Mentor Texts and Mini Lessons

Year two of Writer’s Workshop and I feel much more comfortable with the workshop model. I started using mentor texts right away. I remember in my early days of teaching, I presented students with a plethora of texts and authors, but they were all viewed from the lens of reading not writing. In fact, writing always seemed to take a back seat in the middle school English classroom as we focused on improving student scores on the standardized test in reading. I don’t want to go into a long dissertation on the downfalls of teaching to the test as that has been done to death, but suffice it to say educators are grateful that the sole focus on testing has calmed down and those who set policy in education have realized that good, rigorous instruction improved test scores.

At any rate, in the reading curriculum, there is a strong push to spend more time on a text, doing multiple readings including a close read to flesh out not only key ideas and details, but the writer’s craft as well. While this does allow us to view a text through multiple lenses, I still feel that students need to be exposed to many texts, however. The mentor text was the perfect compromise.

I decided to maintain the practice of writing the personal narrative at the start of the school year. The personal narrative is a perfect first assignment for many reasons. First, it is about the student. Second, because they are familiar with the subject, it is easier to get material. Finally, most students feel comfortable writing about themselves. I had to find mentor texts by top-notch writers to present many writing techniques and strategies. I decided to use some favorites from my prior reading lessons: Amy Tan, Maya Angelou, Julia Alvarez, Gary Paulson, and Clifton Davis. After reviewing the personal narratives of these writers, I set to work developing mini lessons using the selected works.

I started with Amy Tan’s “Fish Cheeks.” This is a short text (one page) and fits the elements of the personal narrative I was presenting to the students. I found a wonderful graphic using a slice of watermelon which then suggested even that slice of life was too big and your story should be a seed in that slice. Amy Tan’s story was that seed. It told the story of a single Christmas dinner the year she fell in love with the minister’s son. “Fish Cheeks” tells about an event that was relevant to the writer and in which she learns a lesson -- that she can look American on the outside, but inside she will always be Chinese.

After reading the mentor text, students were ready to do some writing. Each student has a book they use as their journal. Some students use a spiral notebook, others opted for a journal. The point is, however, that each student is writing or working on some aspect of the writing process every day. As noted numerous times in this account of the workshop model, students are in different places in the process. Eventually, however, they have to publish their writing and I have to give grades.

Although students have written personal narratives every year of their academic lives, they still have trouble coming up with ideas and ask the most popular question in the writing classroom: How do I start? For the first part -- coming up with ideas -- we always suggest brainstorming, but do students really know what that means. The first thing they do is make a web and then stare at a blank web. That’s where I started the mini lessons.

Day one, we made a list of all the potential incidents or small moments about which we could write. I had my list prewritten and took my journal desk-to-desk to show students how I brainstormed my list. Each entry was a sentence or a phrase that helped jog my memory of an incident about which I might write. This strategy worked for some students.

Day two, we made a 3x3 grid and filled each square with a big idea to write about. From family vacations to arguments with a friend, we quickly filled our nine squares. Next, students took one square and came up with three ideas about that topic. Finally, they took one of the ideas and wrote what they remembered about the incident. AgaIn, I had an example completed to use as a model for students. This strategy worked for some more students.

I still didn’t have all of the students with an idea. The final strategy was for those students to tell a story to a neighbor. After they verbalized their story, they were instructed to write down what they said. Finally, I had about 95 percent of students ready to write their incident. Then came the infamous “how do I start?”

The story also has a identifiable opening style in which Tan presents a surprising statement -- “I fell in love with the minister’s son the winter I turned fourteen.” She goes on to use simile. She tells her reader that “he was not chinese, but as white as Mary in the manger.” Finally, Tan gives personal information pertinent to the lesson in her first paragraph relating she wished for the “blonde haired boy” and “a slim American nose.”

In addition to Tan’s story, we also looked at the opening paragraphs of other personal narratives including Maya Angelou’s “Mrs. Flowers” and Julia Alvarez’ “Names/Nombres.” Each writer brings their own opening style to the writing and students were encouraged to study and mimic the style of these exemplars.

Angelou uses contrasting emotions in her opening as the tells us how she felt hopeless and how Mrs. Flowers threw her a “lifeline” giving the reader a sense that she felt hope.

Alvarez starts with an anecdote to tell the story of how many times her name was changed and how she felt about these changes. She also uses imagery in her opening as she compares her last name, Alvarez, to an “orchestra of sounds.”

Now it was time for students to get to their own writing.