Reading In The Writing

Classroom
A Guide To Finding, Writing And
Using Mentor Texts With Your
Class

Felicity Ferguson & Ross Young

Contents
Preface 5

Introduction 8

Part 1: What are mentor texts and what do they do? 10

Intertextuality
The reading/writing connection
Building class writing projects around what bookshops do
Creating your own class publishing house

Part 2: Finding good commercially published mentor texts 13

Read with a writer9s eye: Keeping a lookout for craft moves
Ask yourself: How do writers…?
Adopt picturebooks as mentors
Sharing di erent types of nonûction
Sharing di erent types of ûction
Sharing di erent types of poetry

Part 3: Writing your own mentor texts 29

Looking for texts which could act as mentors for you
An example of practice - KS2

Part 4: How to use mentor texts to the best e ect 38

Reading and discussing
The kind of language you might use when discussing mentor texts
Talk about mentor texts with EASE
Using mentor texts to help you teach 8grammar craft moves9
Spotting gaps? Plug them by using literature
Establishing product goals
Going on a craft move hunt
The cool things I want to do in my text!
Squirrel books
Sharing examples of writing produced by children in previous years
Show me! Using mentor texts to teach other parts of the writer9s process
Teaching children how writers 8leapfrog9 o of their favourite books
Engaging in intertextuality when generating your own writing ideas
Finding writing ideas in your reading

Conclusion 57

References 58

Appendix 60
A book-list of great texts which teach great writing: mentor texts for 3-103 year olds

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 2

The Writing For Pleasure Centre

The Writing For Pleasure Centre functions both as a think tank and as
an action research community. The result is that we are continually
engaged in sharing e ective practices, case studies and research
ûndings. The mission of The Writing For Pleasure Centre is to help all
young people become passionate and successful writers. We look to
accomplish this goal by investigating what world-class writing teaching
might be. We do this through:

● Our school residencies and teacher training workshops.

● Curriculum development and creating resources.
● Conducting, disseminating and publishing research.
● Working with children, teachers, school leaders, teacher-educators and charities.

It9s our hope that teachers regard The Writing For Pleasure Centre as a place where they can access a
specialist network and continued professional development that is free.

If you9re new to the idea of a Writing For Pleasure pedagogy, you can read all about it at:
[Link]

Ross Young & Felicity Ferguson are the founders of The Writing For Pleasure Centre and authors of
Writing For Pleasure: Theory, Research & Practice, The Science Of Teaching Primary Writing and
Real-World Writers: A Handbook For Teaching Writing With 7-11 Year Olds and Writing. They both hold
MAs in applied linguistics in education. As passionate writer-teachers, they now work around the UK
and abroad helping teachers and schools develop extraordinary young writers. They convene The
United Kingdom Literacy Association's international Teaching Writing Special Interest Group and also
help run their Teachers' Writing Group. Ross was the lead researcher on 'What is it Writing For
Pleasure teachers do that makes the di erence?' Their work continues to focus on the learning and
teaching of young writers and is informed by their ongoing work with classroom teachers and early
years educators.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 3

 Thank you for purchasing this eBook. This eBook is for your own individual use: you9re
welcome to access this e-book on multiple personal devices, including computers,
e-readers, tablets and smartphones. However, you cannot make print or digital copies to
share with others, nor may you post this e-book on any school servers, websites, or other
digital or online systems. If you would like a school-wide licence for this e-book, please
contact The Writing For Pleasure Centre at [Link]/contact

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 4

Preface
Some years ago, we were teaching at our local primary school and we came to the conclusion that we were probably
the worst teachers of writing in the whole entire world. We hated doing it, we hated teaching it, and our students got
terrible results. Our students also hated writing and they hated us teaching it too!

Research has since conûrmed why this was, and it appears that we were far from alone. Some of you might feel like
this too. The fact is that many of us didn9t receive the writerly education we should have had while we were at school.
We know this because research shows that a great number of teachers feel deep shame about their own writing
abilities, and consequently have grown up disliking writing. A friend of ours, Paul Gardner, carried out some
investigations, and found that less than 2% of teachers wrote with or for pleasure, with half reporting that they had
never felt any pleasure from writing in their lives (Gardner 2014). To make matters worse, the research surrounding ITE
reveals that the majority of teachers around the world leave their teacher training feeling ill-prepared to teach writing
(Young & Ferguson 2023a).

This is a serious problem, because how we were taught writing at school has a strong inüuence on how we feel about
the subject, how we think it should be taught and what we know about it - our writerly knowledge. Unfortunately, it
appears from the research that, as teachers, we regularly copy the same failed writing teaching that we once received
(Young & Ferguson 2021a, 2023a). We should point out that there is of course a signiûcant minority of teachers to
whom this doesn9t apply - but it certainly applied to us.

