Mentor Text Archives

3 BIG Reasons Why You Should Throw Out The Vocabulary List

September 14, 2017

Stop teaching vocabulary in isolation! Check out the research that provides three big reasons why vocabulary lists don't work.

Give a list of vocabulary words to look up in the dictionary, write a sentence, and then take a quiz on Friday…… these practices have come and gone! Not only do the students not enjoy this process, it isn’t a best practice.

Research has shown that teaching new words without context (teaching just definitions) will not improve reading comprehension. Here are three BIG reasons, supported by research, why you should throw out the vocabulary list. And if you want to read even more, I suggest starting with No More “Look Up The List” Vocabulary Instruction by Charlene Cobb and Camille Blachowicz, as well as Bringing Words to Life by Isabel Beck, Margaret McKeown, and Linda Kucan! (These two book links are Amazon affiliate links. When you buy through these links, Amazon gives me a few cents which I contribute to my fabulous blog giveaways!)

Words must be presented in context for proper comprehension.

Picture books are vital – yes, even in the upper grades – to allow students to use the images to help with context and infer meaning of words. One way to present vocabulary words effectively is to teach through texts you are already using for other lessons. As Irene Fountas and Gay Pinnell remind us in Guiding Readers and Writers (2001), “if you really know a word, you can:

– Read it in many different contexts, understanding the meaning each time.

– Use it in a decontextualized way, mapping out the different meanings that are possible given the context.

– Realize the connotations that a word may have when used in a certain way (e.g., as part of irony or sarcasm).

– Use the word metaphorically if appropriate.”

Words must be used over time or they won’t “stick.”

In order to effectively employ vocabulary instruction, it is crucial to present opportunities for students to make connections between the words and concepts, and provide repeated exposures to the words. One suggestion from Charlene Cobb and Camille Blachowicz is to have a word wall- but not one that remains on the wall untouched all year. It should be used regularly, with student input.

Definitions mean nothing when the relationship is unknown.

Think of how many words can be used as a noun, an adjective, AND a verb, depending on how it is used, or even as one part of speech having several meanings. How are students supposed to figure this out when given a list? Answer: they don’t. They pick the shortest definition and write it!

You probably know, previewing is so important for comprehension… but that rule does not apply to vocabulary, unless you present it completely in context! In other words, it is not necessary to always “preview” words before reading a text, because the students don’t understand the context. Beck, McKeown, and Kucan advise the best time to introduce the meaning of a word is when it is encountered in the text. This can also be done after reading the entire text by referring back to the pages where the word is found.

THROW OUT THE LIST!

Start teaching your vocabulary through the mentor texts you already use and love in the classroom!

LEARN EVEN MORE about how to incorporate ongoing vocabulary activities with ANY words all year long:

Read the next post of this vocabulary blogging series!

Interested in an entire year of vocabulary taught through mentor texts?

Visit the vocabulary category in my TpT store!

Mentor Texts

Are Picture Books COMPLEX Enough?

September 18, 2017

A question I am asked frequently, because of my use of picture books as mentor texts, is: “Are picture books really complex enough for my upper grade students?”

And my answer always is…

YES YES YES!

There are many aspects that contribute to a text’s complexity- not just the “level” (whether that be Lexile or AR or F&P).

For one, a student’s prior knowledge contributes to complexity. What may be complex for one may not be for another. It will be dependent on their background, exposure, vocabulary, and experiences.

Picture books are not "too easy" for the upper grades students, no matter what the Lexile number might say! Find out why you should still be using picture books to teach in grades 3-5!

Secondly, I totally think picture books are like Disney and Pixar movies… how many times have you laughed at something in one of those movies and a kid looks at you like, what’s so funny?? You can read a book to a kindergarten or first grade class that they enjoy, but a ten-year-old would pick up on underlying themes in that same book that the little ones don’t.

