Mentor Text for Descriptive Writing

Nothing is more fun for me as a writing teacher than getting to use mentor texts with my students.  I wholeheartedly believe that authors can teach my students so much about the craft of writing.  I've got a shelf of books that I love to use as mentor texts, but one of my favorites is All the Places to Love, by Patricia MacLachlan.  It's a beautiful story of a boy describing each of his family member's favorite places on their farm.  The detail in both the pictures and text is fabulous!  

All the Places to Love is a perfect mentor text for practicing descriptive writing, paragraph structure, and the writing process.  It's great at the beginning of the school year, but can be a valuable week-long writing task any time of the year.  

First I have students think of a place that is special to them.  Here's a tip - I've found it works best to describe the place as "special" instead of "favorite" -- kids do a much better job writing about a place that is close to their heart than why __________ is their favorite restaurant!

We then go through the standard writing process.  I've included the "Places to Love" resource that I use with my students at the bottom of this post, but you can also use any structure or routines that you currently use with your students during writing.  

A lot of descriptive writing focuses on sensory details, and there are definitely some of those in this book.  But All the Places to Love has tons of examples of how to use prepositional phrases to describe a place.  The page below shows just a few.  Challenge your students to use a few prepositional phrases in their descriptive paragraphs. 

MacLachlan also weaves similes beautifully into the book.  This is another minilesson you can use with your students.  Reread the book to your class and have them give you a thumbs up every time they hear a simile.  Then encourage them to include at least one simile in their writing. 

Now you can choose whether to have your students hand write or type their paragraphs. I let my students create a full page illustration using colored pencils (to add more details than you get with marker!)  There are a few different publishing options in the packet I've included below. 

We chose one of the pictures to serve as our cover, and then I scanned it into my computer and typed a title in a text box.  I bound the pages together, and we had our first class book of the year.  So easy! 

If you'd like to get your own copy of the writing resource I use with my students, just click the picture below for your free copy! 

If you don't have All the Places to Love in your classroom library, good news!  I'm raffling off a copy of the book to give to one lucky winner.  Just enter through the Rafflecopter below!  I'll be picking a winner on 3/4/19!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I've also teamed up with an amazing group of teachers who are sharing ideas about using mentor texts to inspire writers.  Make sure to visit their blogs to get some great ideas - and freebies! 

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