creative writing mentor texts high school

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Listen to my latest podcast episode:.

153: 6 Powerful Mentor Texts for Secondary ELA

• May 17, 2022

Are you ready for mentor texts your students sit up and pay attention to? That’s what today’s episode is all about. I’ve invited five special guests on to share their top favorite mentor text with you, and I’m so excited!

Each of these creative education thinkers will bring their own take on the power of mentor texts, exploring children’s books and YA novels, poetry and podcasts, student work and video. By the end of this show, you’ll be thinking in a totally different way about how you can use mentor texts to help your students grow as creators, and I have a feeling that YOU’LL be feeling pretty excited too.

As you listen, each guest will introduce herself, share her favorite mentor, and then let you know where you can learn more, then I’ll pop back in at the end to share the last one. I hope you’ll enjoy this special collaborative episode!

You can listen in below, click here to tune in on any podcast player, or read on for the full post.

#1 Mentors beyond the Printed Page, with Angela from Make Writing Studios

This Is a Generic Brand Video, by Dissolve from Dissolve on Vimeo .

Here’s what Angela has to say about this mentor text:

“Writing is so much bigger than written words alone! I love using street art, billboards, podcasts, commercials, photographs, videos, infographics, comics, zines, and even nature to demonstrate what compositions are and how arguments, stories, and informational texts are offered to us all day long through unexpected modes and outlets. Make time to look for Kendra Eash’s This is a Generic Brand Video , and invite the young writers and designers in your world to think about how writing is the use of image, sound, gesture, alignment, and even vibration.”

If you’d like to learn more about how to bring multimodal composition into your own classroom (check out the pictures below), Angela has left a TON of free lessons, units, starter sets,  resources, tools, and mentor texts right here for you: https://linktr.ee/AngelaStockman .

Connect with Angela on Twitter @AngelaStockman .

#2 Mentors with Passion, with Amanda from Amanda Write Now

Here’s what Amanda has to say about this mentor text:

“My favorite modern mentor text is any text written by a passionate student. These students are sometimes my own but they can also be students I’ve never met before. One of the most powerful mentor texts I’ve used to model voice and passion in writing was in the form of a video capturing a 7th grade girl’s middle school experience. The assignment this young girl was given was to write a monologue about something she was passionate about. She wrote from the heart and told her truth. When students can write from their heart and share their truth confidently, they can do anything they set their minds to.”

See the video here.

Check out Amanda’s website here.

#3 Children’s Books as Mentor Texts, with Melissa from The Reading & Writing Haven

What Melissa has to say about this mentor text:

“Picture books are one of the most powerful mentor texts at our fingertips, and I don’t think we leverage them enough. Even (and especially) with older students, picture books often have just as much depth and complexity for discussion and analysis as a novel. That’s why picture books are my favorite, go-to mentor texts . 

It’s hard to pick just one picture book because there are so many amazing works of art, but for the sake of recommendation, I adore When I Draw a Panda by Amy June Bates. The author skillfully weaves together a beautiful theme and the power of captivating aesthetics.

The front pages of the book include rigid, step-by-step directions for how to draw a variety of animals and images “perfectly.” These same images frame the end of the book, but here, the perfect step-by-step instructions are scribbled all over, symbolizing that there is no one right way to draw. 

In between those bookends, the story follows a child who chooses to color outside the lines, to embrace her own style, and to bring her imagination to life. When I Draw a Panda is threaded with the message that the power of creativity and an independent spirit are to be celebrated.

Specific teaching opportunities for this book as a mentor text might include:

• Using it to introduce sketchnotes. There’s no fear in drawing!
• Analyzing how a poet can craft a stronger voice by playing with word and line arrangement.
• Studying the use of dialogue, sentence structure, and parallelism.
• Evaluating how word choice impacts mood and tone.
• Identifying how oxymora can be used to provide contradictions between ideas.

And more! Try introducing this mentor texts to your students as a general interactive read aloud, and you’ll be amazed at how often you can refer back to it to study specific ELA skills and concepts. There’s something magical that happens when we read picture books in the classroom. I hope you cherish this book as much as I do.”

Discover more great read-alouds from Melissa here.

Follow Melissa on Instagram @readingandwritinghaven .

#4 Jason Reynold’s Long Way Down as a Mentor Text, with Christina from The Daring English Teacher

What Christina has to say about this mentor text:

“I love using Jason Reynolds’ verse novel Long Way Down as part of the poetry unit that I use in my sophomore English class. At first, when I tell students that we are going to read an entire novel written in poem-form, students groan and complain. However, it only takes the very first poem of the book, and the students are hooked. There are two mentor text activities I assign with this novel – and both revolve around using Reynolds’ form as a mentor text for students to write their own poems. The first poem I use is “My Name Is,” and I have students begin writing their own name poem on the first day we start writing. Modeling Reynolds’ form, student write a poem about themselves. I am always so shocked to learn more about my students in the second semester of the school. The second activity is using Reynolds’ poem BEEF as a mentor text. With this activity, I have students, once again, model Reynolds’ form, to write their own extended simile poem. I absolutely love reading what they come up with.”

Check out Christina’s blog post filled with ideas for Long Way Down here.

Follow Christina @thedaringenglishteacher on Instagram

#5 Powerful Poetry as a Mentor Text, with Amanda Cardenas from Mud and Ink Teaching

What Amanda has to say about this mentor text:

“Shane Koyczan’s poem “How to Be a Person” is my go-to mentor text for resetting after a long break or establishing classroom culture.  As a writing mentor, I like to use this poem to showcase the possibilities for structure in a poem:  in this case, the poet uses a list, and it’s an easy to imitate structure that makes writing poetry feel more accessible for students.”

Check out the step-by-step over on Amanda’s website right here.

Follow Amanda on Instagram @mudandinkteaching

#6 Using Podcasts as Mentor Texts, with Betsy from Spark Creativity

Hey, it’s me, Betsy! I’m back! I’ve created so many podcasting projects over the last few years, and I always start in the same place, with inspiring, or hilarious, or weird, or fun, or wacky podcast episodes as mentor texts. I want students to understand some of the moves podcasters make before they hit the record button, and the easiest (and most interesting) way to do that is by playing podcasts for them and then considering which moves are worth trying.

For the vocabulary podcast project pictured above that I recently designed for The Lighthouse, I picked four really different, super short podcast episodes that are all trying to teach new words in different ways. As they listen, students can think about which moves they like and which ones they definitely don’t.

Do they like Vocabulary Vera’s hilariously over-the-top accent that makes you laugh (or maybe cringe, depending on your age) the moment you turn it on?

Do they like how Dictionary.com uses literary examples?

Do they like how the BBC explains the connection between many words through a single prefix?

Do they find Merriam-Webster’s explanation incredibly boring? (Ha, or is that just me).

