Wonderful Word Wednesday: December Mentor Text

Yesterday I started my day with a Professional Development about Writing Workshop I was presenting along with a teammate.  One of the questions that comes up often is about mentor texts.  As we talked today about how important mentor texts are I realized that the message I need to continue to reinforce is that any text can be a mentor text depending on the focus of the mini lesson.  

I found this book while shopping on black Friday with my daughter (what would shopping be without a trip to the bookstore). This book was brand new to me and as I read it I fell in love with the story. I plan on using it today for our word study.  In December, one of the areas of focus is going to be on parts of speech.  After a quick review of nouns, verbs, and adjectives I am going to read this story aloud.  As I read it I am going to have students collect those different parts of speech. It will be a great text because not only are there simple parts of speech (bell, red, walk) there are higher levels (pack: which is a noun and a verb) The conversations will be interesting to see if the students pick up on how one word could be different parts of speech depending on usage which is the focus for my mini lesson.

Along with parts of speech, I could also use this book for
*predictable text for choral reading
*connection with the other There Was an Old Lady books
*predictions (not until the end of the book do you know why she is swallowing everything
   you will have to read the book to find out:  HO! HO! HO!)
*simple but wonderful word choice
*excellent and funny graphics that support the text

I plan on using this book many times in the month of December-check it out!