We tried all the popular approaches in the UK at the time and none of them worked. We were frustrated. We wanted
to do something about it. We decided that we would build a writing pedagogy from scratch and base it on what the
science and research evidence said was the most e ective and a ecting practice (Young & Ferguson 2021a, 2022a,
2023a). We were no longer going to leave things to chance.

We conducted a total of twenty-three literature reviews spanning more than ûfty years of scientiûc research. First, we
started with the meta-analyses. For those who might not be familiar with the term, a meta-analysis is where a
researcher will group many scientiûc studies on a particular subject in order to identify recurring patterns of
e ectiveness. We then read what case studies tell us about what the best performing writing teachers do in their
classrooms which makes the di erence. We discovered that there are 14 enduring principles which represent the
most e ective teaching practice. These principles all have a track record of raising standards and accelerating
progress in writing. The principles are:

1. Build a community of writers

2. Treat every child as a writer
3. Read, share, think and talk about writing
4. Pursue purposeful and authentic class writing projects
5. Teach the writing processes
6. Set writing goals
7. Be reassuringly consistent
8. Pursue personal writing projects
9. Balance composition & transcription
10. Teach daily mini-lessons
11. Be a writer-teacher
12. Pupil-conference: meet children where they are
13. Connect reading & writing
14. Interconnect the principles

Interestingly, we noted that there were also six a ective needs (relating to the emotions) that teachers should attend
to in order to help children write happily and successfully. These needs are:

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 5

 Young & Ferguson9s (2021a) hierarchy of emotional writing needs

Once these principles and a ective needs were identiûed, we reviewed the research on each one to help us better
understand what we could be doing in our classroom to make the di erence. In the end, we decided to call our
approach the Writing For Pleasure approach. And now, for us, Writing For Pleasure has become simply a synonym for
world-class writing teaching.

We began using this new approach, and it was having a transformative impact on our students. We moved to another
school to see if it would work in another context, and it did. We then started to write about the pedagogy online, and
other teachers started reporting that they were getting the same great results that we were.

Fast forward to 2019, and we were lucky enough to be given a research grant in conjunction with the Goldsmiths9
Company and University Of Sussex. We travelled around to see what it was these other 8Writing For Pleasure9 teachers
were doing. What was special about this study was that, to participate, the teachers had to show that they had a
track record for accelerating children9s progress, and that their children reported that they loved to write and felt
their a ective writerly needs were being met.

What we found out from all this work has since been published as a book called Writing For Pleasure: Theory,
Research & Practice (Young & Ferguson 2021a) and the establishment of The Writing For Pleasure Centre.

The Writing For Pleasure Centre is now informed by over 600 pieces of literature, case study work, action research by
teachers in our a liate schools, and empirical research on the subject of teaching writing (Young & Ferguson 2023a).

The Writing For Pleasure approach involves children and teachers writing together every single day. They write for
many di erent purposes, and for a variety of audiences. They are moved to write about what they are most
knowledgeable and passionate about. They also write to deepen their responses and understandings of what they
read. They write to transform their own (and others9) thinking about what they learn in the wider curriculum subjects.
They write to entertain, to paint with words, to persuade and share their opinions, to teach others, to make a record
of things they don9t want to forget, and to reüect on their own thoughts and personal experiences. They write about
themselves and their cultures. They also write to reüect and sustain the cultures of people they might not have met.
They share their writing and talk about themselves as writers with their peers, teachers and caregivers. They learn
how to live the writer9s life.

Pupils explore new genres of writing through whole class writing projects. Together, they discuss the purpose of the
writing project, explore its basic features, and study mentor texts together. They consider who they would like to write
their pieces for and what they would like to write about most. Students are taught how to use the same features and
expert techniques they identiûed from the mentor texts in their own compositions. They learn how to attend to their
spellings, handwriting, grammar, and sentence construction. This helps them write happily and üuently. Pupils acquire
a great deal of craft knowledge 3 what we call craft moves. This includes writerly strategies and techniques for
negotiating the writing processes. We want children to know how they can take a germ of an idea and see it through
to publication independently and successfully. Students are supported by being provided with clear processes and
ambitious writing goals. They are given ample time and instruction in how to plan and how to improve on what they
have already written through speciûc revision and proof-reading sessions.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 6

Pupils receive daily in-the-moment verbal feedback and responsive assessment-based individualised instruction
through teacher-pupil conferencing. These conversations are designed to push the writer and move their writing
forward. Pupils are given many opportunities to discuss their compositions with their teachers and peers. At least one
hour a day is devoted to the explicit teaching of writing and, within this time, children are engaged in writing
meaningfully for a sustained period. We believe this is the only way they can learn about the discipline of writing and
of being a writer. Across a school day, children also have opportunities to write about their reading and in response to
their learning in other subjects. Importantly, pupils have access to personal writing journals which travel freely
between home and school. We want children to live the writer9s life and to be in a constant state of composition.