Which podcast has the best music? The best listener challenge?

After listening to several podcasts while thinking like a podcaster, students can begin to imagine what they want (and equally important, what they don’t want) for their own podcast style, tone, structure, and content. Same goes for examining podcast covers, show notes, and music.

So now you’ve got six fun ways to explore more modern mentor texts for your classroom. I think I can speak for all of us today when I say if you try one of these out, we’d love to hear about it. Share what you’re up to with us and tag us over on teachergram, we’d love to know how your mentor text explorations turn out!

I’ll help you find the creative ELA strategies that will light up your classroom. Get ready for joyful teaching!

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What is a mentor text anyway?

A mentor text is any text used to model the type of writing your students are learning. Mentor texts are the backbone of writing workshop because students need to see what the pros do, to get inspired in their own writing. Mentor texts can also be called writing samples, or examples. 

One of the most challenging parts of being a writing teacher is finding mentor texts. So I’ve curated a list of my go to places for mentor texts online below.

Before you dive in, I think it is important to remember mentor texts can be found in many, many places. Sometimes I’ll roam the class library for my favorite books or use writing from previous years done by students. I also write my own writing samples . You might think about using these strategies too.

But teachers are busy, so having a go to list can help! 

Another thing you should definitely do is check out this post about How to Use Mentor Texts . 

You can also check out this quick video reviewing ten of my favorite places to find mentor texts…

Mentor Texts by Kids

Thoughtful Learning This is one of my favorite places to find writing samples written by students because there are many samples for each genre of writing and from students in 1st-12th grade. I link this site to my class website so that students and parents can refer to it throughout the year.

Achieve The Core This site is an incredibly comprehensive and well organized resource created by non other than the writers of the Common Core! It not only has samples for grades K-12, it also has prompts, lessons, assessments and much more! I highly recommend you peruse this one.

Reading Rockets This site has Pre-K through 3rd grade writing samples (both hand written and typed). There is also a thorough analysis of what each writer does well and needs to learn next provided with each sample.

Scholastic Write It This site has loads of writing samples for poetry, essays, short fiction, memoirs, humor and journalism. It is also a place for student writers to connect through a bulletin board chat feature! Students can even publish their work here too!

Mentor Texts by Adults

Common Lit Completely free and full of high interest nonfiction and fiction for 5th-12th graders. You can sort by lexile level, themes, genres, devices or standards too!

Tween Tribune This site provides many writing samples to teach information writing in grades K-12 and the articles are even organized by Lexile level!

Dogo News Awesome site with tons of nonfiction articles written about topics kids care about. Students K-8 can comment or even mail each other articles they think their friend may like. Sort by current events, science, social studies, sports, world, environment or fun. Students can also write book and movie reviews. This feature is for students K-12.

Actively Learn Sign up for a 30 day free trial and have access to tons of online texts. Not only that you can insert questions, polls, notes and other links for students to interact with. You can also grade student answers and collect data on how long they read, words they looked up, notes they took and parts they didn’t understand. Students can listen to texts being read aloud too!

Newsela You have to sign up to read full articles but there are a plethora of information articles to choose from and you can have access to the premium version for 45 days. You can add your classes, assign specific articles and track student progress.

New York Times The Learning Network This site is mainly for middle and high schoolers and has lots and lots of resources. There is a writing competition every year and the pieces written by the winners and runners up are featured here. Showing your students really incredible and powerful writing done by kids can be just the inspiration and motivation your class needs.

Middle School Mentor Texts for All Genres  This is a blog post right on this website. What’s awesome about this post is that all the mentor texts are directly linked within the post and every genre is included (except poetry).

Writing A-Z There are so many writing samples on this site it is overwhelming! This site does cost money and is definitely worth it if your school or district decides to go for it. My recommendation until then? Sign up for the 14 day free trial and download as many samples as you can!

Moving Writers This is an awesome site that provides access to a shared Google Drive with many, many mentor texts. Just click the button that says “Click Here to Enter the Mentor Text Drop Box” and you will be transported to mentor text heaven.

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10 Great Mentor Texts for Creative Narrative Writing

Disclaimer:  Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. You don’t have to purchase them through my links, but if you do, it’s much appreciated! 

Our last writing unit of the year is here! Hello Creative Narrative ! Our primary unit is space themed, but I like to incorporate creative narrative into our reading block as well with some great mentor texts!

Without further ado, here are my 10 favorite books to use while teaching about  dialogue, plot, and characters  during creative narrative writing:

Brainstorming: The Best Story

Planning/Writing Plot: The Plot Chickens

Dialogue: Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street

Fictional Events: The Night I Followed the Dog

Graphics Novels/Art as Creative Narrative: Page by Paige

Plan & Climax: The Wednesday Surprise

Descriptive Words: Mars Needs Moms

Fantasy Plot:  King Arthur’s Very Great Grandson

Dialogue & Plot: Jumanji 

Descriptive Words & Revision: Little Red Writing

Featured Resources in this Article

Complete Guide to Teaching Creative Narrative Writing Grades 4-5

You may also enjoy this article.

About the Author

April smith.

April began her career as a 5th grade teacher in 2008 and quickly developed a passion for creating engaging educational materials to share with fellow teachers. She now works with districts around the country, training their teachers and leaders on how to implement research-based strategies and differentiation techniques that meet the needs of diverse learners.

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How to Successfully Use Mentor Texts to Teach Writing

This post may contain affiliate links.

If you’re wondering how to successfully use a children’s book to teach writing. It’s called using a mentor text. Let’s dive into what a mentor text is and how to use them to teach writing. 

Here’s what you’ll read in this article…

• What is a Mentor Text?
• How to Use a Mentor Text
• A Short Example
• How to Choose a Mentor Text

Where to Find Mentor Texts

What Is the Definition of a Mentor Text?

A mentor text is an excellent piece of writing that models for students what good writers do — the craft and skills involved in writing, to which we apprentice ourselves and use it to learn from so that we can improve our writing.

Often, when I’m stuck for inspiration on how to write an article an editor has assigned me, I read something first. Not even writing about the same topics; I just read good writing.

For example, I choose magazines that have high-quality writing such as “Outdoors” or “National Geographic”. 

They usually get me back into my writing zone because reading good writers inspires me and reminds me to do what I know — write catchy leads, use vivid verbs, writing with clear organization, etc.

It’s the same when we’re teaching children to write.

We read exceptional books and passages of text with children to teach them HOW TO WRITE.

Usually, we focus on a specific craft move in the writing.

The experts at the National Writing Project say, “ Mentor texts are pieces of literature that you — both teacher and student — can return to and reread for many different purposes. They are texts to be studied and imitated… Mentor texts help students to take risks and be different writers tomorrow than they are today. It helps them to try out new strategies and formats. They should be [texts] that students can relate to and can even read independently or with some support. “

The good news?

