[jady_marie]

I teach 6th grade and my ELA students are beginning to get bored with the same old thing for our mentor texts. We usually have a mini lesson, read the story in groups, discuss the main points in the story, close read and highlight important parts, etc. What are some ideas that you use with your mentor texts? I need some ideas for the mid year slump!

[maryteach]

Find a particularly good sentence, sort of complicated and rich. Write that on the board and tell them to come up with a subject that interests them--sports, fashion, music, anything. Then have them imitate the sentence, using their own topic. It has to contain the same number of phrases and punctuation needs to be used the same. It needs to be the same length. They can work in partners on this or even groups. They can present these as well and that fosters good discussions about what authors do. All languages hang together in phrases, and this helps to illustrate that.

Speaking of illustrate, kids could also illustrate these.

Kids could also write in their first language for this, if you think that would be better. If someone is really new to English, it might be.