Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Using Mentor Texts to Investigate Grammar

1. Standing on the Shoulders of Giants:Using Mentor Texts to Investigate Grammar a writing workshop by Brenna Kendrick Summer 2010

2. Getting down to business…What is our purpose? • Help our students learn conventions through self-discovery and teacher guidance rather than “skill and drill” practice. • What students can do for themselves they will learn and use rather than memorize and regurgitate.

3. Standards • 1-4.4 Use grammatical conventions of written Standard American English, including • personal pronouns, • common and proper nouns, • singular and plural nouns, and • conjunctions (and, but, or). • (See Instructional Appendix: Composite Writing Matrix.) • 1-4.5 Revise for word choice and simple sentence structure in written works. (SeeInstructional Appendix: Composite Writing Matrix.) • 1-4.6 Edit for the correct use of written Standard American English, including • capitalization • first word of a sentence, • names of people, and • pronoun I; • punctuation • periods, • exclamation points, and • question marks; and • spelling • - high-frequency words and • - three- and four-letter short-vowel words. • (See Instructional Appendix: Composite Writing Matrix.) • 1-4.7 Use appropriate spacing between words.

4. Standards • Mechanics of Editing (English 4) • Capitalization - first word of a sentence; the names of people; the pronoun I; proper nouns; the initials of a person’s name; courtesy titles (for example, Mr. and Ms.); days of the week; months of the year; titles of books, poems, and songs; geographic names; holidays; historical and special events; titles of works of art; titles of publications; brand names; proper adjectives; names of organizations; names of ethnic and national groups; names of established religions and languages • Punctuation – • end punctuation (periods, exclamation points, question marks) • commas (to enclose appositives; to separate items in a series; in dates, addresses, and greetings and closings in letters; in compound sentences; between main clauses; to separate introductory clauses and long introductory phrases from the main body of sentences) • periods in abbreviations • apostrophes (contractions, possessive nouns) • quotation marks (to show dialogue, in direct quotations, to indicate titles of short pieces within longer pieces, underlining or italics of titles of separately published works) • Colons • Hyphens • Semicolons • Ellipses • Parentheses • Spelling – • (high-frequency words; three- and four-letter short-vowel words; words that do not fit regular spelling patterns; basic short-vowel, long-vowel, r- controlled, and consonant-blend patterns; misused homonyms; commonly confused words; words that have blends; contractions; • compound words; words with orthographic patterns; words with suffixes and prefixes; multisyllabic words; commonly confused words; double consonant patterns; irregular vowel patterns in multisyllabic words; and words with Greek and Latin roots and affixes)

5. Research • Anderson, Jeff (2007). Everyday Editing. Portland, ME: Stenhouse. • Donohue, Lisa (2009).Chapter 2 “Using Model Texts and Modeled Writing” in The Write Beginning. Portland, ME: Stenhouse. • Toole, Shannon (Fall 2009). District 5 Literacy Coach. 10 Week course on Guided Reading and Writing Groups.

6. What is a mentor text? Why use them? • “A mentor text can be any piece of written work: a picture book by a favorite author, an article in the newspaper, a report that was posted on the Internet, or a letter than may have been included in a text book” (Donohue 25). • “While students are exploring the mentor texts or sharing their observations we can scaffold students’ thinking by asking thoughtful questions” (Donohue 26).

7. Living a Lesson • We are going to participate in a lesson investigating apostrophes. This lesson would typically take several days to complete in the classroom.

8. Before we begin… • What do we want our students to walk away knowing? • Two meanings – apostrophes show possession and show when letters are missing in a word • What might they misunderstand along the way? • We don’t just use an apostrophe when a word ends in “s” • We will be inviting our students to… • Notice • Collect • Imitate • Edit • Write • Revise • Collect

9. Day 1: Invitation to Notice • “That’s right, punk. I heard you broke Clarisse’s spear.” - Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief (2005) Students, what do you notice about this sentence? • Teacher notes: • Use texts that you have read with your students or know a majority of your students have read. Try to use captivating sentences that will draw your students in. • Use anchor charts! You want your students to be able to go back to this!

10. Day 1 (or 2): Invitation to Collect • Can anyone remind us what the two uses of apostrophes are? • As you read and write today, use your sentence strips to collect different ways apostrophes are being used. • Teacher notes: • Save time at the end of the class to share and celebrate the examples that were written or collected. Post them on the anchor chart from the day before. • Ask students to categorize which way the apostrophes are being used. This is a great time to clear up any misconceptions that are still left.