One book example that comes to mind is The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson. Did you know it has a Lexile of AD490L? If you went strictly by the quantitive element, you wouldn’t think it would be appropriate for an upper grades classroom. But how many six-year-olds do you know that would pick up on the metaphor of the fence in this story? There is such a deep level of understanding that can be discussed with this book on segregation issues!

And that leads me to my next point… YOU as the teacher are one of the BEST aspects that contribute to complexity! You can amp up the rigor of a text simply by asking the right questions!

Choose a book that relates to the standard you are teaching, and as you read, ask comprehension questions throughout to show them the importance of thinking while reading! Not only can you ask questions to prompt them to think the way you want them to, you can also do think-alouds to demonstrate your own thoughts and feelings. This is done so easily with picture books!

In case you needed any more convincing, here are four more reasons that picture books make great mentor texts:

1. The story is usually done in 32 pages. When you refer to parts of the story in your lessons, most likely, students are going to remember. You can read a great picture book one day, and then use it for various lessons for days after that! Often times, you can teach SEVERAL standards with one picture book.

2. Picture books hold students’ attention with illustrations and vivid language throughout. Seriously- some of the BEST examples I’ve found of figurative language, vivid verbs, and sensory details come from picture books.

3. There are so many amazing historical fiction books, science fiction texts, and even math literature. We know there isn’t enough time in the school day to read a book before every lesson (as much as we’d like to) so spread that book as much as you can!

4. Please do not think I’m saying to never read a novel with your students again. Chapter books, extended texts, novels… whatever you want to call them… are still so important! Students have to build stamina and stick with a story that really builds- I totally agree. But students also need to see, hear, and understand so many different styles to become better readers and writers. What better way than to read mentor texts all year long?

Are you interested in learning about how to do more than just “read” a picture book to your students? Do you want to make your read-alouds more meaningful?

Enroll in my Interactive Read-Aloud Mini-Course to get the what, why, and how of reading picture books to promote deeper thinking with your students! Save 20% when you enroll through this post! You’ll have lifetime access to the video lessons, as well as a special exclusive IRA questions bonus AND the lesson and materials for the model/demonstration video I present so that you can implement it in your class, too. There is also a certificate of completion to use for PD credit (if applicable in your district)! You will be excited to start interactive read-alouds right away in your classroom!

Or maybe you’d like to get ready-made mentor text lessons for the week?

Join the club!

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Vocabulary

Make Vocabulary Stick With These Five Activities

September 15, 2017

Vocabulary must be taught in context, and should be an ongoing process, in order for students to truly comprehend the words. Learn about five easy ways you can make vocabulary stick with your students.

As you learned in my previous post, it’s time to throw the vocabulary list OUT! Students need the words in context, and they need practice with the words over the course of the year- not just the week you introduce them.

This post is going to give you five ways you can keep vocabulary instruction alive all year long!

INTERACTIVE WORD WALL

Yes, that’s right. INTERACTIVE. That means it doesn’t stay the same all year. Get student input on how to arrange, and later, rearrange, the words. Words could be sorted by parts of speech. They could be placed on individual strips with room under the words to allow for lists of synonyms. You could even allow students to create illustrations to be displayed with the words. I’m sure students will even have their own ideas of how to sort them!

DETERMINE WORD FUNCTION

In order to use the vocabulary words well, students need to know HOW to use them in a sentence. Determining the function (or part of speech) will help students learn to use them in a sentence. Model for students how to look for patterns to determine the function of the word by looking at suffixes (-ed and -ing often show verb tense, and -ly often indicates an adverb). It might even help to replace the word with another verb or noun to check it.

ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

“Warm up” the students by discussing a topic the words fall under when applicable (for example, if the book is about bats… ask, “What do you know about bats?”) Show the vocabulary words and allow them to share what they know about how the words relate to bats.

PLAY GAMES

Get students moving!! Allow students to act out vocabulary words (old and new) by asking them, “What does it look like when you…?” Another fun game resembles the game HedBanz. Write the word on a strip of paper long enough to go around their head, stapled (like a crown) – students should not see the word on their head. Students should ask questions about their word to others to help them guess the word that is on their crown.

