Oral Mentor Texts: A Powerful Tool for Teaching Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening

Class stories are valuable, free resources for integrating curriculum, aligning your teaching with standards, and meeting the needs of your particular students. Connie Dierking and Sherra Jones

Write the story of a shared event from your classroom, embedding instructional moments.
Share with students to tell, tell, and retell.
Now combine with your lesson plan and watch a simple story become one of your best teaching tools.

That’s the power of oral mentor texts!

Oral Mentor Texts shows you this simple, effective new way to teach, reinforce, and practice skills and strategies with all your students. These teacher-created stories support a wide range of literacy goals as you:

harness the power of oral language to enrich comprehension
help writers internalize narrative structures and craft elements
support English learners and struggling readers and writers to meet literacy standards, including speaking and listening.

Oral mentor texts are a great idea, and Connie Dierking and Sherra Jones make them easy to weave into your teaching with:

suggestions for whole-group, small-group, and individual instruction
lesson ideas for teaching 34 key literacy skills
ways oral mentor texts can turn non-instructional time into teaching time

Read Oral Mentor Texts and give your students a story they’ll remember every time they open a book or pick up a pen.