Mentor texts can be almost any piece of writing including picture books, chapter books, articles, nonfiction books, magazines, and poems.

What’s more, they can be published books, something you’ve written for your students, or something a student has written.

Using student work helps the entire class to see examples at that grade level. If you’re using a student exemplar in your homeschooling, it’s also beneficial as examples for writers to learn from.

How to Use a Mentor Text?

So what do you do with your mentor text?

Classroom teachers will use it in the writing workshop, reading workshop, too.

Homeschoolers will use it during writing time.

Here’s how you use a mentor text in a writing lesson… (for any grade level and age.)

• Read the text and observe.
• Discuss what the writer did that made it SO good.
• Label the writing craft move (technique)  for students if they don’t have the words for it. (Example: The author used dialogue to make the writing flow. Or, the author used vivid verbs to make the writing come alive.)
• Apply the craft move (technique) to your own writing. (First, model how to do this before releasing children to try it on their own.)
• Share and reflect on how it went.

An Example of Using a Short Passage to Teach a Craft Move

READ this passage from Southwest Sunrise by Nikki Grimes.

What does Grimes do that makes the writing so rich?

What could you teach writers to apply to their own writing?

“ I wake up to a knife of sunlight slicing through the room Dad says is mine. I rub my eyes, stare out the barless window at a mountain striped in rainbow. “

LABEL the craft move. Grimes uses VISUAL details to show to give readers a picture in their minds.

Can you see the sunlight? How about the mountain?

After you read this passage with students, discuss what she does to give you a mind movie (sensory details). Then, show students how to apply the craft move by modeling how you would describe something that you all can see. Talk aloud about your thought process.

Then, ask student writers to apply the craft move of using sensory details (sight, in this case) in a short descriptive piece.

How to Choose a Mentor Text?

I’ll be honest, I agonize FOREVER about mentor texts.

First, I look for AMAZING writing. Specifically, writing that exemplifies the craft moves I want to teach.

Then, I consider if the passage or book is APPEALING to kids.

In addition to looking for writing crafts that I want to teach, I also consider the REPRESENTATION in the story.

If I’m going to use a story with a white character, I also want to make sure that I also use stories with BIPoC characters. That’s so my growing writers all have a chance to see themselves in the books.

Another consideration is the LENGTH.

I use Lulu and the Brontosaurus to teach fictional narrative not just because it’s well-written and exemplifies what I want to teach but also because it’s SHORT and can be read in one or two days.

Finally, I consider if the students can COMPREHEND the text — and if it is AGE-APPROPRIATE .

In other words, I won’t be reading a difficult passage describing the injuries in World War II with first graders.

To sum up, here’s what to look for when you’re making a selection:

• amazing writing (that demonstrates the writing craft you want to teach)
• appealing to kids
• diversity in characters
• at a comprehensible reading level, appropriate for the age

Here on Imagination Soup!

I’ve published many lists of mentor texts for both reading and writing with many more in the works.

GO HERE TO SEE the mentor text book lists that I have so far.

Your own bookshelf.

Start reading with new eyes…as a writer noticing the author’s craft.

Start with picture books. Ask yourself…Is the writing rich and amazing? Would it meet the requirements you have to be a mentor text? 

You’ll find so much just by starting to notice books in a different way.

A New Homeschool Curriculum That Uses Mentor Texts

The reason I LOVE to use mentor texts to teach children writing is that it connects writers with real-world writing!

It teaches kids to READ LIKE WRITERS ; to read carefully and study the craft of writing. 

And, to WRITE LIKE READERS ; to write for an audience who will love and appreciate what they write.

Using mentor texts GETS RESULTS.

It transforms reluctant writers into successful writers who feel pride and confidence.

More Recommended Books:

Craft Moves: Lessons Sets for Teaching Writing with Mentor Texts by Stacey Shubitz

Writing with Mentors by Allison Marchetti and Rebekah O’Dell  

You Might Also Like:

Book Lists for the Writing Classroom

Writing Contests for Kids

Journaling with Children and Teens

Melissa Taylor, MA, is the creator of Imagination Soup. She's a mother, former teacher & literacy trainer, and freelance education writer. She writes Imagination Soup and freelances for publications online and in print, including Penguin Random House's Brightly website, USA Today Health, Adobe Education, Colorado Parent, and Parenting. She is passionate about matching kids with books that they'll love.

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How to Teach Creative Writing to High School Students

Creative Writing was forced onto my schedule; I didn’t ask for it. But it ended up becoming my favorite class period of the day. While academic English courses can feel high-stakes and always short on time, Creative Writing can be a refreshingly relaxed elective class. In many districts with loose curriculums, Creative Writing is what you make of it. In this post, I outline six steps to show you how to teach creative writing to high school students.

Why Teach Creative Writing

Before we get into the how , let’s first address the why . Why bother teaching Creative Writing in the first place? Students’ basic skills are lower than ever; is now really the time to encourage them to break the rules?

If you want to get really deep into why you should teach Creative Writing, I have a whole post about it here.

But think about why you love reading. Is it because you were made to annotate or close read a bunch of classic novels? Probably not. You probably fell in love with reading while you were reading something that was fun. And because it was fun, you read more, and your skills as a reader grew.

The same principle applies to writing. If we can make it fun for our students, perhaps we can foster a love for it. And passion is what leads, eventually, to mastery.

Giving our students the opportunity to fall in love with writing is a gift that might help them grow in their academic writing later.

Teach Creative Writing to High School Students Step #1: Decide on Your Standards or Goals

Your school or district may have a mandated syllabus or curriculum. Mine did not. 

Whether you’re given student goals or have to create them, you must have an overall vision for what your Creative Writing class will accomplish. 

Is this a laid-back, engaging course designed to help students discover the fun in writing? Or is it a supplement to rigorous academics for college-bound high school students? 

If you know your school’s student population well, I encourage you to think about their needs. Some students just need to write more–more of anything, but lots more. Some students are high achieving and ready to write their first novels! If possible, design your course around the needs and interests of the general student population in your school or district. 

Regardless of how rigorous your Creative Writing course will be, deciding on these goals first will help you in backwards planning. 

Teach Creative Writing to High School Students Step #2: Choose Your Final Assessments and Big Projects

Before we can start planning our lessons, we have to decide what skills or knowledge our students will need. And to know what they need, we have to decide on their summative assessments.

Will your final assessment be a short story? A collection of poetry? Are you required to offer a final exam?

Once you know what students will need to do, you can make a list of the skill they’ll need. This list will become a list of lessons you’ll need to teach.

Fairy Tale Retelling Project

My Fairy Tale Retelling Project is a great Creative Writing assessment. For this project, students had to first choose a fairy tale. Then, they rewrote the story from the perspective of the villain.