MARZANO’S WORD WORK

This should be used as a front-loading activity, if you wish to use it. It should NOT replace reading the mentor text and discussing the word in the context of the story, but it is a great way to integrate various learning styles in order to help the words “sink in.”

I had the privilege of hearing Robert Marzano present on his six step process several years ago, and it was a nice way to change up how I had been teaching vocabulary. My kids showed a lot of growth, especially in content-area words. This process is not something you want to do for EVERY word (as in all six steps every time) – you don’t have the time, and the kids would get bored FAST.

Read this great article that explains Marzano’s Six Step Process in more detail.

Here is a short summary of the six steps:

1. Provide a description, explanation, or example of the new term.

(Tell a story that integrates the term or show a picture of the term)

2. Ask students to restate the description, explanation, or example in their own words.

(Correct misunderstandings)

3. Ask students to construct a picture, symbol, or graphic representing the word.

(Draw your own example, too)

Use the following page to create a word journal:

4. Engage students periodically in activities that help them add to their knowledge of the terms.

(Identify prefixes, suffixes, synonyms, antonyms, analogies, reminders of confusion)

5. Ask students to discuss the terms with one another.

(Compare drawings and descriptions)

6. Play games periodically that allow them to play with terms.

(Pictionary, Jeopardy, Charades, Headbands)

Interested in an entire year of vocabulary taught through mentor texts? Visit the vocabulary category in my TpT store!

Mentor Texts

Take Back Your Time With Mentor Texts

March 12, 2017

Time is precious. There is NEVER enough of it!!

But, what if there was a way you could take back some of that time? Would you take it?

I have your answer!

Before we dive in, let’s talk about what a mentor text IS and what it IS NOT.

A mentor text is a picture book (fiction or nonfiction), a chapter from a novel, an article, a song, or a poem. This text serves as a model to inspire students to practice a skill. In reading, students will watch and listen to you model a comprehension skill in order to understand how to do it on their own. In writing, students will be inspired to write similarly to the mentor text. In grammar, students will notice all of the “good” in a sentence from the text (called a mentor sentence), and then learn how to incorporate it into their own writing. There is a lot of imitation that occurs with a mentor text; students will impersonate techniques from the texts you present across the subjects.

A mentor text is not simply a read-aloud. Although mentor texts should be read for enjoyment FIRST, that is not its only purpose. It is not an entire novel either. You can absolutely model skills from a chapter book, but a mentor text should be shorter in length so that it can be referred to throughout a week (or two or three!) for different skills.

A MAGNIFICENT MENTOR TEXT can be used for several weeks for MANY skills. In reading, a magnificent mentor text will provide opportunities for a few (if not all) of the following: monitoring, summarizing, questioning, inferring, determining importance, questioning, visualizing, and synthesizing… to name a few. In writing and grammar, a magnificent mentor text will provide opportunities for students to imitate the ideas, structure, AND craft that the author presents in the text. And to top it off, a magnificent mentor text will be enjoyable to read, and one you will want to return to over and over!

And, if you REALLY want to get the most bang for your buck: grab a nonfiction, historical fiction, or science fiction book to integrate your social studies and science content! (OR even math literature!)

We know, as teachers, that using literature is an excellent way to introduce a lesson, but starting EVERY lesson with a new text makes it awfully difficult to keep those mini-lessons MINI! One of the best parts of using a mentor text is that it gives you more time to TEACH. Once you’ve read the book one time, you only need to re-read or refer to parts of it for your whole group mini-lessons. (Small group/guided reading should use books on their level!)

In reading, one way to lead your lesson is to use a graphic organizer. It will help guide their thinking, and it allows for an “I Do, We Do, You Do” lesson- start the graphic organizer with them, then they can help suggest something to add to it, and finally they can finish it on their own. Of course, then they’ll also be able to use that graphic organizer with their own book, or in guided reading, to show their thinking!

