#2ndaryELA is a group of middle and high school English Language Arts teachers looking to share ideas and best practices. We chat every Tuesday night at 8 pm EST using #2ndaryELA. We'd love for you to join us!
Hi #2ndaryELA 🙋🏻♀️ I'm Maggie- former/future HS English teacher and current grad student at @vupeabody !! My blog is https://t.co/P0KcFQJsEJ but I'm woefully behind on updates 😅
Hi #2ndaryELA! Noel, 9th and 10th grade ELA teacher from NC here. I am lurking on the chat tonight---grading essays is taking precedence. Love using mentor texts and mentor sentences! Interested to see how you guys use them.
A1 cont Here's a blog post about using coming of age poetry to help develop students' writing skills, particularly description https://t.co/bnpdqfxQsz#2ndaryELA
A1: We look at the review excerpts books usually have on the back or inside cover. Students will start using these to help them write captions for their posts on our class Instagram. Just got it up and running! https://t.co/15zmjhS5FJ#2ndaryELA
A2: My mentor sentences tend to come from whatever we are reading in class. Getting ready to read The Outsiders and can't wait to pick out some gems from there! #2ndaryELA
A2: @pernilleripp is the master of IDing picture books that work really well as mentor texts. I always check out the ones she posts about. I also try to use whatever YA novel I'm reading at the time, so it doubles as a book showcase. #2ndaryELA
Oh - yes - I see what you mean. I don't use them to teach writing structure - just rules for writing like capital letters, punctuation, subject/predicate etc. #2ndaryela
A3 I tried out using mentor sentences a la Jeff Anderson style last year. I loved it, but it can become the whole lesson and we wanted to keep it to just the warm up/do now period #2ndaryELA
A3: I haven’t specifically used mentor sentences for this. But we do look at claim statements others have written to make sure we are doing ours correctly. #2ndaryELA
I had the same experience. The kids seemed to enjoy it and learn from it, but it ended up taking a whole 40 minute class period. I'm trying to figure out how to shorten it. #2ndaryELA
A3: As a reading teacher, not often. Next year I'll be teaching a reading/writing/SS block, so I'm excited to see others' answers to these next few questions! #2ndaryELA
I use them as a bell-ringer. The first day we just glue the sentence in our notebook and write what we notice (simple, complex, declarative, imperative and so on.) #2ndaryELA
A4 Again being a big reader helps. I collect good sentences from YA Lit that I read. It's a great way to also get students interested in books #2ndaryELA
A4: The other thing I have done is write my own non-fiction texts that relate to our class novel and focus on one sentence from the nonfiction per week. #2ndaryELA
A4: OR sometimes I write non-fiction that is related to a theme for the month - like Earth Day for example - since this month is almost ALL state testing. #2ndaryELA
A5 After practicing several skills through mentor sentences, students might have a larger piece with a checklist of the skills we've practiced to include #2ndaryELA
Struggling to get a good conversation going during your class discussions? This #2ndaryELA Twitter chat was all about Socratic seminars. Middle school and high school English Language Arts teachers discussed the most effective seating arrangements. Teach… https://t.co/9eK4WzVz1d
