Today I'm linking up with Holly to share something I've been dabbling in the past two week with my smarties: Mentor Sentences. Jessica Ivey over at Ideas by Jivey has been such a great help in this area. She answered a million questions for me when I got started. Good thing she is one of my BBBs or I'm sure she would be tired of me!
Jessica has a great product for upper elementary students on Mentor Sentences, but I needed a little bit more complex text. I decided to use my read aloud: The Watson's Go to Birmingham and take text sentences from there. My students are really pretty decent about being able to produce the parts of a sentence, so I am focusing more on using them to review and teach figurative language.
We complete each of the parts: Invitation to Notice, Invitation to Re-read, Invitation to Revise, Invitation to Imitate, and Invitation to Edit through a 5-10 day span depending on what else we have going on. Throughout the week I use the mentor sentence to review a specific piece of figurative language. So far we have done similes, alliteration and onomatopoeia. I continue in my Word Work notebook with lessons, foldable and activities that practice that particular piece of figurative language. The picture above shows my mentor sentences on one side, and then similes practice which I got from Erin at I'm Lovin' Lit.
My smarties really like doing this. On the Invitation to Imitate day they hope they are selected to go up on the Wall of Fame. I am beginning to see the work we put in to this in the writing we have been producing. That's what it's all about, right!
Stop by and visit Holly and see what everyone else has Tried on this Tuesday!
I'd never be tired of you!! :) Thanks so much for the shout-out! I'm so excited you are having success with them!
ReplyDeleteJivey
I love that you use the format with a more challenging text for your students! Your notebooks look amazing!! :)
ReplyDelete~Holly
Fourth Grade Flipper