When my 11-year-old is trying to learn how to effectively shoot a jump shot, we find a video of Steph Curry and study it.

When I started this website, I studied other successful ones first.

When my friend was writing a grant, she looked at a completed one first.

Almost anything new we do, we find more success if we start with a “mentor” first–someone who has successfully completed the job, product, skill, etc. The same is true for writers. When we start a unit by showing students a mentor text (ie picture book, an article from a children’s magazine, a restaurant review, a speech, etc). It provides them a vision for this work, an idea of what the end product might look like. Will their final writing be just like the published piece? No, they are not an adult author with years of experience. But, they begin to envision more effectively what their end product will be.

Providing a vision for the final product is one way to engage student writers with mentor texts. Another one is that it provides an idea of what this writing authentically looks like. It’s not a contrived writing assignment created only for the teacher to grade and assess standards. For example, a first-grader may learn to write an informational book by studying a book about lions. In that book, they will likely see different types of non-fiction details, such as number details or example details. They will likely notice how the illustrator sometimes zooms in to show details or zooms out to show the entirety of something. It creates the context for students to authentically choose crafting and illustrating moves that are real moves authors make. This creates sense of agency, value and purpose in the work. It goes beyond the purpose of what happens inside the walls of school, beyond the tests that we are required to give to students.

A final reasons (though there are others!) that we’ll dig into today is how mentor texts help create a sense of writing identity. What is writing identity? It means that the student identifies as a writer–it’s part of who they are and they take on that “persona.” Does this matter? Absolutely. Research shows a direct correlation between identity and academic achievement. How does looking at mentor texts do this? 1) They learn about real authors–the books they write, the pictures they illustrate, the topic they like to write about, and even more personal information in their bio. They begin to see authors as real people. They learn that they can take on this identity, too. For example, a first grader announced recently that they “are just like Gail Gibbons because they use multiple pictures on a page” to show a sequence of events. They are connecting with a real person who does the real work of writing. This provides them energy for their work. It’s no different than when our athletes aspire to be like Steph Curry–they see he is a real person who worked hard and put in countless hours of work to be great. And, they can, too.

Look for future posts on this topic as we dig into how to use mentor texts in mini-lessons, small groups and conferences. It will be a game changer for you and your students!