# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Unit 5 Mentor Text Read Aloud- Harvesting Hope

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Mentor Text Read Aloud Directions andTemplate

# data[].attributes.headline
How To Effectively Use Mentor Texts in the Classroom

# data[].attributes.subject
How To Effectively Use Mentor Texts in the Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Mentor texts have made my life as a teacher so much easier! They provide skillful, nuanced examples for students to emulate. Mentor texts are valuable tools and they can fit into your curriculum, no matter what age or subject you teach! Learn how to effectively use mentor texts in the classroom.

Just as a mentor guides you and is full of pertinent knowledge, a mentor text provides a concrete example of the skill you want students to master and guides them toward achieving it. Most of the time, teachers use picture books for mentor texts, but novels also model a variety of well-crafted skills. Now, mentor texts won't magically work for all students unless you work in partnership with the book. Your skill as a mentor and guide to your students will help them see the principles of the text that you hope they'll replicate, whether it be creating conflict in writing, understanding motive while reading, or visualizing fractions in math! Many mentor texts provide excellent examples of multiple skills. A good mentor text lends itself to multiple applications and is often interdisciplinary as well.

A lot of learning focuses on what to do and what not to do. We encourage students to do their best and we point out mistakes. We hand out sheets with errors and mistakes and challenge our students to find them, encouraging the thrill of discovery, close reading, and good detective work. A mentor text takes the emphasis off of the student's immediate efforts and instead creates an exemplar. Now students have a text to use as a measuring stick for their own work, not just to do better than, but to aspire to. Mentor texts not only provide examples of skills you want to teach, but they also provide high-quality examples that you feel at ease using, knowing you can provide the best for your students.

How to Select A Mentor Text

Obviously, mentor texts will differ depending on student needs, class, and the concept you wish to teach. However, all mentor texts should get a resounding "Yes!" when you ask yourself the following questions:

Does it showcase high-quality writing? This doesn't mean that every text needs to be an award winner or awash with literary gems. A simple book for a simple concept aimed at young students can still be a work of quality that you can confidently recommend to parents, students, and other staff.

Do I love it? Do you love the book? If it's a literary masterpiece, but you can't fall in love with it, your enthusiasm and passion will not ring true. Students will see right through it. Choose mentor texts that your students will love, and that you love, too!

Will it be engaging to my students?Will this mentor text engage your current group of students? What worked last year might not work this year. One group may have grasped a skill quickly and would find a mentor text that you loved last year to be repetitious.

Does it work in my timeframe? A lengthy novel may be the perfect way to delve into climax and falling action, but it won't fit into a class period or two. Choose a mentor text that will fit into your time constraints and add to your lesson instead of becoming an entirely separate one!

Using Mentor Texts In Each Major Subject Area

Showing an example of quality literature might seem a natural pairing with ELA or writing. However, the concepts in a mentor text can be applied to any subject; it's simply a matter of finding the right story to supplement the lessons you're teaching. Students of all ages love a good tale to inspire and teach them. Take a look at ways you can use mentor texts in every subject!
MATH:
You may initially reject mentor texts for math, since reading about a skill won't give your students the practice they need to master it. However, some students grasp content differently. The use of colorful picture books and descriptive language can help auditory, visual, and linguistic learners grasp mathematical concepts that might otherwise elude them.
Here are a few suggestions to help you visualize how a mentor text can merge with your math lesson:

Teaching division with remainders to your third and fourth graders? Help them with catchy poems and clearly illustrated groupings-and those left over, with A Remainder of One by Elinor J. Pinczes.

Ready to tackle that most tricky of areas, the circle? Enjoy the tale of Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi by Cindy Neuschwander to help your students (even middle schoolers) understand how pi unlocks the "magic formula" and helps mathematicians find the area of circles.

As with all mentor texts, you want to have concrete examples for your students to look back on when they need to replicate a skill. A good math mentor text will give you talking points, such as "Remember, what Sir Cumference learned about all circles? What is the magic number that equals pi?" Students will embrace math concepts and create strong connections to them through stories and characters.