11. Day 2 (or 3): Invitation to Imitate • “Do sit down, the turkey’s getting stone cold.” - J.K. Rowling, The Prisoner of Azkaban (1999) • “Do come help, the water’s overflowing.” - Ms. Kendrick’s writer’s notebook (2010) • Teacher notes: • Try imitating a sentence that a student has written or collected. • Save time at the end of the class to share and celebrate the examples that were written.

12. Day 3 (or 4): Invitation to Edit “A year,” shouted Tanya. “That’s too long. I can’t wait that long, Grandma.” Grandma laughed. “A year ain’t that long, honey. Makin’ this quilt gonna be a joy. Now run along and let Grandma rest.” - Valerie Flournoy, The Patchwork Quilt (1952) • Teacher notes: • You will take the sentence(s) and change one thing at a time – such as craft, punctuation, usage, and grammar. Students talk about how meaning and clarity change and what can be done to make it more meaningful or clear each time. • Previous concepts and/or future concepts will be discussed at this point in the lesson!

13. Invitation to Edit Continued “A year,” shouted Tanya. “That’s too long. I can’t wait that long, Grandma.” Grandma laughed. “A year ain’t that long, honey. Makin’ this quilt gonna be a joy. Now run along and let Grandma rest.” “A year,” shouted Tanya. “Thats too long. I can’t wait that long, Grandma.” Grandma laughed. “A year ain’t that long, honey. Makin’ this quilt gonna be a joy. Now run along and let Grandma rest.” “A year,” shouted Tanya. “That is too long. I cannot wait that long, Grandma.” Grandma laughed. “A year is not that long, honey. Making this quilt gonna be a joy. Now run along and let Grandma rest.” “A year is too long,” shouted Tanya. Grandma laughed. “A year ain’t that long, now run along and let Grandma rest.”

14. Day 4 (or 5): Invitation to Write I was worried. I had no journal. On top of Mary Lou Finney’s desk were six journals. Six. Mr. Birkway said, “Heavens. Mercy. Is it—can it be—Shakespeare?” He counted the journals. “Six! Brilliant! Magnificent!” - Sharon Creech, Walk Two Moons (1994) Students, we’ve been talking about apostrophes and their uses. In this passage, I noticed that Sharon Creech does an excellent job using an apostrophe to show possession to help expand on character conflict. What sticks out to you in the passage? Write a sentence of your own…what has you worried? Be sure to include character conflict! • Teacher notes: • You can take this chance to expand on many other points – similes, metaphors, character conflict, etc. Just choose a passage from a book that will suit your needs. • Invite students to write their own sentences on sentence strips, collect them, and celebrate them!

15. Day 5 (or 6): Invitation to Revise I brought one lemon pound cake to the picnic the day that she brought three – all different flavors, of course. I wore a new blue dress to school the day that her new dress was multicolored and her new bracelet’s colors matched exquisitely. I gave ten dollars the day that she gave a whopping one hundred to the charity’s fund. Of course she always got the credit. She was flawlessly beautiful, undeniably perfect, and always taking every chance she could find to one-up me. - Ms. Kendrick’s writer’s notebook (2010) Students, what is going on in this passage? Reread the passage from yesterday. How are the details today different from the details in yesterday’s passage? What comparisons can we make? Highlight and underline if necessary. • Teacher notes: • Choose two passages that have similar content. You want your students to be able to make comparisons. Again, choose an underlining theme you want your students to develop. (For this, I chose detail.) • Invite students to add detail to their character conflict sentences from yesterday. Write them on sentence strips, share, and celebrate!

16. Day 6 (or 7): Invitation to Collect and Write • Using the magazines and newspapers you have, work with a partner to collect words that include apostrophes. • Make a plan. How can you use each of these words in one piece of writing. Remember that the goal is for your writing to make sense and for you to show effective use of apostrophes. (Either through possessives or contractions.) • Write! • Teacher notes: • You can set limits here – have them only collect ten words, five words, etc. • Take the time to share and celebrate the writing!

17. Invitation to Wrap It Up • Remember that you can do what you need to do to make this model work for you! • You can use any aspect of grammar or craft! Questions?