Using Mentor Texts in the Multi-disciplinary Classroom
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.
And of course, a mentor text doesn’t have to be in the form of a book — a mentor text might be a poem, a newspaper article, song lyrics, comic strips, manuals, essays, almost anything.
Definition from The National Writing Project
- They demonstrate the relevance and real-world practice of the discipline.
- This can include how professional conventions and concerns are presented in various media or to different audiences
- They can illustrate using, interpreting and explaining evidence in a way that may be more accessible or relatable to students.
- This can provide models both of how experts communicate with each other and to other audiences.
- They can provide a sense of variety to accompany a traditional expository textbook.
- They can introduce students to writing forms, genres and platforms they may not otherwise encounter.
- They can provide opportunities incorporate multilingual and multidialectal voices
- Researched essays or memoirs that incorporate external evidence relevant to a particular discipline
- Articles in which scholars work directly with data or primary sources and show their process
- This is a key opportunity for including different translations or explanations of primary texts, especially from diverse or own voices.
- Discipline-related articles or essays in non-academic sources, including memoirs, advocacy or reflections from practitioners in the field
- Reviews of discipline-relevant museum exhibits, documentaries, or other interpretive texts
Tips for Successfully Integrating Mentor Texts
Intentional selection of Mentor Texts is critical to successful use. Consider choosing mentor texts that are relevant to the discipline and provide models for writing in the discipline; reflect student identities, experiences, interests, and reading preferences; demonstrate diverse mediums and genres; and reinforce linguistic equity.
- Choose mentor texts that are clearly relevant to the discipline and the course objectives; however, they do not need to be a one-to-one match.
- The focus should not be on the students mastering or retaining specific new content, but engaging with the context, purpose, and style of the text and producing a creative or reflective response.
- Expose students to stylistic excellence that is appropriate for student comprehension and skill levels. You might consider differentiated choices, depending on student need.
- Choose mentor texts that are reflective of student identities and experience. The opportunity for students to hear from authors who share their experiences and identities can be powerful in encouraging academic engagement and in informing career interest as students read in their chosen field. Mentor texts can be a tool to advance the Learning for Justice Identity Anchor Standards described here. Discussing rhetorical strategies from a representative author can be a powerful tool to engage students.
- Choose mentor texts from diverse mediums and genres. Introduce students to a wider definition of “texts” by examining mentor texts in the form of podcasts, video essays, etc.
- An example students might be familiar with is Hank Green’s Crash Course History YouTube series.
- Incorporating video, audio, and visual texts may offer more flexibility for response times than exclusively reading texts. Class time spent engaging with the text should include both reading/listening/watching and producing a reflective or creative response.
- Choose mentor texts that reinforce linguistic equity. Mentor texts can provide students with successful models for code-meshing and give them an opportunity to examine rhetorical choices, including shifts between different dialects and traditions, inclusion of multilingual phrases or expressions, and consideration of situation or context.
- Choose mentor texts that align with student interests and reading preferences.. Consider presenting students with a short survey or Jamboard at the beginning of the term to gauge their interests, hobbies or professional goals, and current reading/media consumption habits. Many students may respond that they don’t read, so questions or prompts directed towards understanding “texts” in a broader context may produce more answers and help create an awareness in students of the ways they already experience and participate in discourse.
- For example, mentor texts regarding TV shows, movies, comics, TikToks, podcasts, news feeds, etc that they consume may produce more student engagement. This is not to imply that tailoring an entirely unique collection of mentor texts for specific students or sections is expected or practical. However, as you build a collection of mentor texts and share with colleagues, you may be able to incorporate topics students have already indicated an interest in.
- To illustrate: if students are interested in true crime; mentor texts could include articles or essays about historical “cold cases” or cases that are now understood differently, texts critiquing or discussing the ethics of true crime as entertainment, psychological or sociological pieces or personal essays addressing why true crime is such a popular genre, or scientific pieces explaining or critiquing different kinds of forensic evidence.
- For example, mentor texts regarding TV shows, movies, comics, TikToks, podcasts, news feeds, etc that they consume may produce more student engagement. This is not to imply that tailoring an entirely unique collection of mentor texts for specific students or sections is expected or practical. However, as you build a collection of mentor texts and share with colleagues, you may be able to incorporate topics students have already indicated an interest in.
Strategies for Interacting with Mentor Texts
- Don’t limit the use of mentor texts to discussion or direct reflection or commentary; instead, create activities in which students produce their own content that involves critical thinking or creative interpretation after engaging with the mentor texts. The form of this response includes a wide variety of potential activities, but should make clear connections with the text and inspire critical thinking choices about rhetorical strategies like purpose, word choice, audience, rhetorical form, etc.
- Be aware of time management in the selection of mentor texts; in some cases, using excerpts may be more effective than a full-length text. If you choose to use a longer text, consider pausing during the reading time for check-in activities or requiring active reading exercises to maintain student attention.
- Use mentor texts as an opportunity to think about authorial choices and goals, different platforms or publication venues, and intended audiences and make sure students are discussing their own rhetorical and stylistic choices, while using these texts as models.
- Depending on their progress in the English sequence, students may be familiar with rhetorical modes such as informative versus persuasive, or terms such as ethos, pathos, logos, etc. However, rather than directly eliciting these terms, consider using this as an opportunity to break down these modes further, or illustrate how writing in “real world” contexts often mix and meld these modes.
