In my previous post, I detailed how one fifth-grade teacher was using mentor texts as a bridge to guide her students’ own writing, as detailed by Fairfield University’s Ryan Colwell. In this post, I am going to explain some of Colwell’s major findings about how students literary borrow from mentor texts.
For reference, literary borrowing refers to when students identify something (i.e., a literary skill or technique) about the text they’ve read and then use it in their own writing. With this in mind, Colwell had five major findings from his observations of the fifth-grade classroom.
For reference, literary borrowing refers to when students identify something (i.e., a literary skill or technique) about the text they’ve read and then use it in their own writing. With this in mind, Colwell had five major findings from his observations of the fifth-grade classroom.
1) Kids borrow topics from mentor texts, often via personal connections. As an example, Donald Graves’ “Baseball” was used as a foundation for one student to write about his own experiences playing baseball. Another student wrote about his dog Randy after reading a mentor text in which a dog was the protagonist.
2) Kids borrow literary techniques (e.g., similes). One student created her own simile, “My face is as green as the grass” after reading Lauren Leedy’s “Crazy Like a Fox: A Simile Story.”
3) Sometimes kids borrow characters or character traits (braveness, clumsiness). In a funny anecdote, Colwell described how one student tried to recreate the speech of Shaggy after reading “Scooby Doo and the Haunted Castle” by using the word like in her writing.
4) Kids borrowed literary themes like bullying. One student used the mentor text “The Tequila Worm” as a bridge to tie in his love of baseball with the theme of bullying.
5) Kids borrowed genre elements. In other words, Colwell observed students writing genres (e.g., biographies) similar to those of the mentor texts.
6) Kids borrowed elements of an author’s style. As one example, a student used a Shel Silverstein mentor poem to incorporate rhyme and sense of humor in her own writing.
If Colwell’s findings confirm anything it’s that students can write quite creatively when having wonderful models as a starting point, whether it’s mentor texts or a wonderful teacher like the inspiring one in this study.
Source: “Exploring the Literary Borrowing of 5th Grade Writers”
Ryan Colwell, Ph.D.
Fairfield University
As presented at the 2014 NCTE Convention during the lecture “Literary Models and Mentor Texts to Teach the Craft of Writing”
Friday, November 21, 2014
2) Kids borrow literary techniques (e.g., similes). One student created her own simile, “My face is as green as the grass” after reading Lauren Leedy’s “Crazy Like a Fox: A Simile Story.”
3) Sometimes kids borrow characters or character traits (braveness, clumsiness). In a funny anecdote, Colwell described how one student tried to recreate the speech of Shaggy after reading “Scooby Doo and the Haunted Castle” by using the word like in her writing.
4) Kids borrowed literary themes like bullying. One student used the mentor text “The Tequila Worm” as a bridge to tie in his love of baseball with the theme of bullying.
5) Kids borrowed genre elements. In other words, Colwell observed students writing genres (e.g., biographies) similar to those of the mentor texts.
6) Kids borrowed elements of an author’s style. As one example, a student used a Shel Silverstein mentor poem to incorporate rhyme and sense of humor in her own writing.
If Colwell’s findings confirm anything it’s that students can write quite creatively when having wonderful models as a starting point, whether it’s mentor texts or a wonderful teacher like the inspiring one in this study.
Source: “Exploring the Literary Borrowing of 5th Grade Writers”
Ryan Colwell, Ph.D.
Fairfield University
As presented at the 2014 NCTE Convention during the lecture “Literary Models and Mentor Texts to Teach the Craft of Writing”
Friday, November 21, 2014
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