When teaching writing there are a lot of different strategies to help your students become the best writer that they can be. It is important as the teacher have hundreds of different ways to have the students engage in the writing process and grow. Two of the strategies that have deeply interested me through the beginning of this semester is Mentor Texts and Mini-Lessons. These two strategies, Mentor Texts and Mini-Lessons, are respectively great strategies to aid with engaging the students in writing and also complement each other to create a stronger lesson.
Mentor Texts are used in the classroom for students to see work that isn't there own. When a person wants to become an author, the most important thing they can do is read books. This is the same principle just brought into the classroom. In Creating Confident Writers, it is stated, "As the writing mentors in your classroom, we encourage you to seek text that excite your imagination as a teacher-writer. Keep your eyes and ears open to what you see and hear around you for inspiration"(Hicks & Schoenborn, 2020, 54). This is why Mentor Texts can be so useful and important. The Mentor Texts show the students what is possible as well as what and what not to do. Having good writing in front of the students will help the students write better. The only major problem with Mentor Texts is that students could copy style or language from it. I don't find this to be a very large problem. I think it is a matter of putting enough material in front of the students so that they can start to find their own style. See what they like and what they do not like.
Mini-Lessons are a great way to engage students with the work but still make sure the students spend most their time doing what is most important to become a good writer. That being writing. I learned about Mini-Lessons from the Teaching That Makes Sense reading and found it really interesting and simply made a lot of sense. You should not spend to much time taking students away from writing. However, it is important to still teach and Mini-Lessons are a great way for this. A small 10-15 minute lesson that goes over a small part of writing that you want to capitalize on or maybe you are noticing that a few students are struggling with it. In Teaching that Makes Sense it is discussed that these Mini-Lessons need to be quick and practical. It explains, "The best mini-lessons are based on real things that real writers really need to know. They are practical and immediately useful."(Peha, 1995-2010, 3-4). It is necessary to have the students be able to immediately use the information you are giving them. After a Mini-Lesson the students should then be given time to write.
Video I found interesting about Mini-Lessons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELTexnBK9x0
These two strategies are very useful on their own however they also complement each other very well because they work together in the pre-writing process. Neither of these strategies are made to be used while writing is actually happening. They are both used to set students up for success when the time comes to write. The Mini-Lessons set up the more practical parts of writing while Mentor Texts show the students what is possible and show them what good writing is.
References
Hicks, T., & Schoenborn, A. (2020). Exploring Mentor Texts. In Creating Confident Writers: For High School, College, and Life. WW Norton.
Peha, S. (1995-2010). Welcome to Writer's Workshop Teaching Young Writers the Way Professionals Teach Themselves. Teaching That Makes Sense, 1-81.
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