This project works really well because students have structure. They can pick any fairy tale they want, but they can’t write about just anything.

Secondly, students already know the story, so they don’t have to worry about a beginning, middle, and end. The open-endedness of writing a story completely from scratch has paralyzed my students before. Structure allows students lots of creative freedom without the excuse of “I don’t know what to write.”

Author Study Project

If you’d like your Creative Writing class to help beginner writers have fun and just get some practice with fiction writing, a Fairy Tale Retelling Project would probably be perfect for your class.

Another project I’ve done with my students is an Author Study . In this project, students choose one author to study in-depth. Then, they attempt to replicate that author’s style in an original work.

If you’d like your class to also include lots of exposure to other writers or classic literature, then this might be a great assessment for your class.

Learn more about doing an author study in this step-by-step post.

Test or Final Exam

I also gave my students a final exam focused on literary terms.

This Literary Terms Test allowed me to test students on the academic knowledge they gained throughout class instead of their writing ability. This test also helped me fulfill my district’s requirement of having a final exam at the end of each course.

Once you’ve decided on your class’s major projects and assessments, you can begin designing the rest of your class.

Teach Creative Writing to High School Students Step #3: Backwards Plan

Now that you know what your students will need to do at the end of this class, you can list out everything you need to teach them in order for them to be successful.

For example, if you opt for an author study as a final project, you know what you will need to cover. You will need to teach students some literary terms so that they can describe an author’s style. You’ll need to show them how to analyze a poem.

During the course of your class, you’ll also want to expose students to a variety of authors and mentor texts. Students will need to practice basic writing techniques in order to replicate those of their chosen authors.

If you need some inspiration for what kinds of lessons to teach, check out this post on essential Creative Writing lessons.

Teach Creative Writing to High School Students Step #4: Decide on Your Class Structure

Once you’ve decided on the end goals for your Creative Writing class, you can use them to help create day-to-day plans. 

What will your class look like? Will it be full of lots of quiet and independent work time? Will it be full of frenetic energy with students working in collaborative groups? Are students writing in notebooks or on laptops?

Of course, a successful class will most likely include a mixture of all of the above. But it’s up to you to decide on your ratio. 

Again, I encourage you to think about your school’s population. If you’re on ninety-minute blocks, is it realistic for students to be quietly writing that whole time? If you have high-achieving students, might they benefit from working independently at home and then getting and giving peer feedback during class time?

Use your goals to help decide on a general class structure. 

Warm-ups for Creative Writing

You’ll need a consistent way to begin each class.

When I initially began teaching Creative Writing, I just wanted to provide my students with more time to write. We began every class period with free writing. I gave students a couple of prompts to choose from each day, and then we’d write for about ten minutes. 

( Those journal prompts are right here . Every day includes two prompts plus a third option of freewriting.)

Students were given the option to share part of their writing if they wanted to. Every couple of weeks I’d flip through their notebooks to make sure they were keeping up, but I only read the entries they starred for me in advance. 

Later, I wanted to add some rigor to my Creative Writing class and leverage more mentor texts. I created a Poem of the Week activity for each week of the course. 

This gave students the opportunity to study professional writing before using it as a mentor text for a new, original piece. 

(You can read more about using these Poem of the Week activities here.) 

As my goals for the class and my students change, so did the way we began class. 

How can you begin your class in a way that supports the end goals or teaches the desired standards? How often will peers work together?

Teach Creative Writing to High School Students Step #5: Focus on Engagement Strategies

Now you can actually start planning lessons and projects!

But as you do so, focus on creating engaging ones–especially if your class is meant to be a fun elective.

Need more tips? Check out this post full of Creative Writing teaching tips!

Use Mentor Texts and Lots of Examples

Have you ever tried putting a puzzle together without knowing what the image was going to look like? It would be pretty difficult! Similarly, students need lots of examples of strong writing to aspire to. 

Without clear models or mentor texts , students will happily turn in unread drafts. They’ll choose the first word that comes to their mind instead of searching for a better one. 

But if you surround students with great writing, highlight strong technique when discussing the writing of others, and challenge them to notice the details in their own writing, they’ll naturally become better at self-editing.

I don’t believe that you can provide students with too many mentor texts or examples of strong writing. As you teach Creative Writing, keep or take pictures of strong writing samples from students to use as examples later. 

Nearly all of my lessons and projects include an example along with instruction.

Model and Create with Your Students

You can even use your own writing as an example. When I had students free write to creative writing prompts, I always wrote with them. Sometimes I would then put my notebook under the document camera and model reading my own work.  

I would cross out words and replace them or underline phrases I thought were strong enough to keep. Model for students not just great writing, but the process of strengthening writing.

And then give them plenty of time to edit theirs. This is when having students engage in peer feedback is a game-changer. 

Without great writing to aspire to, however, students easily become lazy and turn in work that is “good enough” in their eyes. Don’t let them get lazy in their writing. Keep throwing greater and greater work in front of them and challenge them to push themselves. 

(This is another reason I love using Poem of the Week warm-ups –they expose students to a new writer every week!)

Set Clear Expectations

Creative writing causes a lot of students anxiety. There’s no “right” answer, so how will they know if they creatively wrote “correctly?”

Help them out by setting clear expectations. Offering a rubric for every project is great for this. If you can, give them specifics to include. “At least 500 words” or “three or more similes” are nice, concrete guidelines that students can follow.

Give Students Choice

Offering students choice always boosts engagement. It lets students take charge of their learning and pursue something that interests them.

For example, when I teach odes , students are given the opportunity to write about something they love.

With an author study , students can study a writer whose style and work they admire.

Teach Creative Writing to High School Students Step #6: Use Clear and Structured Expectations

While showing students excellent prose or perfect poetry should help inspire students, your writers will still need some hard parameters to follow. 

Academic writing is often easier for students than creative writing. Usually, academic writing follows a structure or certain formula. The rubric dictates exactly how many quotes need to be included or how long an essay needs to be. MLA or APA formats tell students how to punctuate quotes and citations. 

These rules don’t apply to creative writing. And while that’s exactly what makes creative writing awesome, it’s often overwhelming. 

So do your students a favor and give them some clear expectations (without, of course, entirely dictating what they need to write about).  

The project also includes a rubric, so young writers know what should be included in their stories.

Don’t give your students so much creative freedom that it paralyzes them! Your writers are still students; give them the same level of structure and organization that you would in any other class. 

Engage your students in more creative writing!

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Teach Creative Writing to High School Students Step #7: Give Students Choices

So how do you give students frameworks, requirements, and uphold high expectations without stifling their creativity?

Give students choices. You can write about A, B, or C, as long as you meet requirements 1, 2, and 3. 

Offering choices works with small one-day assignments or lessons as well as bigger, longer-term projects. 