SCIENCE:
As with math, you might initially think mentor texts aren't for a hands-on subject like science. For some students, even the most creative and experimental science classes fail to help them understand the point of a particular process or the end result of scientific inquiry. If you've ever had a student ask you how they'll use the rock cycle or why they'll need to know the difference between a monocot and dicot in "real life", you know what I mean. Mentor texts in science can help bring home the meaningful context of science in our world as well as teach important scientific concepts in a relatable way. Stopping for a good story also increases the likelihood that your point won't get lost in the hustle and bustle of hands-on work. Lastly, there are types of scientific writing like research reports, hypothesis, and inquiry-based project outlines with which you'll want your students to become familiar. What better way than with clear, quality writing?
Here are a few suggestions to help you visualize using mentor texts with your science class:

Consider using Buried Sunlight: How Fossil Fuels Have Changed the Earth by Molly Bang and Penny Chisholm to help students understand the impact of events that happened eons ago, understand how coal and oil are formed, and most importantly, understand how our use of them is changing the world.

You might have students who feel that your units on plants, soil, or botany don't matter in their modern, urban world. You might have students who clearly realize the impact of growing food to feed a hungry world. Either way, help students see how botany makes a difference in the world with In the Garden with Dr. Carver by Susan Grigsby.

SOCIAL STUDIES:
Historical fiction leads to wonderful mentor texts for any time period or topic you teach in social studies! Using a mentor text in social studies can help make the characters come out of the distant past or an obscure and unrelatable moment into the immediate world for students. A good mentor text helps students not only understand historical context, but also the emotions and struggles of the people of the era. This might be especially beneficial if you have students who have only experienced freedoms and privileges already granted in a progressive country. They may not understand the fight for change or the oppression that has already occurred to give them the life they live today. In addition to understanding different time periods and major events, a good mentor text can help students understand different cultures and ethnicities. Social studies is a rich ground for mentor texts.
Here are a few suggestions to help you visualize using mentor texts with your social studies class:

The Composition by Antonio Skármeta is a powerful tale about life under a dictatorship. Children might be forced to lie to shield their parents who are doing the "right thing" even when that goes against what the government considers to be the right thing. The book will help students grasp the choices even children must make to fight oppression.

Encounter by Jane Yolen is technically fictional, but it's based on Columbus' conquest and told from the perspective of a young indigenous boy. The tale offers perspectives that some children may not be aware of when they learn about Europeans coming to the Americas. This book would pair perfectly with...

Plague!: Epidemics and Scourges Through the Ages by John Farndon, to help students realize the historical (and scientific) reasons why Europeans were desperate to find and explore a new world.

READING:
Using mentor texts while teaching reading is a natural choice. Reading good literature that has stand out lessons and examples of skills good readers need is a part of your daily curriculum anyway. Make sure you make the most of your reading time by using mentor texts that model reading concepts like metacognition, summarizing, identifying character traits, identifying conflict, inference, and many more.
Here are a few suggestions to help you visualize using mentor texts with your reading class:

Going Home by Eve Bunting is a joyous tale of a family's journey home for Christmas in their Mexican village. Students can clearly practice summarizing the story events in order, but also the main points and lessons Carlos learns about the meaning of home.

Babushka's Doll by award-winner Patricia Polacco will have your students gasping and giggling while gaining skills in inferring, sequencing, and retelling.

Finally, for that truly challenging topic, metacognition, you'll fall in love with The Girl Who Thought in Pictures: The Story of Dr. Temple Grandin by Julia Finley Mosca. Not only will it help students think about their own thinking, it may help them understand why the world needs all different kinds of thinkers!

WRITING:
Mentor texts support writing in the best way! We spend a lot of time teaching children what to avoid when writing, but mentor texts show them masters of their craft. There are so many wonderful ways to use mentor texts to encourage young writers and to model the great writing they should aspire to. As with reading and math, there are many facets that need to be addressed when creating a skilled and proficient student. Use mentor texts to show students great writing skills that even adult writers still struggle with, such as creating strong plots with good pacing, building multi-dimensional characters, and conveying the author's purpose.
Here are a few suggestions to help you visualize using mentor texts with your writing class:

To teach author's purpose, you can't beat Thank you, Mr. Falkner by Patricia Polacco. Students need to identify whether an author writes to entertain, to inform, to explain, or to persuade, but they also have to observe how the author conveys that purpose in their writing. Polacco's voice is so clear and her intention is so obvious that your students will be inspired to tell a tale of their own, one with a purpose that comes shining through.

Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman creates a strong, shining character, the titular Grace. She's got dimensional qualities that pop her off the page. Inspire your writers with Hoffman's style so that they'll be ready to create their own strong characters.

Lastly, teaching writers to write a strong, compelling, and well-paced plot is tricky. Your students of all ages will have a great guide using the mentor text, The Night I Followed the Dog by Nina Laden. This plot builds in perfect sequence with a steady, believable pace, but is never dull. You'll be laughing, gasping, and waiting to see what happens-a true mentor text for writing a plot that pulls you in!

Are you ready to read?
After reading these tips for using mentor texts in the classroom, we can't wait to hear what gems you've discovered and how you plan to use them! Share them with us on our social media!
Reward your learners with these rockin' mentor texts: AMAZON SUGGESTED LIST Keep rockin' it!
See more Mentor Text blogs: MENTOR TEXT BLOGS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to Effectively Use Mentor Texts in the Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Mentor texts have made my life as a teacher so much easier! They provide skillful, nuanced examples for students to emulate. Mentor texts are valuable tools and they can fit into your curriculum, no matter what age or subject you teach! Learn how to effectively use mentor texts in the classroom.

# data[].attributes.headline
Reading Strategies to Teach Social Studies

# data[].attributes.subject
Reading Strategies to Teach Social Studies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Integrating language arts skills into social studies can be tricky. There is already a lot of subject matter to cover without having to teach reading and writing skills as well! If a social studies teacher did not receive much language arts training within his or her certification program, integrating these skills can be even more difficult. However, within the Common Core framework, social studies teachers are expected to integrate reading and writing skills. In addition, it can be difficult to know which skills students need. The good news is many social studies teachers already use some of the most important reading skills. Adding reading to your social studies lessons may not be as difficult as it may seem.

In this post, I am going to discuss six key reading skills that will build literacy within a social studies classroom.

1. Vocab and Vernacularisms

For many students, a poor vocabulary really holds them back from a deep understanding of social studies content. Students with processing issues or dyslexia have a difficult time sounding out words or breaking them apart, so reading large chunks of text can be overwhelming. Knowing the vocabulary words before reading can make the textbook or documents less intimidating. The more teachers can do to make new words memorable, the better.

One way to tackle vocabulary is to encourage students to use new terms. The more they see and use a word, the better chance they have of remembering it. Students should be expected to use vocabulary words in their writing (but also be allowed to use their notes while they are still learning the words.)

Another strategy is to connect new words to other words or to a mnemonic devices. For example, any time I have a vocab word with a common Greek or Latin root, I take a minute to point out the root, its meaning, and other words in that family. For example,

can be related to so many other words. Many students have studied Spanish and can see that aqueduct is similar to

(water). It also looks a lot like

- the color of water. An

is a water tank for fish. So an aqueduct probably has something to do with water. Giving students multiple connections to other words will help them retain and recall the new word.

An example of a mnemonic device is something like latitude is a ladder. Now, that one never really worked for me - neither does lat is fat - but I have had many students that used it. Personally, I always teach that latitude has an A for Around, while longitude has an O for Over.

In addition, vernacularisms are important to understand primary documents. Students need to understand the language of a time period in order to really comprehend the stated and implied meanings in a document. Teachers could identify any words or sayings in a social studies text that might affect student comprehension and preteach their meanings.

2. Identifying Bias and Propaganda

Being able to determine if information is based on fact or is biased has become even more important in the digital age. Tech-savvy groups are getting better at making emails and websites that really look legitimate!

Although propaganda and bias are not new, they have recently been brought to the forefront in many classes. When studying history, students can examine propaganda or analyze documents and drawings for bias. At the same time, students also need to learn how to consume information digitally, including how to tell whether or not the site author has a bias.

Social studies teachers could coordinate these lessons with the English department. For example, English teachers could perhaps cover identifying bias, propaganda, and fake news from modern sources, while the social studies teachers could weave it into their historical discussions. As this skill is cross-disciplinary, teachers should make sure they are not unnecessarily duplicating content.

GCF LearnFree.org has a some excellent digital lessons available for free, including How to Judge Online Information and Evaluating a Webpage.

If you are looking for lesson on Fake News, Angie Kratzer sells a unit on TPT.