Genuine writing communities are created in classrooms. Children write in positive and enthusiastic writing
environments which are headed up by passionate writer-teachers. Classrooms feel like a mixture of creative writing
workshops and professional publishing houses. The approach is rigorous, highly-organised and reassuringly consistent.
Pupils are encouraged to take risks and to be innovative, but also to write with focus and serious intent. Teaching is
responsive - depending on what individual children need instruction in most. Whether they are in Nursery or Year Six
and regardless of where they are in their language development or writerly experience, all children are treated as
writers and are helped not only to write pieces which are successful in terms of the objectives of the curriculum but
also meaningful to them as young authors.

Felicity Ferguson & Ross Young

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 7

Introduction
Really, I do one thing. I read books. I write books. I think about books. It9s one job.
- Toni Morrison

Writing is the most cognitively demanding activity we ask our pupils to undertake while they are at school. It requires
them to draw on at least thirteen di erent cognitive resources simultaneously. Cognitive psychology has revealed the
amazing complexity of what children need, and need to know, in order to learn how to write competently (Young &
Ferguson 2022a). It is therefore necessary for teachers to have a pedagogy for writing which takes account of all the
many di erent elements involved in helping children not just to write, but to write well.

Research has shown that there is a profound connection between e ective writing instruction and reading. For
example: reading, studying and discussing mentor texts, texts which match the kind of writing children are being
invited to make for themselves, can yield a positive e ect of +0.76 (Young & Ferguson 2021, 2023a). For children with
SEND, it can be +0.94 (Young & Ferguson 2023b). To put those numbers in context, anything above a +0.4 is generally
considered to have a signiûcant positive impact on children9s writing development.

The table above shares what we currently know about the connection between reading and e ective writing teaching.

In addition:

● Having children write about their reading in reading lessons can yield an e ect size of +0.5 (Young & Ferguson
2020, 2021).

● Establishing product goals for a class writing project in response to studying a variety of mentor texts can
yield an e ect size of +2.03 (Young & Hayden 2022; see page 45).

● Sharing and modelling how to use certain craft moves taken from literature before inviting children to use
these craft moves for themselves in that day9s writing time can yield an e ect size of +1.75. For children with
SEND, this can be anything up to +2.09 (Young et al. 2021; see page 44).

● A major part of reading in the writing classroom is children having an opportunity to read, discuss and hear
about how you crafted your own writing. Modelling how you use your reading to support your writing,
providing pupils with mentor texts you9ve written, and writing alongside your pupils can yield an e ect size of
0.54. For children with SEND, this can be anything up to +2.48 (Young & Ferguson 2023b).

● Inviting children to generate and plan their own ideas for their writing (including how they can take ideas from
their favourite reading) can yield an e ect size of 0.54. For children with SEND, this can be +1.55 (Young &
Ferguson 2022b; see page 54).

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 8

In this current eBook, we shine the spotlight on these particular aspects of research-based instructional practice and
show how it can help young writers to write e ectively, successfully and engagingly. We will explain how teachers and
students should come together to share, discuss and study mentor texts as part of a class writing project (The
Writing For Pleasure Centre 2023). Writing For Pleasure teachers refuse to allow writing to remain a mystery to their
pupils. Instead, through a combination of mentor texts and high-quality literature, they make writing techniques
utterly explicit for their young writers. We emphasise that all children need mentor texts, from the EYFS to Year 6 and
beyond.

In this eBook, we cover:

● How to read deeply yourself, as a writer-teacher reads.

● How to teach children to read deeply as a writer reads.
● What mentor texts do for writers.
● How mentor texts make writing techniques visible and available for teachers and children to use.
● How to choose and use mentor texts within a Writing For Pleasure pedagogy.
● How to ûnd craft moves from your reading to use in your own writing.
● The untold beneûts of writing your own mentor texts as a writer-teacher.
● Practical advice on how to write mentor texts across di erent age-groups and genres.
● Advice and activities which help children get the most out of studying mentor texts.
● How to leverage high-quality literature in your instruction to help you model and teach powerful craft moves.
● A book list of great texts which teach great writing: mentor texts for 3-103 year olds.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 9

PART 1
What are mentor texts and what do they do?
If we want to attract children like bees to the idea of writing for pleasure, we must treat our classroom as a
ûeld and ûll it with the sweetest of nectar – good literature.

Every hour spent reading is also an hour spent learning to write. Successful writing teachers know this. Children who
read more write more and write better (Young & Ferguson 2020). Through reading, they learn more about writing, and
they look on their favourite writers as teachers - as heroes- as mentors.

Put simply, a mentor text is any piece of writing that we can present to our young writers, as often as we like, to help
them learn how to do what they may not yet be able to do on their own. It9s all about helping children recognise what
'good writing' is before being invited to craft it for themselves. We can say that good mentor texts are knowledgeable
others, who can o er both experienced and apprentice writers the kinds of possibilities which can move their own
writing forward in a long-term way. Mentor texts can take many di erent forms: stories, memoirs, anecdotes,
instructions, brochures, labels, obituaries, speeches, menus, reviews, picture books, poems, letters, articles, blurbs,
prefaces, forewords, dedications, match reports or notices. The list is endless.

Our eBook will focus on how studying mentor texts provides teachers with the golden opportunity to gain insight into
the writer9s craft, increase their own writerly knowledge and, most importantly, be able to describe in precise terms to
their students exactly what the writer of the text is doing to achieve the intended e ect. Teachers can then give
pupils explicit, practical and contextualised writing instruction.

Intertextuality

If we want to see what lessons have been learned from the texts children read, we have to look for them in
what they write.
- Margaret Meek

Intertextuality, also known as creative play(giarism), cross-fertilization, creative reconstruction, remixing, borrowing, air
8writing under the inüuence9 (Young & Ferguson 2021a; Anderson 2022), is the idea that we consciously or
subconsciously draw on what we read to help us with our own writing. For any writer, a mentor text can function both
as a simple prompt for a writing idea, or as an inspiration for the way in which they might write their own piece. It
often happens that a particularly admired author becomes, for a while, a mentor to an aspiring writer. In his book
Mentor Author, Mentor Texts (2011), Ralph Fletcher describes how he 8spent untold hours copying the stories of Ernest
Hemingway, sentence by sentence, word by word in the hope that somehow, the Hemingway magic might rub o on
me.9 Such attachments can be seen in writing classrooms too: many of you will surely have read pieces where the
writers have wholeheartedly taken on the signature styles of, say, Jacqueline Wilson or Liz Pichon. This kind of
intertextuality is essential in the writing classroom (Young & Ferguson 2020, 2021a). Children will naturally use their
own wider reading as mentor texts, so it9s imperative that in school they are given copious amounts of time to read
independently and for pleasure, with a library of rich and varied books readily to hand.

An Example of Intertextuality in Action!

Daisy is in Year 3 and has written a short story called 8Norris9. Her father, who is a teacher, talked to Daisy about
her piece and recorded what she told him. He also speculated on other possible instances of her use of
intertextuality, based on his knowledge of what she was currently reading.

She was initially moved to write because she wanted to write about a backpack (she had recently bought a new
one and brought it to school). It also came from her hearing A Huge Bag of Worries as the class read-aloud.
Style-wise, her story makes use of quirky, fantastical little details from Chris Riddell9s Ottoline books. She also uses
some of the 8voice9 from the Clarice Bean and Judy Moody books she loves reading in class so much. Norris9 magic
rucksack had been put out in a 8yard sale9 3 a plot line she has taken from the ûlm Toy Story. Daisy has recently
been really immersed in The Worst Witch audiobooks and also watches the CBBC adaptation of it. These books use
a more old fashioned vocabulary and an 8objective narrator voice9 with lots of speech to advance the plot, and this
was the style of writing Daisy was now replicating. She also took the names Sweetpea (from Princess Poppy) and
Drusilla (from The Worst Witch) for her own unkind characters.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 10

 Daisy carries on telling the story of how Norris was going to retrieve her backpack. Norris and Mimosa decide to put
up posters, and this gave her a chance to describe a variety of characters and places on the high street. This
particular idea came from a book called The Fairy Hairdresser - a series of books where the ûrst page always shows
a high street inhabited by a fairy tale character waiting for a haircut. Daisy and her two younger brothers are
regularly dragged down to the high street by their mum at weekends. Incidentally, Daisy9s mum is also a hairdresser.

(From Young & Ferguson 2020 p. 92)

The reading/writing connection

In the ongoing process of becoming a writer, I read and re-read the authors I most loved. I read for pleasure.
What writers know is that, ultimately, we learn to write by practice and from the books we admire.
- Francine Prose

We have written extensively about the relationship between reading and writing elsewhere (Young & Ferguson 2020,
2021a, 2022a, 2023a; Young et al. 2022a). Essentially, research has shown that reading development impacts positively
on writing (Graham et al. 2018a, 2018b), and writing development beneûts reading comprehension (Kim 2022). When
you read aloud to your class, and when you give them sustained daily independent reading time, you are fostering
reading for pleasure. You are doing the same when you read and discuss with them a variety of mentor texts, but the
crucial point here is that, when this takes place in your classroom, you are making a vital bridge between reading and
writing because you are showing children how to read as a writer (Smith 1983) and then transfer this knowledge to
writing for their readers. We9ll return to this important idea later on in the book, but it is worth saying here that, when
children acquire the habit of reading as a writer, they are setting themselves up to both read and write successfully in
their future lives beyond the classroom.

