effectively is to read and know the text. So, I decided to start with, Rick Riordan's, The Lightning Thief.
The 4th grade team was planning for Reading Literature 4.3 - Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character’s thoughts, words, or actions). The team decided to tackle one aspect at a time; the first being character. We talked about what the standard is asking our students to do and what skills they needed to do it. Kids would need to read and annotate text, cite evidence to support their description and infer meaning to be able to 'describe in depth'.
In the first two pages of The Lightning Thief we are introduced to two characters, Percy Jackson and Mr. Brunner. The text provides many details about the characters. Some information was directly stated in the text.
"My name is Percy Jackson. I'm 12 years old". There is also some descriptive writing that students could think and mold around their background knowledge to make some inferences about Percy. This is also true about Mr. Brunner. So, students can choose to describe either character. Or, we talked about a 'We Do' with Percy and a 'You Do' with Mr. Brunner. In the end, the team decided to use this text as a common formative assessment after their direct instruction with other text.
We are learning to plan for and use mentor texts and it has been challenging because it is new. There are many texts that children are interested in to use as mentor text. We just have to jump in and try it. One of the most important lessons I've learned about mentor text is we have to know the text and what we want kids to do or learn from it. Anticipating what students will do, say or write will help develop questions to ask to get our students to make connections. Committing to read, all types, is something I definitely have to do to continue my learning around using mentor text.