

The little picture bring to you 

A dozen dreams to dance to you 

At night when you’re in bed.

Notice how she incorporates rhythm, alliteration, and personification to choreograph this beloved poem. Her fanciful use of language challenges readers to keep a poem close to heart. In fact, on April 29 th , National Keep a Poem in Your Pocket Day, lovers of poetry will celebrate the genre that cuts right to the heart, the soul, and the funny bone!

So how is poetry able to accomplish so much?

Poets like de Regniers, Jane Yolen, and even Dr. Seuss create pictures and arouse emotional responses using literary devices such as alliteration, rhyme, repetition, similes, imagery, and personification in their poetry. They take readers on journeys off to bitter, cold, winter nights where owls howl and wild winds blow or to a musty old basement in Nazi-occupied France where two girls bravely hide. Sometimes a poet’s journey takes readers on a funny detour to the side of a road where a man’s truck is stuck while he has bad luck.  

If I Never Forever Endeavor by Holly Meade

Poetry elements: rhyme, repetition, and onomatopoeia

A young bird rests safely in its nest until the daring day that it spreads its wings to fly the coop! This fledgling considers the possible successes and failures of his future first flight with extensive use of rhyme, repetition, and onomatopoeia.

Some Smug Slug by Pamela Duncan Edwards

Poetry element: alliteration

Alliteration is at the forefront of Some Smug Slug ! This slug encounters different animals that try to stop him from climbing up a slippery slope. This mentor text will make students learn and laugh at the same time.

Teacher tip: Have your students create alliterative stories for their favorite animals. Dogs digging deep holes, cats crouching and crawling, and tigers tugging terrifically!  

Slop Goes the Soup: A Noisy Warthog Word Book by Pamela Duncan Edwards

Poetry element: Onomatopoeia 

This clumsy warthog tries to keep his soup from slopping but ends up making a huge mess in the whole house! Students can use this clever text to learn how onomatopoeias sound like their meaning to produce this warthog’s slippery story.

Teacher tip: Ask students to reflect on what type of onomatopoeias they’ve done today. Knocking on doors, sliding their chairs, or typing on computers are just a few examples! 

There is a Flower at the Tip of My Nose Smelling Me by Alice Walker

Poetry elements: personification and imagery

This gentle and beautiful Pulitzer Prize-winning book contains personification and imagery. The poetic text is accompanied with radiant images to celebrate the connections between the self, nature, and creativity!

Teacher tip: Create an activity for students to personify an object in the room. A chair can hold a student while they read and write, while a door lets people in and out of the classroom!

My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss

Poetry elements: imagery 

This Dr. Seuss book lacks the whimsical theme of his classics and instead combines text with atmospheric illustrations to explain the wide range of human moods and emotions. The imagery is simple, yet powerful, in conveying this complex topic to young and old readers alike.

Teacher tip: Select words of imagery used throughout the book and then use them in a coloring activity. Provide coloring utensils and paper to the students and then read out the words one-by-one. Ask students to choose colors that correspond with that word, and then ask them how it makes sense to describe the emotion with that imagery. Do the colors match the ones in the book, or do they differ? This can create an entire conversation about both imagery and the complexity of how emotions are experienced by individuals.

My Truck is Stuck by Kevin Lewis

Poetry element: rhyme

Students will learn about the elements of rhyme in this light-hearted mentor text. The main character’s truck is stuck, what rotten luck! Will anyone help him make his stuck truck go again?

The Hungry Coat by Demi

Poetry element: theme

This Turkish folk tale would make for a great lesson in learning about the poetry element of theme! The wise Turkish hero, Nasrettin Hoca, attends a banquet in a worn-out coat. The guests ignore Hoca until he returns wearing a silk coat, which he begins to feed because “it was the coat not me that you invited to the banquet.” Themes of inner strength and self-expression are abundant in this culturally rich mentor text.