There have been a couple of UK research projects about the impact of reading and studying mentor texts on children9s
narrative writing. Researchers found that children were able to show awareness of how the texts had been
constructed, could integrate some of the stylistic and organisational elements of them into their personal writing
repertoires, and could justify their own linguistic choices, using an acquired metalanguage to do so (Corden 2007;
Hayden 2021). In short, they wrote more accomplished texts which were their own and were not unthinkingly copied
from their mentors. It9s important to emphasise to children that mentor texts are always something they can use as
inspiration for their own writing ideas. It9s not a question of 8this must be done9, but rather 8this can be done; this is a
possibility.9 Too much close and mindless copying of someone else9s script only results in limiting and constraining
children as they write (Young 2022). We must ûnd a balance.

We conclude this section by noting the a ective beneûts o ered by the reading and discussion of mentor texts,
contributing to children9s writerly knowledge and helping them write better pieces:

● Studying mentor texts is the key to children identifying powerful goals for their own writing. Meeting these
goals increases their feelings of self-e cacy (conûdence) and self-regulation (knowing what to do and how to
do it), and a positive view of themselves as people and as writers.
● Through reading excellent mentor texts, children will feel motivated to try out new things in their writing, to
write in di erent genres, and to write like the writers they most love. This can be both exciting and liberating.
● Children are taught about and discuss genre conventions, but are then invited to use them for their own
purposes. They are also encouraged to actively manipulate and subvert these traditional conventions. This can
create a feeling of empowerment.
● Mentor texts o er children the possibility of developing, changing or re-inventing their writing identity (how
they see themselves as a writer). They might begin to imagine the kind of writer they could become, which
again can be exciting and empowering.
(Young & Ferguson 2021a; Young et al. 2022a)

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 11

Building class writing projects around what bookshops do

A town isn9t a town without a bookshop.

-Neil Gaiman

If you9ve ever been to a good independent children9s bookshop like Bags Of

Books in Lewes or The Book Nook in Hove, you9ll notice that they place their
books under certain categories. For example, here are the categories for the
picturebooks at Bags Of Books when I visited last summer:

Father9s day, brand new picture books, books about transport,

dinosaur stories, nonûction picture books, summer stories,
classic picture books, poetry picture books, ûrst experiences,
celebrating pride, diversity in picture books, all about feelings, be
you - be kind, books - books -books, wordless picture books,
funny picture books, animal stories, our planet, magical picture
books, alternative fairy tales.

We can increase children9s understanding of the reading/writing connection

when we explain to them that in their classroom, they will try to do the same things bookshops do. They will craft
writing throughout the year and place it under di erent categories in the class library. The children can be invited to
think about what categories they would like their class library to have and you can build Class Writing Projects around
children making their own contributions to those categories. For example, one Class Writing Project might be to
produce 8funny books9 for the 8funny9 section. It might be the case that you even take children on a school trip to see
how libraries or children9s bookshops organise and categorise their collections.

Above, you can see a poster where the children have come up with categories both for the existing writing in the
classroom and aspirations for future Class Writing Projects.

Creating your own class publishing house

One dominant aim of any great writer-teacher is to nurture children9s identities as

readers and writers. We want children to feel like genuine writers who go through the
writer9s process in the same ways as their favourite authors do. Additionally, we want
children to feel that their pieces can sit side-by-side the texts they love to read in
the classroom library. What better way to show that the reading/writing connection is
thriving in your classroom?

Years ago, having read Back & Forth: Using An Editor9s Mindset To Improve Student
Writing by Lee He ernan, we were inspired to create a class publishing house in our
own classroom. When we ûrst taught this lesson, we were fortunate enough to have
accepted a publishing deal and so took the opportunity to explain the process we
were going through and the relationship we were building with the publishing house
and our 8editor9. What we9ve come to realise is that a compositional editor is a very
critical friend. They look to push your ideas and your writing to its maximum
potential. They support and champion you but they also tell you when things need
untangling.

A publishing house, we9ve also discovered, has a certain identity, a certain statement of intent and a certain
reputation for producing certain types of books. We decided to talk about this a little with our class. We discussed
which publishing houses were publishing our favourite books in the class library and we decided that, in many ways,
we were the children9s chief editors and, as writer-teachers who produced mentor texts, the children were ours too!
But our class didn9t have its own publishing house. Why not? We publish into the class library but what does our
library stand for? What sort of texts do we want to publish for each other? Importantly, what sort of texts do we need
to publish for each other? What9s our mission? We discussed this and created our own mission statement for our
newly formed publishing house… Now all we needed was a name and a logo.