- For example, after identifying a piece as “informative,” ask students to consider a more granular view of that term–what kind of information does the author want to convey? Is the author attempting to correct or challenge misinformation? Breaking down a complex topic for a general rather than academic audience? Showing how a single incident or example can connect to a larger issue? Informing the audience of newly discovered information? How might these goals interact with persuasive elements?
- Encourage students to practice critical and lateral reading skills in understanding the platform or publication and its point of view, target audience, etc, as well as the credibility or authority of the author. This can provide an intuitive way to reinforce information literacy practice outside of the direct graded context of a larger assignment.
- Ask students to look at the way different genres and contexts use or cite evidence and practice tracking down cited sources.
- Look at examples where authors diverge from Dominant American English–this could include use of dialect, use of multilingual phrasing, first-person versus third-person writing, integration of sentence fragments or other conscious stylistic choices, etc.
Potential Samples and Sources of Mentor Texts
This list represents only a small sampling of potential sources, genres, or styles of mentor texts as a tool for instructors finding and incorporating the best texts for their classes and lesson plans. In the future, we will be building a discipline-specific collection of texts that can be continually updated with new examples.
Some of the sources are grouped by discipline; others that may be useful for multiple subjects are grouped by media or other descriptors as applicable.
This list is in no way exhaustive, and not all activities may be practical for all classes or for all instructors, particularly activities that require bringing unique items to class. For some activities, there are specific links with models or suggestions that may be helpful. We will continue to offer and expand activity suggestions in the future.
- Writing a response/”Letter to the Editor” critiquing or supporting a column or article
- Writing a response or comment that makes use of code meshing, or writing a piece covering the same themes or ideas using code meshing
- Identify where a piece might be excluding a cultural or linguistic point of view and writing either a response in explanation, rewriting the piece in a way to make use of multidialectal or code meshed language, or writing a new piece making use of those language skills.
- Reading and reviewing a children’s book on a discipline-relevant topic, considering how they present the information for that age audience and how or if they present direct evidence. This can also include finding professional reviews of the books or articles about how they are used in school classes.
- This can be an opportunity to consider different perspectives over time and own voices books–examples might be drawn from Debbie Reese’s blog “American Indians in Children’s Literature”
- If bringing in children’s books or reserving them from the NLU library is not practical, a similar activity could be based on reading critiques, such as these responses to “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”
- Having students write and present information in an unusual or unexpected format, such as a meme, dating profile, clickbait style headlines, field notes, an advertisement, etc.
- Have students find a poem, song, or other creative text that references a discipline-related topic and write about how and why it is used.
JSTOR Daily–”where news meets its scholarly match.” Connects and contextualizes current events or cultural discourses with short pieces drawn from scholarship, organized by a variety of disciplines or interests (arts, education, politics and U.S. history, science, etc.)
Nursing Clio–an “open-sourced, peer-reviewed collaborative blog project” focusing on issues of gender and medicine, including disability rights, health care equity, cultural criticism, history, and archival work.
McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies–an online literary magazine featuring short, often (but not exclusively) humorous and satirical pieces that often reference current events, philosophy, rhetoric, grammar and writing, politics, and a wide variety of issues, tagged by topic for easy searching. (The associated journal The Believer also features a wide variety of long-form essays, author interviews, and other pieces of possible interest.)
Contingent Magazine–a non-profit history magazine featuring historians and scholars outside the academic tenure track, dedicated to making history accessible and honoring different approaches and interests. Includes a “for Educators” page with past pieces grouped by topic, and a section where different contributors explain their approaches and motivations for studying history.
Thomas Lecaque–a historian of apocalyptic movements and religious extremism, including contemporary political analysis; also known for his historical analysis of a wide variety of video games.
“A Genius Cartoonist Believes Child’s Play is Anything But Frivolous” [Lynda Barry interview, New York Times, 9/2/22]
MIT Technology Review, including articles on ethics and concerns regarding AI
- “Chatbots could one day replace search engines. Here’s why that’s a terrible idea” [Will Douglas Heaven, 3/19/22]
- “A bias bounty for AI will help to catch unfair algorithms faster” [Melissa Heikkilä, 10/20/22]
How Did We Get So Obsessed with Streaks? Good and Bad Gamification with Adrian Hon,” [Anne Helen Petersen’s “Culture Study” 11/16/22]
Emily M. Bender, director of Computational Linguistics at the University of Washington, media page
Human Restoration Project–blog collective of education professionals, from K-12 through college, devoted to progressive education and student empowerment. Includes both observational writing articles and essays by working professionals as well as open-access peer reviewed articles.
Jesse Stommel and his Hybrid Pedagogy journal–discussion of critical digital pedagogy and compassionate teaching practices.
Science educator Kyle Hill: Topics include history and ethics in nuclear development, explanations of current science news stories, and broader topics such as “How to Read a Scientific Paper.”
Philosophy Tube by Abigail Thorn
Legal Eagle by Devin Stone–videos explaining legal ramifications of current events/news stories, explainers on Constitutional issues, discussions of legal depictions/accuracy in media and pop culture.
Note: This is currently restricted to solely creators with demonstrable professional and/or academic experience in the relevant field.
Moving Writers is a website run by Rebekah O’Dell and Alison Marchetti, authors of Writing with Mentors, Beyond Literary Analysis and A Teacher’s Guide to Mentor Texts, who have written and presented extensively on using mentor texts, student-directed topics, and writing as an agent of change in students’ lives. The website contains a variety of articles, presentations, and suggested activities which can be adapted to use in the college classroom with a variety of texts or assignments.