The Z was Zapped by Chris Van Allsburg

The Z was Zapped is perfect for students to learn the effect of alliteration! This alphabet “play” features 26 acts, in which each letter has its own alliterative transformation to help students learn the power of this poetry element!

Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story

Poetry elements: imagery, repetition

Fry Bread depicts a modern Native American family through imagery and repetition of what the dish of fry bread means to their culture. “Fry bread is food. Fry bread is time. Fry bread is nation.” The repetition serves to bring emphasis to the deep connections between culture and food. This text is rich in poetry elements and also shines light on Native American culture and history.

My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother by Patricia Polacco

Poetry element: similes

Sibling rivalry is taken to the next level when Patricia wishes on a shooting star to be able to do anything to show her older brother up! This is a light-hearted and entertaining tale of competitiveness that features a plethora of similes.

Teacher tip: After reading this story, have students create their own examples of similes about their siblings, parents, or friends.

Owl Moon by Jane Yolen

Poetry elements: tone and similes

Owl Moon is rich with luscious imagery to create the tone of a winter night when a little girl and her father go looking for owls in the woods. Told in poetic verse, similes and word choice help craft the atmospheric and gentle tone of this award-winning picture book.

My Friend Earth

Poetry element: personification

This is a love letter addressed to our friend, Earth! Earth is personified to tend to animals, pour down rain, and sprinkle snow. Aside from using this text to teach personification, it would make a great addition to the classroom for an Earth Day read-aloud!

The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge by Hildegarde H. Swift

A red lighthouse on the Manhattan bank of the Hudson River is brought to life in this personified tale. The lighthouse proudly protects boats from running ashore, but when a great, gray bridge is built behind it, the little lighthouse begins to feel inadequate in comparison. In addition to the personification element of this story, students will also learn that small can still be powerful!

The Butterfly by Patricia Polacco

Poetry element: metaphors and similes 

This moving text utilizes metaphors and similes to depict the struggles of two young girls in Nazi-occupied France. Sevrine has been hiding in Monique’s basement ever since the Nazis came to the small village, sparking a friendship between the two young girls. This story’s friendship is based upon Patricia Polacco’s great-aunts, who are still friends to this day! The poetry elements capture readers in this book of bravery and courage while also providing students with some historical background.

I hope you found some amazing poetry books! If you would like to see a larger list of suggested books, check out this Figurative Language Amazon List or go to my main Amazon List.

For other Poetry Blogs click: https://rockinresources.com/category/poetry

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Earth day mentor text – learn how to restore our earth.

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Mentor Texts for Teaching Argument Writing

admin 01.29.18 Booklists Reading Writing

As a follow-up to our November 2017 #NCTEchat, Using Mentor Texts , we asked our social media community to share some of their favorite mentor texts with us. In the first part of this series, we’ve compiled educators’ favorite mentor texts for teaching argument writing. To see the original messages this list is based on, click here .

Did we miss one? Please let us know on Twitter!

Should There Be Zoos?: A Persuasive Text by Tony Stead with Judy Ballester and her fourth-grade class Examines the opposing viewpoints of a fourth-grade class on whether zoos are helpful or harmful to animals; written in persuasive language.

Hey, Little Ant by Phillip M. and  Hannah Hoose , illustrated by Debbie Tilley What would you do if the ant you were about to step on looked up and started talking? Would you stop and listen?

A Pig Parade Is a Terrible Idea by Michael Ian Black, illustrated by Kevin Hawkes Could anything possibly be more fun than a pig parade!? You wouldn’t think so. But you’d be wrong. A pig parade is a terrible idea.

I Wanna Iguana by Karen Kaufman Orloff, illustrated by David Catrow Alex just has to convince his mom to let him have an iguana, so he puts his arguments in writing.

Have I Got a Book for You! by Mélanie Watt Mr. Al Foxword is one persistent salesman! He will do just about anything to sell you this book. Al tries every trick of the trade.

Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing by Judi Barrett, illustrated by Ron Barrett This well-loved book by Judi and Ron Barrett shows the very youngest why animals’ clothing is perfect . . . just as it is.

