Student Motivation Saturday: Mentor Sentences


What a beautiful fall morning, to finally find a few spare moments to get back to my blog, by joining one of my blogging buddies Joanne with Student Motivation Saturday!

 


We have been using another blogging buddy, Jivey's Mentor Sentences since the first part of the year {crazy to think conferences are almost here! Where is all of that time going?} It took a week or two for students to understand the process, but now they LOVE it!

The added details on this board mostly came from freebies. You can check out where here.
Their favorite part of the week is when they have a chance to revise and imitate. I created a bulletin board that changes weekly {usually with a picture of the mentor text on it as well... forgot it this last week, whoops!} and the students eagerly work and beg to be on the board. I teach multiple sections of communications, so I can only pick a few from each section to make it on the board. It's a pretty huge honor for the kiddos who make it. I've also been keeping track so that every student will have their chance to shine.

Whoops... missed the second missing comma in the bottom one.
What sticks out to me, is the amount of hands that shoot up throughout the week when it's time to share. I've been in classrooms that use Daily Oral Language, and in my experience, it was like pulling teeth to get a response that wasn't "add a capital" or "add a period" (even if the punctuation should have been a question or exclamation point.)

Want to motivate your students to become involved in the ELA curriculum, excited, and learning? Dig out some of those great works of children's literature and use them as mentor texts. There are some great products out there that take out the work in putting mentor sentences together in easy to implement formats (see one from Jivey and one from the Collaboration Cuties.)

I encourage you to check them out!



6 comments

  1. I love your idea of putting a picture of the text on your display also! I put mine on one side of my hallway bulletin board, and the other classes all stop to look at our sentences. My kids are so proud when their sentence is chosen!
    ~Kristen
    Chalk & Apples

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  2. I *LOVE* your Mentor Sentences board - so cute! It's really sweet that your students beg to be put up on the board - very motivating!

    ~Jessica
    Joy in the Journey

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  3. They sure love the neon sentence strips! Getting to use one for their sentences and get them on the board - Bazinga!

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  4. I use Jivey's mentor sentences, too. My kids absolutely LOVE working on these. I really feel they're able to connect the dots with this and then in their writing. I did not ever see that happen with DOL. I think this makes for a seemless way to work in parts of speech, too. Every single one of my kids wants to share their revision AND imitation sentences - even those reserved kids:)
    Are We There Yet?

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  5. I totally agree with you Christy about the students sharing their sentences! Mine all want to share too! I really like the idea of displaying the mentor text on the board! Very motivating bulletin board! Thanks for sharing and linking up! I've missed you friend!
    Joanne
    Head Over Heels For Teaching

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  6. I just want to say THANK YOU!! I was wondering about the whole DOL packet we have and this makes so much more sense! I'm going to use it during my writing block with my first graders. It will be less detailed, but I'm very excited to get started!

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