Use mentor texts for grammar through the use of mentor sentences. For 10-15 minutes each day at the start of writing time, look at a mentor sentence that was taken from the mentor text you are reading that week. Students notice all the wonderful things about it, figure out patterns in parts of speech, revise the sentence, and imitate the author in our writing- all over the course of the week. And of course, in writing, students will impersonate the ideas, structure and/or craft of a mentor text through your modeling and lessons.

Does this sound like an amazing solution, but you’re thinking, well, Jivey, you just told me WHAT to do, but you haven’t told me HOW to do it! I’ve got you covered!! Sign up below for a FREE one-week course and get all you’ll need to integrate reading, writing, and grammar! In this FREE course, you’ll receive a week of activities and lessons each day for reading, grammar, and writing; and encouragement, suggestions, tips, and reminders. I want to help you take back your time!

Select your grade level below to get comprehensive lessons just for you and your class!

You will get an outline for the week right away, with more information about the importance of using mentor texts. Then, over the course of the next week, you will receive explicit lessons, student activities, explanations, reminders, and suggestions for the next day’s ELA activities. If you’d like to complete the activities with your students over the course of that week, you can! Or, you can “save” all of the lessons and implement them another week if it doesn’t work right away for your schedule.

Lessons, activities, explanations, and support… did I mention FREE? What are you waiting for? Click on your grade level!

Or maybe you’d like to have it all done for you… looking for ready-made mentor text lessons for the week?

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Mentor Texts

Using Mentor Texts in the Primary Grades {Freebies Included!}

May 1, 2016

Mentor texts help students learn how to read like writers and write like readers- yes, even in the early years! In fact, K-2 teachers are a super-big-help to the upper grades teachers because their use of mentor texts helps ingrain the importance of reading, as well as to write like the authors we love.

Mentor texts help students learn how to read like writers and write like readers- yes, even in the early years! Ideas By Jivey talks about the importance of mentor texts in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade, and gives some freebies to try!

In the primary grades, it’s important to choose mentor texts that are engaging. First, read the book to them for pleasure- you want them to enjoy the book! Once they’ve listened to the book, you can go back and discuss (and maybe re-read) the content for reading comprehension. Finally, you can incorporate the mentor text into your writing lessons! With a good mentor text, you will be able to teach multiple skills across reading, writing, grammar, and maybe even science and social studies!

Read Like a Writer!

Reading like a writer does not come naturally for little ones. You will want to do a lot of modeling and “think-alouds” with a text they are familiar with- point out characters, dialogue, the author’s word choice, the way a problem is solved, the way the author might have surprised you… and so on.

One way to help students notice the style, structure, and conventions of great writing is to use mentor sentences! Students are encouraged to notice what makes the sentence a good sentence, and then are able to practice writing their own sentence just like the mentor sentence. (If you are unfamiliar with mentor sentences, you can read more about them here and here, too!) There is also a grammar focus in first and second grade mentor sentences, so you can touch on parts of speech and conventions during mentor sentence time, too!

Write Like a Reader!

Once you and the students have analyzed how the author wrote a mentor text, you will want them to practice writing that way, too. Try to choose authors that have series of books when you can- it’s a great way to see how consistent they are!

One of my favorite authors to use is Doreen Cronin with her Diary series!

Read these books with your students and take note of the first-person point-of-view diary format with your students. Talk about how the characters reacted to certain events, and how that is similar or different to how they would react in the same situation. Also discuss the things Doreen Cronin included that is typical of that animal (for example, the worm digging in the dirt, and hanging out on the sidewalk after the rain). Have students write their own “Diary of a ____” story with a different animal or insect than in the books!Teaching about animals or insects in science? BONUS! You can incorporate that into your writing time by allowing them to choose something they’ve learned about and include characteristics just like Doreen did! (Diary of a Caterpillar, anyone?!)

You can try out some lessons that I’ve created for Diary of a Worm by clicking on the links below! They are great for first and second graders and MAYBE some high kindergartners, too!

Want to hear more about how I implement these organizers into reading and writing workshop? Attend one of my free webinars by clicking below!