Stella Writes an Opinion by Janiel Wagstaff, illustrated by Dana Regan Meet Stella. She has lots of opinions. When Ms. M. tells the class they get to write an opinion, Stella gets excited. But how will she choose what to write about?

I Wanna New Room by Karen Kaufman Orloff, illustrated by David Catrow Writing letters to his mom convinced her to let him get his pet iguana, so Alex puts pencil to paper again, this time determined to get his own room.

They All Saw a Cat by Brendan Wenzel In this celebration of observation, curiosity, and imagination, Brendan Wenzel shows us the many views of one cat and the ways perspective shapes what we see. When you see a cat, what do you see?

Dear Mr. Blueberry by Simon James It’s vacation time, so Emily has to write to her teacher for help when she discovers a blue whale living in her pond. Mr. Blueberry answers that she must be mistaken, because whales live in the ocean, not in ponds.

Red Is Best by Kathy Stinson Young Kelly’s mom doesn’t understand about red. Sure, the brown mittens are warmer, but the red mitts make better snowballs. No doubt about it, red is best.

The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt, illustrated by Oliver Jeffers Poor Duncan just wants to color. But when he opens his box of crayons, he finds only letters, all saying the same thing: We quit! The supporting details are great to get students to think and write about the why instead of just writing a list of demands.

One Word from Sophia by Jim Averbeck, illustrated by Yasmeen Ismail Sophia tries varied techniques to get the giraffe she wants more than anything in this playfully illustrated story about the nuances of negotiation.

She Persisted by Chelsea Clinton, illustrated by Alexandra Boiger In this book, Chelsea Clinton celebrates thirteen American women who helped shape our country through their tenacity, sometimes through speaking out, sometimes by staying seated, sometimes by captivating an audience.

Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving  by Laurie Halse Anderson, illustrated by Matt Faulkner Way back when “skirts were long and hats were tall,” Americans were forgetting Thanksgiving, and nobody seemed to care! Thankfully, Sarah Hale appeared.

Earrings by Judith Viorst, illustrated by Nola Langner Malone She wants them. She needs them. She loves them.  Earrings!  What won’t a girl do to finally get her ears pierced?

Upper Grades

This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women , edited by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman Based on the NPR series of the same name,  This I Believe  features eighty Americans―from the famous to the unknown―completing the thought that the book’s title begins.

Everything’s an Argument by Andrea A. Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz This bestselling text shows students how to analyze all kinds of arguments—not just essays and editorials, but clothes, cars, ads, and website designs—and then how to use what they learn to write their own effective arguments. Making a Visual Argument: Claire Ironside’s “Apples to Oranges” was specifically mentioned.

Dear Mr. President: Letters to the Oval Office from the Files of the National Archives by Dwight Young and Brian Williams Drawn from the extensive holdings of the National Archives, these carefully chosen letters remind us that ours is a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” which entitles us to make our views known to our leaders.

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela The autobiography of Nelson Mandela, one of the great moral and political leaders of our time.

Good speeches are exemplars of argument, evidence, genre blending, word choice, and more.

“Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!” by Patrick Henry, delivered March 23, 1775, St. John’s Church, Richmond, Virginia

“ Ain’t I a Woman? ” by Sojourner Truth, delivered 1851, Women’s Convention, Akron, Ohio

“ The Destructive Male ” by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, delivered 1868, Women’s Suffrage Convention, Washington, D.C.

“ Toward a More Perfect Union ” by Barack Obama, delivered March 18, 2008, The Constitution Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Any speech by Barack Obama, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King Jr., or Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Newsela Current events stories tailor-made for classroom use. Indexed by broad theme, stories are student-friendly and can be accessed in different formats by reading level.

The New York Times Upfront Magazine by Scholastic Upfront  gets teens talking about today’s most important issues with current events for grades 9–12.

“ The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me ” by Sherman Alexie, Los Angeles Times, April 19, 1998

Atticus Finch’s closing argument in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Declaration of Independence

Abigail Adams’s letters to John Adams

Barack Obama’s Town Hall response where he compares gun control to auto safety

Book descriptions are taken from the Goodreads website.

