Polka-dots in the Panhandle: Primary Mentor Sentences

Saturday, October 1, 2016

Primary Mentor Sentences

So what is a mentor sentence and why would it ever be useful in Kindergarten or First Grade? In theory it is a sentence that is taken from a mentor text that is used to model different kinds of sentence structure. Last February, we were introduced to the concept of mentor sentences during a professional development presentation. Granted the concept is geared to second, third, and fourth grade students (more to come one this later) however; I liked the idea so much I immediately started to brainstorm how I could possibly bring the idea into my classroom or even make it appropriate for my primary students. It seemed to me, that no matter how many times I went over that a sentence begins will an UPPERCASE letter and ends with a period, my kiddos still seemed to forget to do it in their own writing. I decided to focus my attention to this concept (or lack there of) using mentor sentences. Each week, I would choose a mentor text and take a sentence to focus on for the week. On day one I would read the story. Then we would look at the sentence together, we would circle the uppercase letter and period, count the words in the sentence and look for any sight words in this sentence.

The students would then set to work on illustrating the sentence. On day two we would review the story and we would work on unscrambling the words to put them in the correct sentence order. The students would finish the day's activity by rewriting the sentence in their best handwriting.

On day three we would go over the story and sentence a third time and then the students would set to work by writing their own version of the sentence. We would start by brainstorming a list of ideas together and I would complete one example. This way, my struggling students could participate by copying the example and my more advanced students could write their own. All students were then expected to illustrate their sentence.

On day four we would review the story and sentence one last time and then the students would complete the weekly assessment.

On day five we would review the sentence and complete the corresponding craft. I would usually display their weekly writing and craft on my bulletin boards. What I found was through the repetition of completing these mentor sentences each week, my kiddos finally started to use the proper conventions in their everyday writing. If you want to bring these into your classroom Click Here for my Officer Buckle and Gloria Mentor Sentence Freebie. You can also check out my other Mentor Sentence Units.