How do you help students learn to read like writers?
One answer is to provide time for whole-class text study during genre studies, as well as during other units of study that focus on the teaching of craft (Ray, 1999). Whole-class text studies suspend the normal structure of writing workshop, giving you the opportunity to devote most or all of a writing workshop period to engaging your class in a discussion of a mentor text. In this discussion, students talk about craft techniques the author of the mentor text uses, analyzing what the author did as a writer, and why. As students talk about the text, your role is to guide and support them as they try to read the text like writers.
Whole-class text study has several important benefits. These conversations:
There are several steps in whole-class text study:
Step 1: Introduce your class to the study
→ If your class is new to whole-class text study, explain what they’ll be doing during the period, and why.
→ In this excerpt of a video of whole-class study, watch me introduce the study to a group of upper elementary students:
Step 2: Read the mentor text
→ Next, read the mentor text aloud. It’s best if you reread a mentor text your students are already familiar with from the immersion phase of the unit, that is, the first few days of the unit when you introduce the mentor texts with which you’ll be teaching.
→ If possible, give your students a copy of the text, and ask them to mark places where they like the way the writer wrote a part. If that’s not possible – for example, if you’re reading a picture book – project the book onto a screen or SMART board using your document camera, and tell students to be on the lookout for places where they like how the writer (and illustrator) wrote or illustrated something.
Step 3: Students share what they noticed
→ When you’ve finished reading the text, ask your students to read their favorite parts of the text aloud. If they have a copy of the text, they’ll read from that. If you projected the text, ask students to tell you which part to zoom in on so they can read it aloud.
→ As students read, mark on your copy of the text which parts your students enjoyed, as you’ll soon be discussing some of them.
→ Watch the upper grade students share their favorite parts and features of the feature article, “Surprising Saturn,” by Liz Huyck:
Step 4: Students discuss several craft techniques
This is the most important part of whole-class text study, when students have an in-depth discussion of craft techniques they noticed.
Watch the upper grade students discuss one of their favorite parts of “Surprising Saturn”:
You’ll find students will be just as engaged in whole-class text study in the primary grades as they are in the as upper grades. In this video, watch – and enjoy – the conversation first and second graders had about an exclamation mark Gaia Cornwall uses in Jabari Jumps:
If your students are new to whole-class text study, you may run into these issues:
Step 5: Invite students to try out the craft techniques:
→ Finally, end the study by asking students which of the craft techniques they discussed they’ll try in their own writing.
→ If the idea of reading like a writer is new to your students, on the next day, you could do a mini-lesson in which you demonstrate using one of the techniques the class discussed in your own writing. Seeing you do this also helps students understand the ultimate purpose of studying texts closely as writers.
You’ll find students enjoy whole-class text study and are genuinely interested in discussing what writers do. You’ll also be amazed at your students’ insights into how texts are written – and at how much better their writing gets when they try out what they learn from this study!
For more information about whole-class text study, read Chapter 6 in A Teachers’ Guide to Mentor Texts K-5. The book also gives you access to the complete videos of the primary and upper grades whole-class text studies excerpted in this blog.
Browse more blogs featuring this book here.
To learn more about A Teacher's Guide to Mentor Texts, K-5 visit Heinemann.com.