My students need mentor texts in the classroom so students will have access to rich literature throughout the school year. These mentor texts will reinforce character building, reading strategies, and writing skills.
"This is the best day ever!" These are the words I often hear from my first graders when I read them a story from a picture book and have an engaging lesson that involves reading and writing. Witnessing the joy my first grade students experience from books is thrilling as a teacher.
Since our school is mainly composed of military students, my class is full of a diverse group of children with a wide range of abilities and needs.
They come from a variety of backgrounds, which means they come with a varying amount of background knowledge. Through all of the struggles that my students are faced with, they still come to school excited to learn. It is my job as their teacher to keep them excited about learning. I want to give my students the knowledge they need to succeed in and out of the classroom.
My Project
A picture book to begin a writing lesson or character building lesson? Of course! I have found that through the use of reading aloud mentor texts to my students, they are able to draw on their background knowledge and real-life situations. Mentor texts will be used to introduce a variety of character traits such as respect responsibility, friendship, bullying, and many more. I also have found that using picture books to introduce a reading concept or writing skill can be equally as useful. Mentor texts help introduce reading and writing strategies such as making predictions, inferring character traits and struggles, discussing how characters change throughout the text, finding the main idea, forming ideas, organizing text, etc. Students will independently apply the concepts learned.
More than a third of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. Cravatt and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
