"Here is what I love about this book:€ It has gobs and gobs of student writing samples with smart and lively explanations of how to use each as the focus of a craft lesson to teach writing. The right models of student writing are the best mentor texts a teacher can find and with this book, you need look no further. ... Breathe, fellow writing teachers.€ Much needed and wanted help has arrived."--Ruth Culham, Author of Traits WritingSometimes a student's best teacher is another studentIf ever there were a book to respond to the pressure to increase students' test scores, this is it. You see,

Sometimes a student’s best teacher is another student Just as the pressure for students to perform well on state assessments escalates ever higher, and the call to raise students’ achievement in narrative, opinion/argument , and informative/explanatory writing grows louder, Gretchen Bernabei and Judi Reimer publish Fun-Size Academic Writing for Serious Learning. If ever there were a book to answer every need, this is it. You see, Gretchen and Judi have been concerned about adolescents’ writing for years, and they have had amazing success using mentor texts by students to teach the ins and outs of writing in any genre. So with this book, they "hand over their file drawers" and provide you with 101 essays written by students with one-page companion lessons that address text structure, imagery, dialogue, rhetorical devices, grammatical structures, textual blends--all the different tools that writers use. Organized into three major sections that align with the Common Core, STAAR, and other major state assessments, Fun-Size Academic Writing delivers succinct, powerhouse instruction on topics such as: • How to choose a structure for argument, informational, or narrative writing • How to read a piece and extract thesis statement and main points • How to layer a wide range of details to support points • How to use rhetorical devices and grammatical constructions for effect • How to write from the point of view of a fictional character The essays—also available in reproducible form on the companion website--demonstrate something striking, something imitable, something concrete. They give students a bank of choices to call upon as they write. The lessons are short, practical, and full of variety. Collectively, these essays and lessons have the potential to move the needle on American students’ writing achievement once and for all. They show what has been done by students—and they reveal to you how your own students can do it, too.

It's been a decade since Lynne Dorfman and Rose Cappelli wrote the first edition of Mentor Texts and helped teachers across the country make the most of high-quality children's literature in their writing instruction. In the second edition of this important book Lynne and Rose show teachers how to help students become confident, accomplished writers by using literature as their foundation. The second edition includes brand-new "Your Turn Lessons," built around the gradual release of responsibility model, offering suggestions for demonstrations and shared or guided writing. Reflection is emphasized as a necessary component to understanding why mentor authors chose certain strategies, literary devices, sentence structures, and words. Lynne and Rose offer new children's book titles in each chapter and in a carefully curated and annotated Treasure Chest. At the end of each chapter a "Think About It--Talk About It--Write About It" section invites reflection and conversation with colleagues. The book is organized around the characteristics of good writing--focus, content, organization, style, and conventions. Rose and Lynne write in a friendly and conversational style, employing numerous anecdotes to help teachers visualize the process, and offer strategies that can be immediately implemented in the classroom. This practical resource demonstrates the power of learning to read like writers.

If reading school essays puts you to sleep, Gretchen Bernabei's REVIVING THE ESSAY will wake up your students' writing in ways even they never dreamed of. This exciting new resource for students and teachers provides 30 delightful lessons and activities that will awaken all of the senses, challenging and cajoling, stirring and stimulating even the most reluctant writer. Chapter headings such as "Finding your Message," "Finding or Inventing your Structure," "Experimenting with Thick Description," and "Crafting the Essay for a Reader's Ears" quickly reveals the substance and scope of this inventive approach to teaching a form that dates back to Montaigne. Bernabei uses a number of examples, visual prompts and verbal generators to engage students in thinking about every side of a subject.

Poetry is a joyful art form, but how do you teach students to joyfully read, analyze, and write poems? In Text Structures from Poetry, Grades 4-12, award-winning educator Gretchen Bernabei teams up with noted poet Laura Van Prooyen to light the path. Centered around 50 classroom-proven lesson and poem pairs, the mentor texts represent a broad range of voices in contemporary poetry and the canon. These unique and engaging lessons show educators how to "pop the hood" on a poem to discover what makes it work, using text structures to unlock the engine of a poem. This method enables educators to engage students in reading and re-reading a poem closely, to identify how the parts of the poem relate to each other to create movement, and to leverage what they have learned to write their own evocative poems. Each of the 50 lessons includes a mentor poem that serves as an excellent model for young writers, a diagram that illustrates the text structure of the poem, and several inspiring examples of student poems written to emulate the mentor poem. Easy-to-use instructional resources enhance instructor and student understanding and include: Teaching notes for unlocking the text structure of a poem and the engine that makes it work. Tips for exploring rhyme scheme, meter, and fixed forms. Instructional sequences that vary the ways students can read and write poems and other prose forms. Ideas for revising and publishing student poems. A "Meet the Contemporary Authors" section that includes fascinating messages from the contemporary poets. Teach your students to learn about poetry using the magic of poems themselves and lead the way to a rewarding love of poetry for teachers and students alike.

In this new book Tom Newkirk invites teachers to decide and lay claim to what's worth fighting for, and he offers them substantive ammunition. He asserts that no curriculum can ever work unless it fits on the back of an envelope, then offers his own envelope-sized curriculum for teaching writing, four questions and sixteen focal points.

Text Structures from the Masters provides 50 short texts written by famous Americans driven by what Peter Elbow described as “an itch” to say something. By examining the structure of these mentor texts, students see that they too have an “itch” and learn how to use the text structure of each document to express it. Each 4-page lesson includes: A planning sheet that shows the structure of the mentor text Brainstorming boxes A method for “kernelizing” (outlining) their own essay Student examples