Mentor Text Unit...Someday

I am about to start my mentor text unit on sentence fluency, organization, decription, and time-order words.  I know that's alot to tackle and some of those are just "introductory" lessons.  I use a wonderful story/poetry book called Someday, by Eileen Spinelli.  I love this book because it is a poem, but at the same time, there is freedom to write great descriptions while following the form of the poem.  Spinelli's character talks about what she plans to do "Someday" and then brings her ideas back to earth and talks about what she can do right now.  I love the frame this poem creates for kids. The illustrations are great inspiration for the kids to think about what they could do in their futures.  We just kinda "linger" over each idea in the poem and study the pictures.  Here are pictures from the book.

image from www.amazon.com

Notice the great detail and description.

First...I will have the students frame their poem by writing their "someday statement." 

Next...We will write our conclusion before we write the body of the poem.  I focus on thinking about what they can do now to work toward their goals. I like that the conclusions all have some type of time-order words.  This is a great way to teach time-order and different transitions such as "in the meantime," "for now," "at the moment," etc... There are great ideas and the kids can pick one or come up with their own.   

After that...we write the body of the poem, focusing on the descriptive examples in the book and how they can elaborate on their ideas. 

This is great description with details for mentoring their "someday" idea.

 

Someday... she will dig for dinosaur bones and become famous.

What she is digging for now!

This is one of my favorite mentor texts.  It really allows the kids freedom to write and imagine while giving them a very supportive framework.  

We also combine our poems and illustrations and publish the book!