The previously mentioned Fairy Tale Retelling Project is a great example of offering a narrow selection of choices that uphold expectations without dictating what students write. 

Another one of my favorite examples of offering students choices is my “Show. Don’t Tell” Mini-lesson . This lesson touches on everything students need to successfully learn creative writing. 

First I teach them the concept of showing vs. telling in writing through direct instruction. I show them lots of examples of expanding a “telling sentence” into a “showing paragraph.”

Then I model for students how I would write a paragraph that shows crucial information, rather than telling it. 

Lastly, I have students pick a strip of paper from a hat or a bag. Each strip of paper contains a “telling sentence” that they must then write as a “showing paragraph.” Students are limited by the sentences I provide, but they still have complete freedom over how they achieve that detailed paragraph. 

If you wanted to give students even more freedom, you could let them pick their sentences or trade with a peer rather than blindly choosing. 

Any time you can give students a choice, you give them permission to use their creativity and allow them to take some of the initiative in their own learning.

Teach Creative Writing to High School Students Step #8: Encourage Peer Collaboration and Feedback

We can tell students something a hundred times, but they won’t listen until a peer says the same thing. Us educators know the value of positive peer interaction, so don’t limit it in a creative writing class!

There are a ton of ways to implement peer interaction in a creative writing class. I often do this on the first day of class with a writing game. You’ve probably heard of it: everyone writes a sentence on a piece of paper, then everyone passes the paper and adds a sentence, and so on. 

I highly encourage you to use peer feedback throughout the class. I usually start having students share their work from day one with my free “I Am” Poem Lesson so that they can start getting used to having their work read by others immediately.

Make getting feedback so routine in your room that students don’t even question it.

It’s really tempting to let students get away without sharing their work. We don’t want to make shy or anxious students uncomfortable. I mean, what better way to completely ruin creative writing for a student than to make them feel embarrassed all the time, right?

But keep trying to encourage shy students to share. Even if that means you share it anonymously or read it aloud for them. 

I recommend including some kind of peer feedback with every writing assignment . Yes, even short practice assignments. This will work as a kind of “immersion therapy” for receiving feedback on more involved work.

After some time, you might find that your students even begin to share their work without your prompting! 

I like to organize the desks in my Creative Writing class so that students are in little groups. I’ve found that at least half of my classes will begin talking and sharing with one another in their little groups while working on projects. 

They’ll ask each other questions or to remind them of a word. They’ll read sentences aloud and ask if they sound right. Personally, I would much rather hear this kind of chatter in my class than have a dead silent room of boring writers!

However you decide to allow students to work together, be sure to provide the opportunity. Reading and getting feedback from peers could possibly teach students more about writing than any of your instruction (sorry!).

One of the truly great things about teaching creative writing to high school students is that there often isn’t a rigid curriculum. Of course, this is also sometimes one of the worst things about teaching creative writing to high school students!

You have total freedom over the assignments you give, the standards you teach, and how you organize and structure your classroom. After a few years of teaching Creative Writing, however, I’ve found that sticking to these six steps is a great way to have a successful semester.

If you’re excited about teaching your Creative Writing class, but are running low on prep time, check out my complete 9-week Creative Writing course ! Included are two different types of warm-ups, poetry analysis activities from well-known authors, mini-lesson, projects, and more!

Creative Writing

Course description.

Creative Writing is a one-semester online course designed to improve your ability to find and express your ideas through various writing styles. Each unit blends the reading of rich mentor texts with the opportunity for you to engage intimately with the process of writing. The ability to read analytically and to write expressively exists as the cornerstone for success in the work place, the military, and/or post high school collegiate work. Embrace the process and find your voice.

Course Objectives

Upon completing this course you will understand and use:

• analyze various genres of literature and understand their cultural significance.
• analyze the critical attributes of varying modes of writing to appreciate and emulate the artistry of the writer.
• compose various types of texts dependent on audience, purpose, and message.
• incorporate standard grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling into all written work.

Required Course Materials

• Interactive Notebook – In the form of a small composition notebook, a spiral notebook, or loose-leaf paper kept in a binder.
• Pencil or Pen – In order to do well in the course, you must take notes, sketch diagrams and graphs, and solve problems when instructed to do so.
• Internet Access
• Adobe Reader
• Dictionary access (print or online)
• Online copies can be found, but you can also purchase your own copy of Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible . Paperback:  576 pages Publisher:  Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Reissue edition (June 10, 2008) Language:  English ISBN-10:  0061577073 ISBN-13:  978-0061577079

Course Organization

This course is a single semester that contains 7 units and one final exam.

Each Unit contains:

• 2–4 lessons. Each lesson includes some or all of the following components: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate.
• Self-assessments to help you check your own understanding of the material covered in each lesson. You must complete these assessments in order to advance in the course.
• 2 graded assignments

Final Examination

The final examination is comprehensive; it covers the material from all 7 units. To pass the course, you must receive a grade of 70 percent or better. You can apply to take the Final Exam after 100 percent of your graded assignments have been submitted, and at least 70 percent have been graded and returned to you.

Format: Multiple-choice and essay, online Time Allowed: 3 hours Materials Allowed: None

Semester Topics

Topic 1: Why Do Writers Write? Topic 2: Creative Nonfiction Topic 3: Short Fiction Topic 4: The Novel Topic 5: Poetry Topic 6: Experimental Writing Topic 7: A Way of Writing

A Comprehensive High School Writing Curriculum Guide

In this comprehensive high school writing curriculum guide, I explain necessary components of planning a writing for a year. 

Writing is an essential skill that students need to develop in high school. Part of teaching this essential skill is encouraging, inspiring, and mentoring.

However, not all writing curriculums are created equal. A well-structured writing curriculum can help students understand the fundamentals of writing, improve their skills, and explore their creativity.

High School Writing Curriculum: A Comprehensive Guide

Honesty time: I do not suggest one entire curriculum but rather, pieces from several sources. Many tools can get you to meeting standards, encouraging young writers, and working through common struggles. However, as someone who has taught in various capacities for over twenty years, one set curriculum will probably not work. You will need to incorporate pieces of your own to address the learners in front of you and modify it each semester.

Therefore, in this blog post, I’ll explore the components, considerations, and requirements for high school students.

Why are you writing about a high school writing curriculum?

If you have followed me for a few years, you were with me while I finished my second master’s degree, one in English Literature . Now, I teach dual-credit writing courses at my high school in coordination with a local community college. Many of my subscribers teach a similar class for high school credit.

The previous seven years, I taught freshmen and worked with those standards. Therefore, my teaching load focuses on standards for seniors, a shift for me.

As I create and build my high school writing curriculum, these considerations come into play.

Understanding the Essentials of a High School Writing Curriculum

A comprehensive high school writing curriculum will address students’ writing skills and grammatical knowledge. Meeting language skills alongside the writing standards can happen naturally.

