“I walked into my classroom. It felt like sunrise, like a rootbeer float, like a best friend.”

The mentor texts for these two weeks, Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes and The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, are similar in the sense that they are amazing examples of kids working through problems. Both books are easy to sell during the book talk because kids love books where students are handling conflict. I love teaching irregular verbs over the course of two weeks because the first week we learn what irregular verbs are and then do some practicing with examples. In the second week, we combine standard past tense verbs with an -ed ending, AND we also use irregular verbs in our sentences. We are still building on our work with action verbs/verbs of being and helping verbs from previous weeks.

Before jumping into the lessons, I wanted to take a moment to revisit the goals I have for this six-week marking period.

If you are new to this work, you may want to spend some time reading my other mentor text posts in the Teaching Blog by Category page or the Writer Resources page.

The mentor text lesson sequence is simple:

1. Book Talk

2. Notice and Name the Author’s Strategy or “Move”

3. Write Like the Author!

4. Celebrate and Share

Week 1 of Irregular Verbs:

STEP 1: BOOK TALK (5 MINUTES WHOLE GROUP)

STEP 2: NOTICE AND NAME THE AUTHOR’S MOVE(S) (10 MINUTES WHOLE GROUP)

During this step, I am hoping students identify the verbs and action words. I am also hoping they notice that sentence two has weird commas there that seem to give more detail about the character. I am also hoping that students start to notice who is doing the talking in these two sentences and that it seems to not be a character within the actual story.

STEP 3: WRITE LIKE AN AUTHOR! (5-10 MINUTES INDIVIDUAL/PARTNERS)

STEP 4: CELEBRATE AND SHARE (5 MINUTES)

Week 2 of Irregular Verbs:

STEP 1: BOOK TALK (5 MINUTES WHOLE GROUP)

STEP 2: NOTICE AND NAME THE AUTHOR’S MOVE(S) (10 MINUTES WHOLE GROUP)

During this step, I am hoping students identify the verbs or action words (like in the first mentor text). However, I am also hoping they see the repetition of the word “like” in sentence two. There is a clear purpose of an action in the first part of these sentences and a feeling in the last part. I want students to notice what the sentences are about, but not necessarily content. I know that a girl is holding hands with another person. I want them to see the action of holding hands connected to how the character is feeling.

STEP 3: WRITE LIKE AN AUTHOR! (5-10 MINUTES INDIVIDUAL/PARTNERS)

STEP 4: CELEBRATE AND SHARE (5 MINUTES)

Writing Mindset Reflection: How do you teach irregular verbs? What mentor texts would you use?