I have always loved a good read-aloud, read with all the voices and sounds! Sometimes I think I love them more than my students!! I use them after recess, rest time, and to introduce a new genre in a reading or writing unit. I even use them for science and social studies units. We use them all, narratives, informational and persuasive texts. I recently taught a new writing unit, “how-to” writing to my class. While planning my unit, I found some fun and engaging mentor texts for introducing the new type of writing to my kindergarten class.
It is important to teach children with explicit instruction and practice, especially when working with new writers. When I plan a mini-lesson with a mentor text, I read it beforehand and add sticky notes with notes on what to point out to the students. My students think it is hilarious when I think out loud to model the how-to writing.
Teaching Sequence of Events And How-To Writing
An important skill for students to already have in kindergarten is understanding sequence of events. This is an important comprehension skill and a must-have if they are going to write a “how-to” writing piece. I used the book, How to Make Bubbles: A 4D Book (Hands-On Science Fun) to introduce my first lesson. We read the book twice and then the third time followed the steps to make our bubbles. The kids had so much fun! We talked about the steps or the sequence and how we could use them in our “how-to” writing.
Another mentor text for how-to writing is, Step By Step Projects: How to Bake a Cake. As we read this book, we drew the steps of how to make a cake together as a group. When we were finished, we read through the book again and made sure we did not miss any steps, because we didn’t want our cake to be a flop! Next, we looked at our pictures and came up with a sentence for each. We decided how we could put some sentences together, and put them all together in our final paragraph.
The last mentor text I used for a mini lesson, was How to Make a Pancake. We used this mentor text in much the same way as the How To Bake A Cake book, however, this time I had each child draw their own pictures and then come up with their own sentences for each picture. This took a lot more time, but the process was important and the results were amazing. My students were so proud of their writing!
A New Product Idea !
This was my first time teaching writing to Kindergarten. We loved the mentor texts I found and fun working with them. I knew my students would need a lot more practice with this genre of writing, so I set out to create a new pack to use in my classroom. The kids have enjoyed using the cut and paste sequence of events as writing prompts and it has made it so easy to give them more practice! Click on the picture below to check it out and hopefully it can help you too in teaching “how-to” writing to your kindergarten or first graders !
Good luck and have fun !!
Jeanne
