Lesson's mentor text: The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown

Lesson objectives: Margaret Wise Brown's The Important Book contains a dozen "Important Book Passages," which are Brown's original structure for looking at items that are important to her. She first says what's most important about an item, then she shares three or four other interesting details, and then she again stresses what's most important. This simple type of passage can be assigned to students so they can show what they have learned about scientific topics.

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Lesson's mentor text: Any printed cookbook or series of recipes from the Internet.

Lesson overview: Students translate scientific research into a creative form of writing: a recipe imitation. After choosing a topic, students list what ingredients they'll need to "cook up" their scientific recipe, and they create a list of instructions on how to combine their ingredients. The students' goal is to report accurately report on scientific facts, using the "voice" of a real recipe.

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Lesson's mentor text: We Are Bears by Molly Grooms

Lesson objectives: We are researchers. If you assign a non-fiction animal reports to your students, this lesson provides you with a unique structure and an interesting lesson about verbs and nouns. Inspired by Molly Grooms' We Are Bears, students will organize their reports based on interesting animal-specific nouns they discover while researching.

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