A well-rounded high school writing course will also address essential aspects such as argumentative writing (sometimes referenced as persuasive writing), informative, and creative/narrative writing, providing students with a holistic understanding of the writing process.

Here is my teacher’s guide to incorporate all these factors.

Importance of a Structured Approach to Writing

A structured approach to writing is essential in a writing curriculum. In my teaching career, I have taught several semester-long courses like public speaking, creative writing, and English 101. My #1 learned lesson: Have an overarching project that builds community in classes. For public speaking, speakers set goals for public speaking. In creative writing, writers compile a journal with writing prompts.

In a standard writing class, we use images to write about mentor sentences and fun topics . Images help young writers envision their responses, and the images work as a form of scaffolding. An ongoing activity, a habit, allows writers to reflect on their writing process, figurative language use, and sentence structure. Take time to reflect with students.

Diverse Writing Assignments

Instilling excellence in writing skills and grammar instruction is essential for an effective writing curriculum. One research paper and one narrative alongside “drill and kill” grammar will not produce an engaging high school writing curriculum.

A few of my favorite writing assignments for high school:

• Mini-memoirs (narrative standards)
• Response to informational text (an assortment of standards)
• Argumentative RAFT (argumentative standard)
• Researched famous events (expository standards)

If you look at the mentor texts (below) and provide excerpts to your classes, you will also create diverse writing assignments from those inspired pieces.

Calendar of Writing

Map out your calendar of dates. No amount of researching and organizing will help us creators of a high school writing curriculum: We must sit down with a calendar.

My high school writing curriculum contains two large-ish type assignments, one due about six weeks into the semester and another at about fourteen weeks. I space them out so that students understand my expectations and feedback, so that we have worked through our standards together, and so that large assignments are not due when students are already overwhelmed. Spacing out assignments in this manner also provides me time to provide meaningful feedback.

If you are interested in looking at my outline for a creative writing course, you can make a copy on Canva (for free).

Grammar Excellence

If you have floated around my blog for a bit, you’ll realize that my preference is not to teach grammar with worksheets. A grammar workbook and worksheets have their place, sure. But once classes understand the basics of language, I branch into additional resources.

For instance, with my high school grammar activities , students use interactive pieces to practice punctuations, to add types of clauses to sentences, and to experiment with difficult concepts. The pieces allow writers to take their own writing and implement lessons. In doing so, they are experimenting with language.

Another addition to any writing program will be addressing grammatical errors . My suggestion is to assign paragraph writing and while grading, note common errors. Then, provide direct instruction and practice correcting the errors.

Any grammar curriculum will connect grammar to writing. One of my goals is to approach language in a positive way so that my brave writers feel empowered instead of crushed by grammar rules.

Meeting Standards with Writing

Writing standards define the expectations for what students should be able to do at each grade level. These standards aim to develop clarity, coherence, and effective communication through writing.

However, meeting these standards can sometimes be a challenge for both students and teachers. Below, I explain what helps me as my students and I work to meet writing standards.

Importance of Writing Standards

Writing standards are guidelines that outline the skills and knowledge students should acquire in writing. They provide a common framework for teaching writing skills, ensuring consistency across classrooms and grade levels.

Be prepared to breakdown standards with students in sensible ways. For instance, in my creative writing activities, I break down pieces like implementing pacing and external conflicts into smaller lessons. With those smaller activities, we can dive deep into the standards.

Overall, writing standards promote clarity, coherence, and effective communication, which are essential skills in the 21st century.

Implementation of Standards

The more you build your writing curriculum, the more engrained and natural the standards will be.

To start, align writing activities with specific standards. By doing so, you ensure that the writing skills targeted are directly tied to the standards. This alignment helps reinforce the skills and knowledge necessary for students to meet the standards effectively.

Additionally, incorporating a wide range of writing skills into lesson plans allows you to address multiple standards simultaneously, providing a comprehensive writing instruction experience for students. In the example above, pacing and external conflicts will occur in smaller activities and then implemented into larger one.

Don’t fear breaking down a standard with students. (Some teachers call this process “unpacking the standards”). The more you discuss writing expectations that derive from the standards, the more meaningful discussions you and your students will have.

Considering mentor texts.

Mentor texts are simply example texts that work well for providing example of structure, vocabulary, language use, and any other piece of writing. Below, I have included books from which I pull pieces. Included are explanations of ways I use the excerpts.

Plus, university writing courses often use excerpts, so using them is a great way to prepare classes. If you read a publication like the New York Times, keep your eyes open to pieces you can add.

All of these affiliate links will take you to Amazon. You can read my disclosures about affiliate links.

This book might be the most loaned book from my classroom library. Dashka Slater is a journalist who wrote The 57 Bus , a story told from two perspectives of what became a hate crime.

Five Little Indians

Michelle Good’s novel portrays the lives of residential school survivors. The uses for Five Little Indians is diverse. Dialogue, setting, and pacing shine through in this story.

The Forgotten Girls

Monica Potts’ memoir weaves research into a narrative. The story covers rural women and their limited options. When older students write narratives, I encourage them to add research and use Potts’ memoir as a mentor text.

The Sun Does Shine

I’ve written about The Sun Does Shine before. Pieces from Anthony Ray Hinton’s story have been in my American literature class too. For a writing class, chapter two, “All American,” works well for modeling background and flashback.

Chapter twenty-seven, “The Symbols of Caste” works as a model for comparing two situations. Isabel Wilkerson compares America’s response to slavery to Germany’s response to the Holocaust. Her pacing and transitions serve as strong examples.

Slavery by Another Name

Douglas A. Blackmon’s book provides examples of incorporating primary sources into research. The end to the chapter, “New South Rising” has a short piece to analyze with writers.

The chapter, “Took Over the OxyContin Belt” serves as a mentor text for narrative nonfiction. From its hook to its powerful concluding paragraph, this short chapter helps me to model narratives.

Patient H.M.

Patient H. M. is about lobotomies, written by the grandson of a famous doctor who performed them decades ago. Luke Dittrich incorporates interviews into research. You can also use excerpts to model writing about delicate topics.

Excerpts from larger books provide authentic texts for young writers and if they are interested, you can loan them the book. Incorporating mentor texts into your high school writing curriculum provides young writers with inspiration and examples.

For those readers who are designing a homeschool writing curriculum, you can ask your local librarian for suggestions regarding books of varying genres.

In conclusion, a high school writing curriculum should provide a structured approach to writing that covers key components such as grammar, vocabulary, and essay writing. It should also offer options that cater to different learning styles and preferences.

While most writing curriculums have their merits, it is important to incorporate creative elements to engage and inspire today’s high schoolers with your own touch. By tailoring the curriculum to your student’s needs and interests, you can make the learning experience more enjoyable and effective.

