Making Writer's Workshop Possible: Class Mentor Essay

If you had told me ten years ago I would love teaching writing, I would have told you you were crazier than a teacher getting an evaluation on party day.  But I do!  Why, you might ask? Because I've finally figured it out.  I've discovered how to create writers. This year, I've created students who believe they are writers and I owe it all to Writer's Workshop.

Mentor Essays in Writer's Workshop

It's an exciting time to be a writing teacher.  The shift in the new standards emphasize students' ability to write.  As teachers, we need to think carefully about how we teach writing because we play a central role our students' success. We must effectively teach writing and we should embrace that challenge with excitement. 

To make writing manageable, it needs to be broken down into bite-sized chunks, so students can master one element at a time. One of those chunks involves using a mentor essay.  

A mentor text is a term we are familiar with.  It is a text that is an example of good writing for writers. A mentor essay is a text students write with the teacher to provide guided practice of how to write a good essay. 

Steps For Success With Mentor Essays

I start each year with opinion writing.  Let's be honest, our students usually love their own opinions, so I say let's use that to our benefit!  I start by telling them opinion writing is their chance to prove they are right and that appeals to them. Then, I explicitly teach how to write an opinion essay through a series of mini-lessons, while simultaneously writing a class mentor essay. The steps for writing a mentor essay are easy to follow and implement in your classroom.

1. Define It: I start the writing unit by explaining to students we will create a class essay together.  I tell them it will be our "mentor essay".  This essay will be a good example of how to write.  It will have an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion paragraphs that they will want to replicate.  It will be their go-to if they ever get stuck in their own writing.  It will be displayed for them to use throughout the year. 
2. Read Texts: If we are going to write a mentor essay together, we have to read the texts we are going to write about.  Prior to reading the texts, we look at the prompt, as I would expect them to do with their own essays. Then, we read the texts. I have varying level of students. Some students can read the text independently and some read it in small groups with a teacher.  It is important to give your students the support they need to access the texts so they can write about it, without taking away their opportunity to be independent.
3. Write: As I teach each component of opinion writing, we write the mentor essay as a class on anchor chart paper.  When I say we, I mean we. This means let go of your control and use their ideas.  If their ideas need improvement, then help guide them to making their ideas work. Students will value the mentor essay more if they contributed to its writing. During this time, I often pretend I am them, and think out loud. Teach them strategies during this time that a good writer uses.  The teacher must model what a good writer does so students know what good writers do. For instance, when writing an introduction, we write it, evaluate it for effect, check it for the elements of an introduction, and then reread it for clarity.  Many times, I leave mistakes so we can correct them during the edit and revise stage.  Modeling is critical during this step and will lead to better student writing.   

   

   The class uses our rough draft to revise our final draft.
   
   

4. Edit and Revise: It takes us about a week to write our class model, maybe more, because we write each part as I teach it. Once we've written it, we edit for mistakes. We revise parts that are weak or need more evidence.  This is a step many students skip in their own writing, so it's important to teach them how critical this step is.  We mark up our original essay.  I draw arrows, cross out, and change words as they see fit.  I model what I want them to do.  I tell them revising can be messy and that's okay!
5. Rewrite: Once we've edited and revised our rough draft, we rewrite our essay.  I have the students write their own copy of the mentor essay so they have a copy to keep in their Writing Notebooks.  
6. Replicate: Replicating isn't the final step. It actually happens during the other steps.  It is something the students do during their WW. They replicate what we do in writing our mentor essay in their own writing.  

If you have any questions about using a mentor essay in your class, let me know.  Mentor texts are an invaluable part of any Writer's Workshop.  It is important that students see what good writing looks like, so they can apply that knowledge to their own writing.