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Mentor texts for common core nonfiction standards.

I just finished up my Literature mentor texts blog post, check that out  here . Are you now looking for mentor texts for informational ELA standards?

Now, it’s time for the informational ELA mentor texts! My ELA packs for Kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, and 4th grade include three mini-lessons, printables, passages, interactive notebook activities, task cards, and an assessment. Some of these activities are really complimented when books that focus on that specific standard are used. I have had many, many requests for a suggested book list. So, I wanted to create a blog post for my ELA teachers to reference when using mentor texts for ELA! All the books that are linked in this blog post are linked to affiliate Amazon links.

Ask and Answer Questions

Ask and Answer Questions (RI.1.1, RI.2.1, RI.3.1) Key skills to hit: answer text-dependent questions and ask strong questions for more information

•  Odd Boy Out by Don Brown
• Hurricanes! by Gail Gibbons
• What Makes a Magnet? by Franklyn Branley
• What If You Had Animal Ears? by Sandra Markle
•  Whose Tools are These? by Sharon Katz Cooper
•  A Tree is a Plant by Clyde Robert Bulla
• Living in… Mexico by Chloe Perkins
• Emmanuel’s Dream by Laurie Ann Thompson
• She Loved Baseball by Audrey Vernick

Main Topic and Main Idea

Main Topic/Main Idea (RI.1.2, RI.2.2, RI.3.3) Key skills to hit: finding the main topic (1st and 2nd grade) and main idea (3rd grade); finding key details to support the topic or idea

• Martin’s Big Words by Doreen Rappaport
• Who Has These Feet? by Laura Hulbert
• I Am Amelia Earhart by Brad Melzer
• Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 by Brian Floca
• The Museum Book by Jan Mark
• Ivan: The Remarkable Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla by Katherine Applegate
• Schomburg: The Man Who Built the Library by Carole Boston Weatherford 
• One Plastic Bag by Miranda Paul

Making Connections – Informational ELA Mentor Texts

Making Connections (RI.1.3, RI.2.3, RI.3.3) Key skills to hit: connections within historical events, scientific ideas, or technical processes

• Now and Ben by Gene Barretta
• How People Learned to Fly by Fran Hodgkins
• From Peanut to Peanut Butter by Robin Nelson
• School: Then and Now by Robin Nelson
• The Magic School Bus Gets Baked in a Cake by Joanna Cole
• From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons
• Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
• This is How We Do It: One Day in the Lives of Seven Kids from Around the World by Matt Lamothe

Unknown Vocabulary

Unknown Vocabulary (RI.1.4, RI.2.4, RI.3.4) Key skills to hit: new vocabulary, words and phrases, context clues

• Fire! Fire! by Gail Gibbons
• So You Want to Be President by Judith St. George
• Rocks and Minerals by Kathleen Zohfeld
• Jump into Science: Dirt by Tomecek
• Frog or Toad? How Do You Know by Melissa Stewart
• An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Hutts Aston
• D is for Drum: A Native American Alphabet by Michael Shoulders
• The World is Not a Rectangle by Jeanette Winter

Informational ELA Mentor Texts – Text Features

Text Features (RI.1.5, RI.2.5, RI.3.5) Key skills to hit: know and use various text features

• National Geographic Readers: Planets by Elizabeth Carney
• Wildlife Photographer by William David Thomas
• I Wonder Why the Sea is Salty by Anita Ganeri 
• How Things Work: In the Yard by Lisa Campbell Ernst
• National Geographic Readers: Pandas by Anne Schreiber
• Little Kids for Big Book of Why by Amy Shields 
• Living In… South Korea by Chloe Perkins
• Celebrate Chinese New Year by Carolyn Otto

Author’s Purpose or Point of View

Author’s Purpose or Point of View (RI.2.6, RI.3.6) Key skills to hit: find author’s point of view, compare author’s point of view to their own

• Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs by Houghton Mifflin
• Who Says Women Can’t Be Doctors by Tanya Lee Stone
• Turtle Tide: The Way of Sea Turtles by Stephen R. Swimburn e
• If the World Were a Village by David J. Smith
• You Wouldn’t Want to be an American Pioneer by Jacqueline Morely
• George Washington and the General’s Dog by Frank Murphy
• Salt in His Shoes by Deloris Jordan
• Sonia Sotomayor: A Judge Grows in the Bronx by Jonah Winter

Images in a Text

Images in a Text (RI.1.7, RI.2.7, RI.3.7) Key skills to hit: use images in a text to further understand the text

• Seeing Symmetry by Loreen Leedy
• Timeless Thomas by Gene Barretta 
• Are You an Ant? by Judy Allen
• Clothesline Clues to What People Do by Kathryn Heling
• I Read Signs by Tana Hoban  (very early readers)
• A Medieval Feast by Aliki
• The Story of Frida Kahlo by Susan B. Katz (3rd-4th grade)
• Jazz Age Josephine by Jonah Winter

Author’s Point and Reasons

Author’s Point and Reasons (RI.1.8, RI.2.8) Key skills to hit: find the main point the author is trying to make, find the reasons the author gives for their point

• If You Lived in Colonial Times by Ann Mcgovern
• What If Everyone Did That? by Ellen Javernick
• Hippos are Huge! by Jonathan London
• The Bravest Dog Ever: The Story of Balto by Natalie Standiford 
• What If You Had Animal Teeth? by Sandra Markle
• Tuesday Tucks Me In by Luis Carlos Montalvan
• Let them March by Monica Clark-Robinson
• Susan B. Anthony: Fighter for American Rights by Deborah Hopkinson

Text Structures- Informational ELA mentor texts

Text Structures (RI.3.8) Key skills to hit: compare and contrast, cause and effect, sequence

• Who Would Win? Killer Whale vs. Great White Shark by Jerry Pollatta
• Cats vs. Dogs by Elizabeth Carney
•  Endangered Animals of the Jungle by William Rice
• Earth: Feeling the Heat by Brenda Guiberson
• Milk: From Cow to Carton by Aliki
• From Seed to Pumpkin by Wendy Pfeffer
• Sisters and Champions by Howard Bryant

Informational ELA Mentor Texts – Comparing Nonfiction

Comparing Nonfiction (RI.1.9, RI.2.9, RI.3.9) Key skills to hit: find the important points from two texts, find similarities and differences between them

• Rosa by Nikki Giovanni  and  If a Bus Could Talk by Faith Ringgold
•  Animals in Winter by Henrietta Bancroft  and  All About Animals in Winter by Martha Rustad
• I am Helen Keller by Brad Melzer  and  Helen Keller: Courage in the Dark by Joanna Hurwitz
• Looking Closely Inside the Rainforest by Frank Serafini  and   Step Into the Rainforest by Howard Rice
• The Secret Garden of George Washington Carver by Gene Barretta  and  George Washington Carver National Geographic Reader by Kitson Jazynka

Want a FREE way to organize your mentor texts?

FREE MENTOR TEXT ORGANIZER

When you sign up for my email list, this Mentor Text Organization freebie will be sent directly to your inbox. Check your email after this!

Suggested Standards-Based Literature Activities

For full ELA units with mini lessons for these books and extra reading passages (and much more), check out the grade level sets for RI standards. If you click the links below, check out your grade level. They’re sold separately as well if you only want one or two standards at a time.

For full ELA units with mini lessons for these books and extra reading passages (and much more), check out the grade level sets for RI standards. If you click the links below, check out your grade level. They’re sold separately as well if you only want one or two standards at a time.

Want to read more ELA nonfiction topics?

• Using Nonfiction Text Pictures and Images
• How to Teach Author’s Point and Supporting Reasons
• Teaching Kids How to Compare and Contrast Nonfiction Texts
• Read more about: Books , Common Core Aligned , Reading Blog Posts , Uncategorized

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11 favorite mentor text to teach informational writing.