Replace a student workbook with excerpts, webinars, and audio pieces to diversity the curriculum.

Remember, the goal is to equip them with the necessary skills to express themselves confidently and effectively in various writing formats. You can see details of my high school writing curriculum as a foundation for your classes.

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Our 2020-21 Writing Curriculum for Middle and High School

A flexible, seven-unit program based on the real-world writing found in newspapers, from editorials and reviews to personal narratives and informational essays.

Update, Aug. 3, 2023: Find our 2023-24 writing curriculum here.

Our 2019-20 Writing Curriculum is one of the most popular new features we’ve ever run on this site, so, of course, we’re back with a 2020-21 version — one we hope is useful whether you’re teaching in person , online , indoors , outdoors , in a pod , as a homeschool , or in some hybrid of a few of these.

The curriculum detailed below is both a road map for teachers and an invitation to students. For teachers, it includes our writing prompts, mentor texts, contests and lesson plans, and organizes them all into seven distinct units. Each focuses on a different genre of writing that you can find not just in The Times but also in all kinds of real-world sources both in print and online.

But for students, our main goal is to show young people they have something valuable to say, and to give those voices a global audience. That’s always been a pillar of our site, but this year it is even more critical. The events of 2020 will define this generation, and many are living through them isolated from their ordinary communities, rituals and supports. Though a writing curriculum can hardly make up for that, we hope that it can at least offer teenagers a creative outlet for making sense of their experiences, and an enthusiastic audience for the results. Through the opportunities for publication woven throughout each unit, we want to encourage students to go beyond simply being media consumers to become creators and contributors themselves.

So have a look, and see if you can find a way to include any of these opportunities in your curriculum this year, whether to help students document their lives, tell stories, express opinions, investigate ideas, or analyze culture. We can’t wait to hear what your students have to say!

Each unit includes:

Writing prompts to help students try out related skills in a “low stakes” way.

We publish two writing prompts every school day, and we also have thematic collections of more than 1,000 prompts published in the past. Your students might consider responding to these prompts on our site and using our public forums as a kind of “rehearsal space” for practicing voice and technique.

Daily opportunities to practice writing for an authentic audience.

If a student submits a comment on our site, it will be read by Times editors, who approve each one before it gets published. Submitting a comment also gives students an audience of fellow teenagers from around the world who might read and respond to their work. Each week, we call out our favorite comments and honor dozens of students by name in our Thursday “ Current Events Conversation ” feature.

Guided practice with mentor texts .

Each unit we publish features guided practice lessons, written directly to students, that help them observe, understand and practice the kinds of “craft moves” that make different genres of writing sing. From how to “show not tell” in narratives to how to express critical opinions , quote or paraphrase experts or craft scripts for podcasts , we have used the work of both Times journalists and the teenage winners of our contests to show students techniques they can emulate.

“Annotated by the Author” commentaries from Times writers — and teenagers.

As part of our Mentor Texts series , we’ve been asking Times journalists from desks across the newsroom to annotate their articles to let students in on their writing, research and editing processes, and we’ll be adding more for each unit this year. Whether it’s Science writer Nicholas St. Fleur on tiny tyrannosaurs , Opinion writer Aisha Harris on the cultural canon , or The Times’s comics-industry reporter, George Gene Gustines, on comic books that celebrate pride , the idea is to demystify journalism for teenagers. This year, we’ll be inviting student winners of our contests to annotate their work as well.

A contest that can act as a culminating project .

Over the years we’ve heard from many teachers that our contests serve as final projects in their classes, and this curriculum came about in large part because we want to help teachers “plan backwards” to support those projects.

All contest entries are considered by experts, whether Times journalists, outside educators from partner organizations, or professional practitioners in a related field. Winning means being published on our site, and, perhaps, in the print edition of The New York Times.

Webinars and our new professional learning community (P.L.C.).

For each of the seven units in this curriculum, we host a webinar featuring Learning Network editors as well as teachers who use The Times in their classrooms. Our webinars introduce participants to our many resources and provide practical how-to’s on how to use our prompts, mentor texts and contests in the classroom.

New for this school year, we also invite teachers to join our P.L.C. on teaching writing with The Times , where educators can share resources, strategies and inspiration about teaching with these units.

Below are the seven units we will offer in the 2020-21 school year.

September-October

Unit 1: Documenting Teenage Lives in Extraordinary Times

This special unit acknowledges both the tumultuous events of 2020 and their outsized impact on young people — and invites teenagers to respond creatively. How can they add their voices to our understanding of what this historic year will mean for their generation?

Culminating in our Coming of Age in 2020 contest, the unit helps teenagers document and respond to what it’s been like to live through what one Times article describes as “a year of tragedy, of catastrophe, of upheaval, a year that has inflicted one blow after another, a year that has filled the morgues, emptied the schools, shuttered the workplaces, swelled the unemployment lines and polarized the electorate.”

A series of writing prompts, mentor texts and a step-by-step guide will help them think deeply and analytically about who they are, how this year has impacted them, what they’d like to express as a result, and how they’d like to express it. How might they tell their unique stories in ways that feel meaningful and authentic, whether those stories are serious or funny, big or small, raw or polished?

Though the contest accepts work across genres — via words and images, video and audio — all students will also craft written artist’s statements for each piece they submit. In addition, no matter what genre of work students send in, the unit will use writing as a tool throughout to help students brainstorm, compose and edit. And, of course, this work, whether students send it to us or not, is valuable far beyond the classroom: Historians, archivists and museums recommend that we all document our experiences this year, if only for ourselves.

October-November

Unit 2: The Personal Narrative

While The Times is known for its award-winning journalism, the paper also has a robust tradition of publishing personal essays on topics like love , family , life on campus and navigating anxiety . And on our site, our daily writing prompts have long invited students to tell us their stories, too. Our 2019 collection of 550 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing is a good place to start, though we add more every week during the school year.

In this unit we draw on many of these resources, plus some of the 1,000-plus personal essays from the Magazine’s long-running Lives column , to help students find their own “short, memorable stories ” and tell them well. Our related mentor-text lessons can help them practice skills like writing with voice , using details to show rather than tell , structuring a narrative arc , dropping the reader into a scene and more. This year, we’ll also be including mentor text guided lessons that use the work of the 2019 student winners.

As a final project, we invite students to send finished stories to our Second Annual Personal Narrative Writing Contest .

DECEMBER-January

Unit 3: The Review

Book reports and literary essays have long been staples of language arts classrooms, but this unit encourages students to learn how to critique art in other genres as well. As we point out, a cultural review is, of course, a form of argumentative essay. Your class might be writing about Lizzo or “ Looking for Alaska ,” but they still have to make claims and support them with evidence. And, just as they must in a literature essay, they have to read (or watch, or listen to) a work closely; analyze it and understand its context; and explain what is meaningful and interesting about it.

