In September of 2011, our fourth year of our Mentor Texts of the Year Program kicks off! Each June, we select two complementary texts and focus our lessons of the month for the upcoming school year on the messages found in these books.

The criteria for the mentor texts we choose? They have to be books from published writers about the craft of writing. We look for direct advice about writing skills from talented writers.

In September of 2011, we began using Show, Don't Tell: Secrets of Writing (by Josephine Nobisso) and Live Writing: Breathing Life into your Words (by Ralph Fletcher).

With each of our monthly writing lessons posted at our Ning next school year, we will be featuring an idea or quote from one or both of these books.

Last year, we focused on two mentor texts that were about using Writer's Notebooks, and as a result we created a whole new page of prompts here at WritingFix. Click here to access that page.

We will be creating a new resource page that focuses on Showing Skills (which combine idea development, word choice and voice techniques) during the next school year thanks to the messages found in these two mentor texts.

We hope you'll join us by obtaining classroom/school copies of both mentor texts and by joining our conversations in our brand new Showing vs. Telling Interest Group at our site-sponsored Ning.

Mentor Texts

A Mentor Text --here is the definition from Corbett Harrison (one of the NNWP's very own consultants with his own website for teachers!)-- is a published piece of writing whose idea, whose structure, or whose written craft can be used to inspire a student to write something original.

Quite a few of our Northern Nevada teacher workshops focus on lesson design around a specific type of mentor text. Using the lessons posted at WritingFix, it is very easy for us to design an entire inservice workshop where teachers study a number of really good mentor text-inspired writing lessons, then work together to create original lessons around mentor texts from their own classroom bookshelves.

Finding these lessons: With the light-blue menu bar found in the upper left-hand corner of all WritingFix pages, if you hover over "Mentor Text Lessons," you will discover a drop-down menu of the types of mentor texts we've designed workshops around in Northern Nevada.

Writing Traits

Comparatively to other regions, Northern Nevada teachers have had a fairly long and generally positive relationship with the writing traits. Since 1980, our NNWP has been offering regular and interactive workshops on the six traits of writing, so when traits became the language of our state writing assessment rubrics a little while back, we took the news better than many states who'd had a different history.

Just about every inservice class currently offered by the NNWP makes some reference to the writing traits. Because it can be such a foundational topic in improving writing instruction, we do offer certain workshops that are very trait focused.

Finding these resources: In the light-blue menu bar found in the upper left-hand corner of all WritingFix pages, if you hover over "The 6 Writing Traits," you will discover a drop-down menu of trait-focused materials we use in our workshops.

Genres/Modes of Writing

Good writing can achieve many different purposes. Our students need exposure to exciting lessons that will help them learn about each genre of writing and apply their new knowledge with original writing that feels important or valuable to them.

Every school year, the NNWP offers local inservice classes that help teacher participants make new connections about the genres of writing. Participants analyze lessons about genre, then they collaborate to create original lessons for their classrooms. At WritingFix, we've developed resource pages to go with each genre of writing. These pages contain lessons and mentor text suggestions specific to the genre. If you can't attend our face-to-face version of the class, these pages offer you an opportunity to analyze the same lessons we use during our classtime.

Finding these resources: On the blue menu bar found in the upper left-hand corner of all WritingFix pages, hover over "Writing Genres" and select one of the genres/modes that interests you.

Writing Across the Curriculum

Writing is not a skill, tool, or curriculum that belongs to the Language Arts teachers. It should not be something that exclusively happens during literacy block. Any teacher, no matter what the content of a lesson, can challenge deeper student thinking by requiring students to write before, during, and/or after the learning occurs.

But you can't simply assign writing to your students and expect your lesson to become better. As part of your lesson, you must teach writing --the skills, the process, and/or the qualities--if your goal is to deepen students' thinking. Our inservice classes on Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) help teachers find ways to teach writing with more content than they currently are. Most of the WAC workshops we offer have a companion page here at WritingFix.

Finding these resources: In the light-blue menu bar found in the upper left-hand corner of all WritingFix pages, if you hover over "Across the Curriculum," you will see our WAC topics, including links to our "sister sites," HistoryFix, NumberFix, and ScienceFix.

We're constantly growing at WritingFix, adding dozens of new lessons, resources, and student samples each semester. If you'd like to know when something new is added to our website, stay in touch with us using one of the following: