Literacy News

OGPS staff receive their box of Mentor Texts

Mentor texts for writing are pieces of text we can hold up as examples of good writing. A mentor text could be a single sentence or an entire book. It could be something written by a student, a published author or someone else entirely. Mentor texts allow us to show students what quality writing looks like rather than telling them.

Mentor texts in reading are books/pieces of text we can use to model the use of specific reading strategies such as decoding, predicting, inferring, or even discussing character traits.

In 2022, our School Council approved the use of our Colour Run money to purchase mentor texts for every classroom. Since that date we have purchased, catalogued and contacted over 500 books!!! In a recent staff meeting, teachers were given their mentor text crate and the opportunity to read and plan using their books. 

The list of titles were carefully selected using Narissa Leung’s (Oz Lit Teacher) recommendations of suitable texts and come with individual book plates that help teachers to plan using the 6 + 1 Traits for writing, and model different decoding and comprehension strategies for reading.

The mammoth task could not have happened without the tireless work of Sally, in the Library, who catalogued the books during the summer holidays and our wonderful volunteer, Kath Wade who contacted them all. Thanks should also go to Megan King and the Colour run team and last, and most importantly, our families who donated money to the Colour Run.

As you can see from these photos, the teachers are very excited to begin using them in their literacy lessons.