Mentor Texts

Here is a chart with three mini-lesson statements and examples of how to frame your whole class discussion.  Fill out your charts with these organizers as you discuss each book with the class!

The Giving Tree is a wonderful story that leads into some amazing lessons on cause and effect.  As the boy comes back to take more from the tree, there are consequences he doesn't realize until much later in life.

Teach students about another culture, while thinking about how our thrown-out plastic bags impact the environment in this true story, One Plastic Bag: Isatou Ceesay and the Recycling Women of the Gambia .  The women in this story turn thrown-away plastic bags into beautiful purses to sell.  A great cause and effect example!

Those Shoes is a great story about a young boy who feels the pressure to have the ‘cool' shoes that all his friends are wearing.  The only problem is his family cannot afford them.  There are many cause and effect examples throughout this fabulous story about being yourself and trying to fit in at the same time.

Check out the resource below that features 20 different graphic organizers to use with any text and reinforce these cause and effect comprehension skills:

1. Cause and Effect Matching Set One
2. Cause and Effect Matching Set Two
3. Cause and Effect Matching Set Three
4. If…Then…
5. Identifying Causes in Texts
6. Identifying Effects in Texts
7. Inferring Causes in Texts
8. Inferring Effects in Texts
9. What Happened/Why It Happened
10. Creating Causes Set One
11. Creating Causes Set Two
12. Creating Causes Set Three
13. Creating Effects Set One 
14. Creating Effects Set Two
15. Creating Effects Set Three
16. Cause and Effect Signal Words
17. Illustrating Cause and Effect 
18. One Cause, Multiple Effects Set One
19. One Cause, Multiple Effects Set Two
20. One Cause, Multiple Effects in Text

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers is such a great book to teach tension.  It also is a true story about a man that snuck into the World Trade Center Towers as they were being constructed, slung a tight rope across the towers, and walked in the sky!!

Going along with the World Trade Center theme, Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey is an incredible true story about how an old fireboat helped during the terrorist attacks on 9/11.  It's a great book for teaching tension!

Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China is an awesome twist on the Little Red Riding Hood story, and a great book to teach tension!

For a variety of questions about tension in three formats that reinforce your teaching and can be used with any mentor text at any level, check out this resource!

My New Friend is So Fun! is an awesome book to read with kids of all ages and offers amazing opportunities to talk about character traits.

The Story of Ferdinand is a GREAT book to read with kids of all ages.  We love to talk about Ferdinand and describe his character traits and how unusual they are for a bull.

The Other Side is such a great book to use with so many comprehension skills, but especially character traits because you can talk about how characters change in a story and the reasons they make those changes.