Informational writing is one of the most common forms of writing that we use in our everyday lives.  Before teaching students any form of writing, it’s important to immerse them into texts of that genre that serve as mentor texts.  Mentor text serve as an anchor for the foundational skills of informative writing that you are teaching.  There are so many amazing non-fiction text that you can share with your students, pulling out some favorites so students have easy access to them is a great way to kick off your informational writing unit.

What are mentor text?

Mentor text are anchor text that are used as an example for students.  Students use the mentor text to help impact their own understanding and learning.  The mentor text can be read during a mini-lesson to help students learn about the skill you are focusing on.   A mentor text provides students with an example of the standard or skill you are working on.  Reading an informational text before students begin their writing helps to set expectations for their own learning.  

Mentor text can model genres of writing, grammar skills, conventions of writing, and other writing skills.  A mentor text can be a short text, a teacher or student example, a picture book, or an excerpt of a longer text.

Using mentor text throughout your informational writing unit will show students that the sky is the limit when it comes to informational writing.  They will be inspired by the stories that you share and gather tips from authors as they listen and learn from your carefully chosen mentor text.

1. The Book Itch by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson

“ The Book Itch ” is a wonderful non-fiction story to share with your students.  It is the story of Lews Micheaux Sr. and the bookstore that he started in Harlem.  The bookstore became not only a place where people bought books but also a place where they came together to share ideas and stand up for what they believed in.  It shows the importance of reading, but also has some really great history in it.  At the end, there is a short autobiography about the book store owner that is a good example of informational writing.  There is also a bibliography page to show where the research was found.  It is all around a really great read and the perfect book to kick off your informational writing unit.

2. Who Is/Who Was Series

T hese books are usually longer text, so they are a great example of non-fiction writing that uses text features and presents information.  Students love these books because they are written about people and events that are of interest to them.  They are great books to share to show how you can collect information about one idea and sort it into different topics.

3. The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton Poet by Don Tate 

“ The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton Poet ” is the story of George Moses, a slave in North Carolina.  He loved words but was not able to go to school to learn to read.  He taught himself to read and became the first-ever Southern Black man to be a published writer, protesting slavery in his verse.  The book is the amazing story of George’s life and is a wonderful mentor text to share with your students as you explore informational writing with a storyteller’s voice.  There is also acknowledgments and a list of sites and books that the author used in doing research for the book.  These are important to note to students that while the book was written in a storyteller’s voice, much research was done to be sure that the text was accurate.

4. Freedom Song: The Story of Henry Box Brown by Sally M. Walker

Henry Brown has an extraordinary escape from slavery-in a box.  This story honors Henry’s determination and courage as he mailed himself to freedom.  It is an excellent choice to share as a mentor text because of the lyrical rhythm that the author uses to honor Henry’s love for music.  Many times students feel that non-fiction text is just full of facts and this book shows the beauty of nonfiction.  There is a note from the author and the letter from Henry at the end of the book, which are both important to share with students as they begin their own research projects.

5. Balloons Over Broadway The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade by Melissa Sweet

I love, love, love this story and it is so perfect to share with students as an example of informative writing.  If they’ve ever watched the Macy’s Parade on Thanksgiving, they are sure to recognize the large floats.  The book is the story of Tony Sarg and his balloons that have become the trademark of the famous parade.  The book shares a bibliography to show where the author found the facts and information presented and also shares a primary source of the original ad in the New York Times from 1933.  

6. Dinosaur Lady: The Daring Discoveries of Mary Anning, The First Paleontologist by Linda Skeers

The story of Mary Anning tells of her love to dig, explore, and discover.  She loved looking for shells and fossils.  One day, she found dinosaur bones and her findings rocked the world of science.  Her findings created a whole new world of studies known as paleontology.  This is an amazing book to share for students that want to embark on telling the story of how something began.  It is filled with facts, a timeline, and a bibliography on its last pages. 

