Read Alouds For Writing Instruction
Posted by Marsha on January 4, 2012
Read alouds are not just beneficial for teaching reading; they are perfect for teaching writing, too. Quality literature, be it picture books or novels, are perfect for modeling craft and target skills we want our students to include in their writing. For example, with similes and metaphors like- “The trees stood still as giant statues. Somewhere behind us a train whistle blew, long and low, like a sad, sad song. And when their voices faded away it was as quiet as a dream.” and “…the snow below it was whiter than the milk in a cereal bowl.”- Owl Moon, by Jane Yolen, is a wonderful mentor text for teaching figurative language.
It is also perfect for showing the richness sensory details add to a piece of writing. For example- “Our feet crunched over the crisp snow and little gray footprints followed us. I had to run after him every now and then to keep up, and my short, round shadow bumped after me. We reached the line of pine trees, black and pointy against the sky…. The moon made his face into a silver mask. I could feel the cold, as if someone’s icy hand was palm-down on my back. My mouth felt furry, for the scarf over it was wet and warm.”
Tips for using mentor text when for teaching writing skills:
- Think about the target skills you want to teach. Look at your favorite picture books and/or novels for evidence of these targets.
- If you don’t have favorite texts, Google it. For example, Google “Picture books + sensory details” and see what you find.
- Keep post-it notes on hand to jot down targets as you read any book, just in case you run across a target. For future reference, leave the post-it note on the inside cover to remind you of the gems in the book.
- You MUST read the book before you read it to your kids. MUST, MUST, MUST. In fact, practice reading the book aloud before you read it to your students (even two reads are better than a cold read). In addition to pointing out craft and targets, it is important to model how fluency and inflection sound. Besides, you will not do the book justice if you read it cold.
- When you do find a book you want to use with your students, keep post-it notes or flags on hand to mark the targets you come across in the text to remind you to stop and comment about each when you read the book to your class.
- Before you read the text to your students, build background as it pertains to the text and target. For example, you might say to your students, “Owl Moon is a book about a little girl who goes out with her father on a winter night to look for owls. The author, Jane Yolen, does an amazing job at using similes to paint pictures in our mind and let us know what it is like to go owling. I am going to read Owl Moon to you. I want you to listen, enjoy the book, and pay attention to the pictures the similes create in your mind.”
- As you read, stop and quickly comment on each simile, but don’t pause so long as to loose the focus and groove of the book. Continue to read the book straight through, or in logical chunks.
- After you read the book for enjoyment, THEN you can return to specific pages and discuss the simile or sensory detail (or whatever target you decided to highlight). Put the page up on a document camera and let your students see how the target skill works in context of the story (rather than a list of similes on a handout in writers’ notebooks).
Using mentor texts to teach writing is an effective way to introduce or take a deeper look at target skills such as word choice and figurative language, how authors use punctuation in their writing, and the different ways writing can be organized. Preparation and planning are key!
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