The children are beginning to write pieces that teach readers how-to do something. Before I ask young writers to try a new genre, I spend time during writing workshop reading several books that we use as our mentor texts.
Mentor Texts
After that, we work together to record what we noticed in each of the books we read.
For our first shared how-to writing, we made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and then wrote the directions as a group.
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- The final step…eat your sandwich! Yum!
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- Leila and Diya have different opinions about their sandwiches.
On another day we made chef hats and baked a pizza.
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- First, put dough on the pan.
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- Second, spread tomato sauce on the dough.
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- Third, sprinkle cheese on top of the sauce.
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- Bake the pizza in a hot oven.