3. Close Reading

Over the past few years, close reading has been given a lot of attention in upper elementary grades. In close reading, students are really determining the main idea and key details, as well as reacting to the text. Students are taught that multiple readings are required to truly comprehend the text. Of course, without specific instructions, you and I both know many students will read the text one time and keep on going!

Social studies teachers can easily continue to model this in older grades as texts become increasingly complex. It sounds like a lot of extra instruction, but many teachers may already be doing this. For example, if the class is reading and analyze a document or passage, teachers can simply "think aloud." In other words, the teacher can show how he or she understood a chunk of the text saying out loud the thinking process. (If you are like me, you already talk to yourself when thinking through something, so you just need to say it louder!)

Another part of close reading is taking notes in the margins. I know many teachers already do this on copies of documents, so just modeling this to students will help integrate this skill.

For more information on close reading, here are two well-written articles on using the strategy:

4. Author's Purpose

Author's Purpose is especially important in social studies. As students read and analyze historical documents, political cartoons, posters, diaries, etc, they need to determine the author's purpose in creating the piece. Did the author want to persuade or inform the reader? Is the author simply entertaining or describing something to the reader? Understanding the author's intent of a piece may affect how the text or image is interpreted.

Students should come to middle school with a good understanding of the types of author's purpose. By sixth grade, this is

a new skill. Social studies teachers may need to do a basic review of the types of author's purpose, but really, teachers just should try to make a point to ask and explore author's purpose when examining historical texts or images.

5. Cause & Effect

Although students have studied cause and effect multiple times before middle school, this is a skill social studies teachers should continue to review. When students begin learning this skill, they only have one cause and one effect. By fifth and sixth grade, they will begin to see multiple causes or multiple effects. However, historical events often have multiple causes

multiple effects - which can be much more difficult for students to understand. (Keep in mind that many students confuse which things are causes and which are effects.)

Using graphic organizers may help students understand more complex relationships. Some students will start to see the "big picture" of the content with a visual organizer. Teachers can just add a cause and effect graphic organizer to their note-taking system to help students comprehend the cause and effect relationships.

Within PowerPoint, there are a few graphic organizers in the SmartArt section. SmartArt can be found on the Insert tab. To find cause and effect, click SmartArt and then Relationships. Once selected, you can add or subtract pieces to fit your needs.

6. Historical Perspective
Historical perspective
has been defined as "attempting to see through the eyes of the people who lived in times and circumstances far removed from our present-day lives." ( Seixas and Morton 2013) As social studies teachers, we need to teach students to understand historical perspective. For many students, this may be a new concept.

If you teach upper elementary or middle school, you have probably had students declare a past action to be "wrong" or 'racist". This is called
presentism
, or looking at history from a modern day perspective. From a modern point of view, the beliefs, values, and practices of the past may indeed be considered wrong. However, what students need to ask themselves is how would people of the time period interpret the event? By interpreting events in the context of the time period, students will have a better understanding of how the event, document, etc. would have been interpreted by and affected people.

Teachers can introduce students to the time period they are studying with images, quotes, songs, or other cultural artifacts. Using these items as bell ringers can help give students a better understanding of the time period. Discussing the culture and values of a time period will help students form a deeper understanding of the past.

The Historical Thinking Project, based on Seixas and Morton's The Big Six Historical Thinking Concepts, has a good description of historical perspective, as well as teacher resources.

Teachers can also find resources on the Digital Chalkboard, created by the California Department of Education.

I hope these explanations and tips have been helpful. If you are a social studies trying to integrate reading skills, don't despair! It seems really overwhelming at first, but there are so many things social studies teachers do that already support reading. Start with one reading skill at a time. Integrate it in a few lessons, and keep doing it until you are comfortable with it. Once that skill becomes a normal part of your routine, add another. Before you know it, you will be seamlessly integrating reading into your content lessons!

Do you have questions? Need help? I would be glad to help! You can reach me by email or just leave a comment.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
6 Reading Strategies You Need to Teach Social Studies - TeachingIdeas4U

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Integrating language arts skills into social studies can be tricky. There is already a lot of subject matter to cover without having to teach reading and writing skills as well! If a social studies teacher did not receive much language arts training within his or her certification program,

# data[].attributes.headline
Teaching Social Studies is Teaching Reading

# data[].attributes.subject
Teaching Social Studies is Teaching Reading

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Teaching Social Studies is Teaching Reading - Natalie Wexler | The OC for Social Studies