Craft Moves: Lesson Sets for Teaching Writing with Mentor Texts

How do you choose mentor texts for your students? How do you mine them for the craft lessons you want your students to learn?In Craft Moves: Lesson Sets for Teaching Writing with Mentor Texts , Stacey Shubitz, co-founder of the Two Writing Teachers website, usestwenty recently published picture books to createmore than 180 lessons to teach various craft moves that will help your students become better writers.Each of the 184 lessons in the book includes a publisher's summary, a rationale or explanation of the craft move demonstrated in the book, and a procedure that takes teachers and students back into the mentor text to deepen their understanding of the selected craft move. A step-by-step guide demonstrates how to analyze a picture book for multiple craft moves.Shubitzintroduces picture books as teaching tools and offers ways to integrate them into your curriculum and classroom discussions. She then shares different routines and classroom procedures designed to help students focus on their writing during the writer's workshop as well as focusing how teachers can prepare for small group instruction.Using picture books as mentor texts will help your students not only read as writers and write with joy but also become writers who can effectively communicate meaning, structure their writing, write with detail, and give their writing their own unique voice.

Stacey Shubitz is an author, an independent literacy consultant, and an adjunct professor. A graduate of The Literacy Specialist Program at Teachers College, she has experience teaching fourth and fifth grades. She is also the Chief of Operations and Lead Writer for Two Writing Teachers, a popular blog about the teaching of writing. Visit the blog at twowritingteachers.wordpress.com and follow Stacey on Twitter: @sshubitz #CraftMoves