Mentor Sentences in Word Study

  "Richard gave me one of his extra-rotten, weasel-eyed, green-toothed grins."  

  Last week we read the story, "My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother", by Patricia Polacco.  We used it to discuss story elements as well as well as using it to focus on some grammar activities. The sentence above was known as our 'mentor sentence'. We used it to discuss parts of speech, types of sentences, author's craft.   One of my favorite parts of this activity was the last day of analyzing the sentence.  Students had to imitate the sentence using the same structure Patricia Polacco used.  They came up with some great sentences!  We started some grammar centers in Rti and then continued them later on in the day in ELA.  In our grammar centers we worked on mentor sentences,  parts of speech BrainPop, parts of speech task cards, and a grammar board game we tend to play in Rti.