Want to see some more mentor text ideas?

Be sure to check out this pin board, put together by The Reading Crew!

3-5, Mastering Mentor Sentences, Mentor Texts

Use Enemy Pie To Maximize Your Teaching Time

September 27, 2016

Use the book Enemy Pie to teach multiple skills in multiple subjects- maximize your teaching time with one mentor text!

I absolutely LOVE getting the most bang for my buck, don’t you? Time is such a precious commodity in the classroom, so any time I can maximize that time by using a mentor text, I do! Today, I’m going to share how I use the book, Enemy Pie by Derek Munson.

You can get the book on Amazon:

This link is an affiliate link on Amazon.

OR you can play the book on Storyline Online!

There are so many wonderful things you can do with this book. I am going to share a few in this post.

All of the activities I am suggesting can be found in this mentor text pack in my TPT store!

READING

This is a great book to use to introduce the theme of friendship! There are many pieces of evidence the students can find to support this theme.
But don’t stop now! You can also teach character traits with this book. Have students describe the boy or Jeremy Ross giving evidence of their thoughts, words, and actions with you for practice, then have students describe Dad on their own!

WRITING

This next idea won’t just get in some great writing practice, but it will also be a great review of manners and how to treat each other. Students should write an opinion piece on what makes a good friend. First, discuss and brainstorm ideas as a class, then have students write to the topic.
Of course, you’ll also want to tie in good-sentence-writing and revision lessons with this prompt, which leads to the next subject…

GRAMMAR

Use a sentence from the book full of adjectives for your mentor sentence! (Not familiar with mentor sentences? Read all about them HERE!) Have students identify the adjectives and tell you why they help the reader. They should also be using adjectives when writing about what makes a good friend.

My friend Megan over at I Teach! What’s Your Superpower?

loves using mentor sentences!

You can also practice identifying subjects and predicates to make sure the students have complete sentences in their writing. We always practice first by looking at sentences from the book we are reading. I prepare sentences on sentence strips first and cut them apart between the complete subjects and complete predicates. I pass them out to the students and their first job is to decide if they have a subject or a predicate strip. Then, they will circle the simple subject(s) and underline the simple predicate(s).

Next, they will find their “match” to make a complete sentence!

As the sentences we use for mentor sentences become more difficult, this is a great way to identify compound and complex sentences, too! This is an easy activity that can be done pretty quickly during “writing time” or “grammar time” because it reinforces skills needed for both!

I hope this post gave you some good ideas on how to get the most out of your teaching time with one mentor text! You can head over and get the pack for this book in my TPT store here!

If you want even more IN-DEPTH step-by-step help with implementing mentor sentences, check out my courses!

Or maybe you’d like to get ready-made mentor text lessons for the week?

Join the club!

No really… there’s a club!

3 BIG Reasons Why You Should Throw Out The Vocabulary List

Words must be presented in context for proper comprehension.

Words must be used over time or they won’t “stick.”

Definitions mean nothing when the relationship is unknown.

THROW OUT THE LIST!

LEARN EVEN MORE about how to incorporate ongoing vocabulary activities with ANY words all year long:

Visit the vocabulary category in my TpT store!

Are Picture Books COMPLEX Enough?

YES YES YES!

Or maybe you’d like to get ready-made mentor text lessons for the week?

Make Vocabulary Stick With These Five Activities

INTERACTIVE WORD WALL

DETERMINE WORD FUNCTION

ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

PLAY GAMES

Interested in an entire year of vocabulary taught through mentor texts? Visit the vocabulary category in my TpT store!

Take Back Your Time With Mentor Texts

Or maybe you’d like to have it all done for you… looking for ready-made mentor text lessons for the week?

Using Mentor Texts in the Primary Grades {Freebies Included!}

Read Like a Writer!

Write Like a Reader!

Use Enemy Pie To Maximize Your Teaching Time

READING

WRITING

GRAMMAR

Or maybe you’d like to get ready-made mentor text lessons for the week?

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