How to use Mentor Sentences in Middle School

 

Once upon a time, I convinced my team that mentor sentences are an amazing tool to teach grammar, writing conventions, and even review reading skills.   

My first exposure to mentor sentences was with using picture books but I knew I had to be creative and find grade-level texts to use.  I had trouble finding ones that were "just right" for the task and time frame we had to work with (bell work time) so I decided to make my own.

I like to use them as bell-ringers and in order to do this I came up with my own system.

3 Steps for how I use mentor sentences in my middle school class as bell-ringers:

1. Each month, my students are given one new text.  

I wrote the texts to focus on themes such as perseverance or on the history behind holidays such as Earth Day.  I also had some fiction texts.

2.  Each week of the month, students study one sentence from the text as a model of good writing.

3.  Each day of the week students get one question to answer about the sentence of the week.

These questions would be about capitalization, punctuation, using commas, literary devices, and much more.

How much time does this mentor sentence work take, you ask?  

Well, the very first day of the month takes the most time as I ask the students to read the text before I give them the sentence for the week.  But after that, students get into the routine and they can complete their question of the day in the time it takes me to take attendance. Then we go over answers in about 5 minutes (or less).  So it's quick and easy!  

What about assessments with mentor sentences?

At the end of the week, I have been known to ask students to re-write the sentence of the week in the same style and use some of the same words but with various changes including new adverbs or adjectives or even take one bigger sentence and make it two sentences.  At the end of the month, I challenged my students to use their sentences to create a summary of the text for the month.

Ready to try mentor sentences in your middle school classroom?  

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