The children got together and came up with a variety of ideas. We took a vote and agreed on Banger Books Publishing:
Books Which Wizz And Bang! Alongside it was a logo which we felt everyone would be able to draw and add to their
published pieces easily. You can read more about this example of practice on our website.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 12

PART TWO
Finding good commercially published mentor texts
Every hour a teacher spends reading children9s literature is an hour spent becoming a better teacher of writing.
This is because a writer-teacher who reads sees exciting and useful 8craft moves9 that can be taught to their
students.

Teachers who write read di erently to everyday readers. They seek out excellent texts because they are aware that
books can be some of the best writing-teachers. A mentor text can be taken from (or be) a commercial book, but it
can also be something written by a peer or a recreational writer, or (something we strongly advocate for) by you
yourself (Young & Ferguson 2020, 2021a, 2022g, 2023b). If you don9t yet have the conûdence to write yourself, this
section will tell you what you need to consider when looking for and choosing high-quality commercially published
texts to act as mentors for your young writers. Here is our list of absolute essentials.

Your mentor texts must match the kind of writing you are asking the children to do

To learn how to write for newspapers you must read newspapers. For magazines, browse through magazines.
To write poetry, read it.
- Frank Smith

All too often we see, particularly in the book-planning approach to the teaching of writing, a whole novel being served
up as a single model for all kinds of di erent writing tasks. For example, children may be asked to write short stories,
diary entries, or even information or discussion pieces based around a single piece of literature. We feel that this is a
real shame and a serious instructional mistake. Instead, we want children to be swimming around the writing
classroom in a rich sea of mentor texts. We want them to bathe in them for a while, and, in the process, soak up all
their goodness. As a teacher of writing, it9s vital that you collect a whole variety of mentor texts - texts which match
the type of writing you are actually inviting children to write, for each of the class writing projects you plan to teach.
To see the list of mentor texts we9ve gathered together over the years for di erent class writing projects, see our
Appendix.

Here is a wonderful example of a writer-teacher 8bathing their children in mentor texts9 for a fairy-tale writing project.
Her mentor texts include commercial books, a fairy-tale she9d written herself, and the mentor texts we provide as part
of our Class Writing Project material.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 13

Your mentor texts should reüect the interests, voices and experiences of the children in your
classroom
Young and his colleagues (2022a) suggest that children are more likely to accept an author as a writing mentor if they
can identify themselves with what that author has written, and who the author is as a person. Children need to see in
the texts chosen as mentors a diversity of characters and situations they can readily relate to. Similarly, nonûction
texts should centre on topics that reüect children9s concerns and interests, many of which are, sadly, often excluded
from the curriculum. In addition, reading mentor texts written by authors with varying backgrounds, perspectives and
experiences makes it possible for children to feel that they can be writers like them too.

When you ûnd a text you love, ask yourself: Will my class like this piece of writing too? Would
they like to write something like that?
If you can, ûnd texts which have genuinely made you laugh out loud, nod along, grossed you out, made you scared,
left you on the edge of your seat, moved you to a few tears, challenged you or given you a new perspective on
something. Choose texts that have touched you, the reader, in some way, and have shown you why the author was
moved to write the piece. Children will see that this is something they can do too, especially if you convey your own
enthusiasm for the piece. Tell the children the author9s name and, if possible, show a picture of them and share just a
few biographical details - this makes the author a real person in the children9s eyes, and helps them consider that
they too could be just such a writer.

Read with a writer9s eye: Keeping a lookout for craft moves

As well as looking for whole mentor texts, it9s essential that you keep an eye out for 8mini mentors9. These can be
passages or lines from some of your favourite writing that can help showcase to children powerful craft moves. Craft
moves include literary techniques and grammatical and sentence-level features (Young et al. 2021; Young & Ferguson
2022c, 2022d). Keep a notebook, and use it to store excellent little pieces of writing craft from di erent sources and
across di erent genres. This little notebook can quickly become your own 8craft move index9, and will help you with
your choice of an appropriate commercial text or extract. You can also match your notes to the various writing
projects you engage your class in. Here are just some of the ways you can keep an eye out for appealing craft moves.
When you9re reading, ask yourself:

● What is the purpose of this text? We call this the 8diamond moment9, the essence, the spirit, the central
feeling of the piece - why the writer was moved to write it.

● What9s the underlying structure and organisation? Whether ûction or nonûction, how are the various parts
organised and how do they ût together?

● What kind of speciûc detail has the author put in? Have they 8painted with words9 to achieve an e ect, show
a character9s feelings, describe or explain a fact, persuade you to adopt their point of view?

● Does the writer9s or narrator9s voice or personality come through, perhaps by means of word choice, sentence
structure, or the inclusion of a joke or an anecdote? How are they addressing their audience?

● How and why do they use conventions like punctuation, paragraphing and capitalisation the way they do?

