TEXT STRUCTURE MENTOR TEXTS

     On Pinterest I found this great anchor chart on text structure:
                                               http://pinterest.com/pin/34340015878746199/
      It reminded me of the lessons I did to teach text structure.  I found that using a mentor text, and adding it to a similar chart we made, helped students to better identify text structures independently.  As we worked on text structures, students would compare and contrast the books read aloud as an added piece of information to help guide their thinking.

      Here are some of my favorites.  I hope you, and your students, enjoy them!

                           CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

             

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                                       DESCRIPTIVE
                

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                                                  PROBLEM & SOLUTION
 

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                             COMPARE & CONTRAST

     

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                                          CAUSE & EFFECT

 

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Words Paint

     The Aminal is an old book that never gets old with students.  I've used it with Kindergarten through 3rd graders and they've all loved it.  It's great to use to teach visualization as a comprehension strategy, and to teach about using specific nouns, verbs, and adjectives to make our writing "paint pictures."
When I use it, I put it in a folder and don't show any pictures to the students.  Students fold and divide a piece of paper into 8 boxes.  On the first box, they write the title and authors, and their names.  On boxes 2 - 7 they listen to each child's description and draw what they picture.  On the 8th box, they write "I think it is..." and draw a picture.  Before doing this, we go back and think about what we know from what Patrick initially said, often I re-read those pages so they can make their predictions.

     Then I re-read each description and we look at the illustrations of what each child pictured, comparing the books' illustrations to ours.  Kids get a kick out of seeing the similarities and differences, and we talk about what specific words may have been better to use.  When we unveil the final picture that shows what the "aminal" is, students are usually surprised.  Of course, there are always a couple of students that are right on target, but for the most part few get the prediction correct.  This is a great opportunity to talk about how readers have to be like detectives as they read, going back to re-read sections, and storing clues throughout their reading.

Making History Real - WWII

     I often hear students complain about how boring Social Studies is, how it's just a bunch of stuff that happened long ago and they hate having to remember people and dates that mean nothing to them.  Thankfully, in the last few years children's literature has really exploded in historical fiction.  These are my favorites and although all but one are picture books, older students still get touched by these characters and the injustices, bravery, and pain suffered by those they represent.

Rose Blanche, Christopher Gallantz and Roberto Innocenti - Rose is a young German girl who gets curious about trucks passing through her town and decides to follow one after seeing a boy jump out of one only to be thrown back in by the soldiers.  What she finds is a concentration camp and she begins to save and steal food to take to the children at the camp.  I love that it shows students that all Germans were not in agreement with the Nazis and it leads into talking about how the authors used the German resistance group's name as the title and main character's name.

The Harmonica, Tony Johnston - This book tells the story of a young boy taken to a concentration camp and separated from his family.  The officer in charge likes how the boy plays his harmonica so his life is saved by being able to play for the officer every night.

Terrible Things, Eve Bunting - This is an allegory of the Holocaust.  The setting is the woods and the "terrible things" repeatedly come to take different animals away for absurd reasons while the other animals look away, until it is their turn. 

Erika's Star, Ruth Vander Zees and Roberto Innocenti - By far, this book generates the most outrage and discussion by students.  As it begins the narrator tells of a lady he met while visiting Germany and the lady begins to tell her story by saying she doesn't know her name, her birthday, or her parents but she knows they saved her life as they traveled on a train to a concentration camp.

Luba, The Angel of Bergen-Belsen, Luba Tryszynska-Frederick, Ann Marshall and Michelle Roehm McCann - This is the truly amazing true story of how Luba, along with the women in her concentration camp, saved children who had been separated from their parents by hiding them in their sleeping quarters.

So Far From the Sea, Eve Bunting - As the story begins, a family is going to visit the grandfather's tomb and the father tells the story of how his father's family was taken to a Japanese internment camp due to the fear Americans had after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

The Bracelet, Yoshiko Uchida - A Japanese-American girl is confused when her family is taken to an internment camp.  She can't understand why.  She's just like her best friend. She's a girl scout, for goodness sake!

The Devil's Arithmetic, Jane Yolen - The only chapter book in the mix is a story that begins in present time with a 12-year old girl who doesn't see the point of celebrating a Jewish holiday hearing the same stories every year.  Suddenly, she is transported back to a Polish village just as the villagers are taken to a death camp.  The story unfolds telling of the apalling conditions of their travel and life at the camp.

The Butterfly, Patricia Polacco - Monique lives in a small French village occupied by the Nazis.  She begins to see what she thinks is a ghost in her bedroom at night and soon finds out that this young Jewish girl and her family have been hiding in her basement.  Her mom is part of the French resistance.

One of my favorite lessons with these picture books, before beginning any talk about this in Social Studies, is to divide the class into groups and hand each group a book with the strict directions to not read any of it (students look at me like I'm crazy), but to only pay attention to the pictures and jot down their thoughts, questions, and reactions.  Warning, it won't be a quiet lesson because students immediately want to talk about what they're seeing so groups get into great discussions.  To keep them from reading the text, you have to give them only about 10 minutes per book.  We rotate the books around the room and later group share their thinking.  As you probably imagine, students can't wait to read the books after that, which they do during their independent reading.