7. She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World by Chelsea Clinton

I love sharing this book as a mentor text because each woman’s story is its own short text.  Each short passage about Harriet Tubman, Helen Keller, Maria Tallchief, and more shows students how a short piece of writing can teach us so much about a topic.  

8. Ivan: The Remarkable True Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla by Katherine Applegate

Maybe it is because I can remember being little and hearing of Ivan , but I just absolutely love the story of Ivan, the shopping mall gorilla and it is a fascinating story to share with your students.  They will be enthralled by the story of Ivan and his life as he was captured when he was young and brought to a shopping mall where he lived for 27 years.  The real-life pictures of Ivan and the note from Ivan’s keeper make the book extra meaningful as an informational text.

9. Ada’s Violin: The Story of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay by Susan Hood

I love sharing this story because it is so inspiring and it helps students see past informational text being just textbooks.  The illustrations are gorgeous and the story tells of a poor village in Paraguay whose livelihood is the landfill.  They use pieces from the landfill to begin an orchestra and the rest is history.  The book has sources cited as well as videos linked for learning as well.  This is a great example to show students that you can gather information from multiple sources and media types.

10. Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpre by Anika Denise

This is an inspiring biography about Pura Belpre’s life as she championed bilingual literature.  She moved to America from Puerto Rico and became a bilingual assistant at the New York Public Library.  She turned her retellings into stories that are shared still today.  It includes information for further reading, an author’s note, and more for students to see the research that was put into creating such a biography.

11. The Girls WIth a Mind for Math: The Story of Raye Montague by Julia Finley Mosca

This is another really amazing story and the author fills the book with facts, a timeline, related text, a bibliography, and even a note from Raye Montague .  Raye pushes past the inequality that faces her to become a pioneer of engineering that changed the course of ship design forever.  This is the third book in this series about inspiring scientists and it is a great example for your students as a mentor text for your students as they begin their own informational writing.

Sharing a variety of informational text will help open your students’ eyes to the beauty of nonfiction stories.  As you share each text students will be immersed in the craft of the author, absorbing the storytelling, fact presentation, timelines, and more.

I hope you found some new books to read with your students and ideas for your informational writing unit!

You might also like to read more:

Teaching Informational Writing to Upper Elementary Students

Find more tips and ideas for Writing Workshop HERE.

Shop the resources featured in this post here:

Happy Teaching!

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Literary Analysis Essay Mentor Text Pack

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Description

Use this pack of 6 exemplar essays to teach your students what strong literary analysis looks like. All essays are aligned to middle school-leveled texts (6th, 7th, and 8th grades), and the writing reflects strong middle-level 4- or 5-paragraph structured essay format.

Yes, middle school students CAN write literary analysis essays! I have used these mentor texts with my 6th and 7th grade students to give them a vision of what strong writing looks like before they begin their own essays.

Using these essays, students can study:

• 5 paragraph essay format
• Strong introduction and conclusion paragraphs
• Architecture of body paragraphs
• Different ways to embed evidence
• Clear and concise analysis
• Crafting topic sentences
• Transition words and phrases

This resource includes 6 essays that explore various story elements, including:

• Theme in 1 text ("Barbie")
• Theme compared across 2 texts ("Barbie" & "Popularity")
• Character traits in "Barbie"
• Character growth in short film "Give"
• Conflict's impact on character in "So I Ain't No Good Girl"

Corresponding Short Stories & Films*:

*Story texts are not included due to copyright issues, but many can be found through a Google search.

• “Barbie” by Gary Soto – from the short story collection “Baseball in April”
• “Popularity” by Adam Bagdasarian – from the short story collection “First French Kiss: And Other Traumas”
• “So I Ain’t No Good Girl” by Sharon Flake – from the short story collection “Who Am I Without Him”
• “Give” (short film)- https://youtu.be/RDHbcDJkAc4
• “Snack Attack” (short film)- https://youtu.be/38y_1EWIE9I

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