Reading as a writer: Keeping a lookout for craft moves

Purpose
What9s the 8diamond9 moment or idea? What moved them to write?

Structure and Showing detail and

organisational devices 8painting with words’

Voice Conventions
What9s their 8writing personality9 How do they write with clarity
like? How do they decide to 8talk9 and accuracy?
to you?

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 14

Sometimes teachers can struggle to know what it is they should be collecting in their reader/writer notebook. Here is
a list of the sort of things we9ve found we collect in ours. It might be useful to you:

Purpose
Ideas and themes for writing

Structure and organisational devices

● Diagrams showing how di erent writers have organised their texts/paragraphs
○ What the text would look like as a graphic organiser
○ What the narrative9s story arc would look like
● Openings/endings to narratives and nonûction texts
● Genre craft moves - craft moves that are linked to certain types of texts

Painting with words poetry craft moves

● Metaphor & simile ● Show don9t tell
● Personiûcation ● Metonymy
● Alliteration ● Symbolism
● Onomatopoeia ● Pathetic fallacy
● Rhyme ● Persona
● Hyperbole

Narrative craft moves

● Types of story openings ● Characters9 reactions to settings
● Types of story endings ● Settings being personiûed
● Great action moments ● Setting descriptions from di erent times of day
● Monologue ● Setting descriptions from di erent historical periods
● Dialogue ● Setting descriptions related to di erent types of
● Characters9 body language weather
● Sharing their characters9 personality
● Character descriptions

● Sensory description
○ Noticing
○ Show don9t tell
○ Feeling
○ Hearing
○ Touching
○ Imagaining
○ Smelling
○ Tasting

Grammar craft moves

● Expanded noun phrases ● The passive
● Prepositional phrases ● The subjunctive
● Interesting sentence constructions ● Speaker-tags
● Relative clauses ● Ellipsis
● Parenthesis ● Semi-colons
● Fronted adverbials ● Colons
● Cohesive devices ● Dialogue
● Quotations

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 15

 Voice
● The tenor a writer has written in - the way they decided to 8talk9 to their reader
● Interesting decisions around tense and narrator voice
● Interesting words

Conventions
● Examples of writers using the conventions you9re trying to teach your class about (capitalisation,
punctuation)

As we will see in Part Three, the ability to mine a text for the author9s craft moves will help you when you come to
write your own.

Ask yourself: How do writers…?

Whatever your writerly question is, the answer can always be found in your reading. If you are planning on teaching a
particular genre, literary, grammatical or sentence-level technique, you can certainly investigate how other writers do
it (Young et al. 2021; Young & Ferguson 2022c, 2022d). You can then share what you ûnd with your classes. Indeed, you
can even bring your class in on the investigation. For example, very early on in the year, we set some children a
challenge to do at home. We ask them to ûnd a line or a passage from a book that has really struck them. We do this
not just because it9s a great way of getting to know the children in the class, but it prepares them for the work we are
going to do that year. You want the children in your class to read texts and exclaim 8I want to write like that!9

Children enjoy the challenge of supplying the class with a healthy stock of great writing examples. You can let them
know what craft move you plan to teach them about beforehand so that they can prepare. For example, 8We are going
to be looking at how writers write great setting descriptions, so keep a lookout for any good examples during your
reading9. Over the course of the year, children could supply you with excellent examples of titles, characters, settings,
object descriptions, poetic lines, unusual ways of seeing things, plot ideas, story openers or endings, nonûction
openings and endings, interesting vocabulary, cohesive devices and organisational features. Instead of looking at a
single example chosen by the teacher, the children will be able to look at a wealth of examples that they themselves
have found. They may also begin composing their very own excellent examples to share with the class. Having a
whole-class 8squirrel9 book that lives in the library can be a good model for some children and shows them how they
can start their own (see pages 14 and 48 for more details).

Example Of Practice: Developing Our Characters

Ross was usually pretty disappointed with the quality of his class9 character development. So, the ûrst thing he
asked himself was: Well, how do other writers usually develop their characters?

He went to literature to ûnd an answer to his question and he found that there were a number of common ways.
He recorded them under di erent categories, including action, appearance, dialogue and monologue.

He shared his ûndings with his class and invited them to look in some of their favourite books in the class library
to see how other authors try to share more detail about their characters. Children noticed that they could typically
ût their examples under at least one of the categories Ross shared. They also discussed whether some character
development could ût under multiple categories.

Next, he shared some of his favourite character development from the literature he loved the most.

Action
Here is an example of Roald Dahl telling us more about his character Augustus Gloop through his actions. This is
an extract taken from Charlie & The Chocolate Factory.

Augustus Gloop Goes Up The Pipe

When Mr Wonka turned round and saw what Augustus Gloop was doing, he cried out, 'Oh, no! Please, Augustus,
please! I beg of you not to do that. My chocolate must be untouched by human hands!'