In our Mentor Texts series , we feature the work of Times movie , restaurant , book and music critics to help students understand the elements of a successful review. In each one of these guided lessons, we also spotlight the work of teenage contest winners from previous years.

As a culminating project, we invite students to send us their own reviews of a book, movie, restaurant, album, theatrical production, video game, dance performance, TV show, art exhibition or any other kind of work The Times critiques.

January-February

Unit 4: Informational Writing

Informational writing is the style of writing that dominates The New York Times as well as any other traditional newspaper you might read, and in this unit we hope to show students that it can be every bit as engaging and compelling to read and to write as other genres. Via thousands of articles a month — from front-page reporting on politics to news about athletes in Sports, deep data dives in The Upshot, recipes in Cooking, advice columns in Style and long-form investigative pieces in the magazine — Times journalists find ways to experiment with the genre to intrigue and inform their audiences.

This unit invites students to take any STEM-related discovery, process or idea that interests them and write about it in a way that makes it understandable and engaging for a general audience — but all the skills we teach along the way can work for any kind of informational writing. Via our Mentor Texts series, we show them how to hook the reader from the start , use quotes and research , explain why a topic matters and more. This year we’ll be using the work of the 2020 student winners for additional mentor text lessons.

At the end of the unit, we invite teenagers to submit their own writing to our Second Annual STEM writing contest to show us what they’ve learned.

March-April

Unit 5: Argumentative Writing

The demand for evidence-based argumentative writing is now woven into school assignments across the curriculum and grade levels, and you couldn’t ask for better real-world examples than what you can find in The Times Opinion section .

This unit will, like our others, be supported with writing prompts, mentor-text lesson plans, webinars and more. We’ll also focus on the winning teenage writing we’ve received over the six years we’ve run our related contest.

At a time when media literacy is more important than ever, we also hope that our annual Student Editorial Contest can serve as a final project that encourages students to broaden their information diets with a range of reliable sources, and learn from a variety of perspectives on their chosen issue.

To help students working from home, we also have an Argumentative Unit for Students Doing Remote Learning .

Unit 6: Writing for Podcasts

Most of our writing units so far have all asked for essays of one kind or another, but this spring contest invites students to do what journalists at The Times do every day: make multimedia to tell a story, investigate an issue or communicate a concept.

Our annual podcast contest gives students the freedom to talk about anything they want in any form they like. In the past we’ve had winners who’ve done personal narratives, local travelogues, opinion pieces, interviews with community members, local investigative journalism and descriptions of scientific discoveries.

As with all our other units, we have supported this contest with great examples from The Times and around the web, as well as with mentor texts by teenagers that offer guided practice in understanding elements and techniques.

June-August

Unit 7: Independent Reading and Writing

At a time when teachers are looking for ways to offer students more “voice and choice,” this unit, based on our annual summer contest, offers both.

Every year since 2010 we have invited teenagers around the world to add The New York Times to their summer reading lists and, so far, 70,000 have. Every week for 10 weeks, we ask participants to choose something in The Times that has sparked their interest, then tell us why. At the end of the week, judges from the Times newsroom pick favorite responses, and we publish them on our site.

And we’ve used our Mentor Text feature to spotlight the work of past winners , explain why newsroom judges admired their thinking, and provide four steps to helping any student write better reader-responses.

Because this is our most open-ended contest — students can choose whatever they like, and react however they like — it has proved over the years to be a useful place for young writers to hone their voices, practice skills and take risks . Join us!

• Our Mission

Using Mentor Texts to Motivate and Support Student Writers

If we want students to do something well, it helps to both tell them and show them what we expect. When it comes to writing assignments, we teachers will give students directions to write a convincing essay or draft a descriptive narrative followed by telling them how to earn a good grade on it. Many of us also hand out a rubric or criteria chart that tells all the expectations for the essay. But, with all that there is to cover and the time crunch, we may sacrifice showing them mentor texts, examples of good writing.

Show Not Tell

Let's take a moment to think of ourselves when we learn: Do we understand something and apply it better when we are shown a finished product while also being told about it? I'm going to guess that most of us will say yes. Doesn't it help to scrutinize that already-assembled bookshelf display at Ikea before going home to those often confusing instructions? (Clearly, I speak from experience on this one.)

So if we want students to write a convincing persuasive essay that includes evidence, let's show them examples. If we want them to craft a descriptive story, filled with dialogue and details, we need to show them what this looks like and talk about.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking: when I show them a student model it often gets copied or parroted back! And, yes this is a concern as we want all our students to work hard and create their own original and unique essay, story, or speech. Additionally, and I speak from experience as both a teacher and a writer on this one, nothing causes writer's block more than being handed an amazing model and then told, "Okay, now you write!"

So how do we keep students from mimicking or from freezing up? We have to give students time to talk about the mentor text, time to practice, and time to share their own efforts with peers for feedback.

Deconstructing Good Writing

Once you have found some good mentor texts -- student written or published pieces -- plan backwards from there. Put your lesson designer cap on and ask yourself, what are all the features that make this a solid piece of writing: the organization? the title? the sentence variety? the use of metaphor and other imagery? the evidence that supports claims? the introduction?

After you have listed these features, create mini-lessons for each one you want your students to emulate. The mini-lesson should include time after the teaching for students to practice and share in small, safe groups and when ready, with the whole class. Also, I used to create a handout with several really great introductions (from books, essays, short stories, and speeches). Together, the students I would analyze these opening sentences and discuss what made them so powerful.

The importance of what happens next should not be underestimated: Give your students time to practice writing what they just learned. And not just time but make it low-stakes -- no grading, no evaluation, no rubric -- simply time to explode on a page, take chances, be whimisical, be daring: firewrite! Let them then share what they wrote with near neighbors or read it aloud to the whole class. If they don't want to do either, give them the option to not.

Finding Mentor Texts

If you are a new teacher and don't yet have a collection of student essays and writing samples, then turn to your colleagues who might have some to share. I've also found awesome mentor text on the Internet.

Write Source offers a large collection of student writing for all grade levels and genres , and for free. What is great about this selection is that numerous teachers from all over have submitted these models so there's quite a bit of variety.

Because I support teachers who work at urban public schools in Los Angeles, a relevant resource I found to share with teachers is the publication, LA Youth. Archived on the site are countless narratives, persuasive essays, letters, and poems written by teenagers living in metropolitan areas of LA. The more students can relate to the voice and content found in a mentor text, the more it will inspire their own writing.

There are also many anthologies and books out there that offer wonderful collections of children and adolescent writing. I used this one with eleventh-graders as they were writing their college personal statements, 50 Successful Harvard Application Essays . This collection of essays offered up clever, zany, and heartfelt teenage writing that sparked creativity and bravery in my own students' writing.

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