'Augustus!' called out Mrs Gloop. 'Didn't you hear what the man said? Come away from that river at once!'

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 16

 'This stu is fabulous!' said Augustus, taking not the slightest notice of his mother or Mr Wonka. 'Gosh, I need a
bucket to drink it properly!'
'Augustus,' cried Mr Wonka, hopping up and down and waggling his stick in the air, 'you must come away. You are
dirtying my chocolate!'

'Augustus!' cried Mrs Gloop.

'Augustus!' cried Mr Gloop.

But Augustus was deaf to everything except the call of his enormous stomach. He was now lying full length on
the ground with his head far out over the river, lapping up the chocolate like a dog.
'Augustus!' shouted Mrs Gloop. 'You'll be giving that nasty cold of yours to about a million people all over the
country!'

'Be careful, Augustus!' shouted Mr Gloop. 'You're leaning too far out!'

Mr Gloop was absolutely right. For suddenly there was a shriek, and then a splash, and into the river went
Augustus Gloop, and in one second he had disappeared under the brown surface.
'Save him!' screamed Mrs Gloop, going white in the face, and waving her umbrella about. 'He'll drown! He can't
swim a yard! Save him! Save him!'

'Good heavens, woman,' said Mr Gloop, 'I'm not diving in there! I've got my best suit on!'
Augustus Gloop's face came up again to the surface, painted brown with chocolate. 'Help! Help! Help!' he yelled.
'Fish me out!'

Appearance
Here is an example of writer J.R.R Tolkien telling us more about some characters called hobbits by describing their
appearance. This is an extract taken from The Hobbit.

An Unexpected Party

I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as
they call us. They are (or were) a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded dwarves.
Hobbits have no beards. There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps
them to disappear quietly and quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come blustering along, making a
noise like elephants which they can hear a mile o . They are inclined to be fat in the stomach; they dress in
bright colours (chieüy green and yellow); wear no shoes, because their feet grow natural leathery soles and thick
warm brown hair like the stu on their heads (which is curly); have long clever brown ûngers, good-natured
faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it).
Now you know enough to go on with.

Appearance
Here is an example of author Justin Fisher revealing more about his character Ned by describing his appearance.
This is an extract taken from Ned9s Circus Of Marvels.

A Birthday Wish

The subject didn9t matter. Ned Waddlesworth always got a C. Not a C plus or minus, nothing with any particular
character, just your average, everyday C. He was an unremarkable-looking boy too, with light brownish sort of
eyes, and hair that was neither long nor short, styled nor loose, brown nor blonde. His hair was, quite simply,
there. Ned wasn9t tall or short, chunky or particularly thin. At school Ned wasn9t in the clever classes, nor did he
slouch at the back. Ned, like his hair, was just: there. Teachers barely noticed him arrive at his new schools, or
leave again a few months later. He never got to try out for any teams and, until recently, was never around long
enough to make any friends.

Dialogue
Here is an example of author William Golding revealing more about his characters Jack and Ralph by sharing how
they talk to each other. The boys in this story are surviving by themselves on an island. Jack is trying to dislodge
Ralph from being the Chief of the island. The Conch is a large shell; it was used in 8council9 sessions to allow an
individual to speak. This is an extract taken from Lord Of The Flies.

A View To Death

The boys arranged themselves in rows on the grass before him but Ralph and Piggy stayed a foot lower, standing
on the soft sand. Jack ignored them for the moment, turned his mask down to the seated boys and pointed at
them with the spear.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 17

 <Who9s going to join my tribe?= Ralph made a sudden movement that became a stumble. Some of the boys
turned toward him.
<I gave you food,= said Jack, <and my hunters will protect you from the beast. Who will join my tribe?=
<I9m chief,= said Ralph, <because you chose me. And we were going to keep the ûre going. Now you run after
food4=
<You ran yourself!= shouted Jack. <Look at that bone in your hands!=
Ralph went crimson. <I said you were hunters. That was your job.=
Jack ignored him again. <Who9ll join my tribe and have fun?=
<I9m chief,= said Ralph tremulously. <And what about the ûre? And I9ve got the conch.=
<You haven9t got it with you,= said Jack, sneering. <You left it behind. See, clever? And the conch doesn9t count at
this end of the island4=
All at once the thunder struck. Instead of the dull boom there was a point of impact in the explosion. <The conch
counts here too,= said Ralph, <and all over the island.=
<What are you going to do about it then?=

Monologue
Here is an example of writer Dave Shelton revealing more about the boy in his story. He tells us what he is thinking
and feeling while he is talking to a bear! This is an extract taken from A boy and a bear in a boat.

Floating Down

The boy realised he was speaking quite loudly now. Not shouting exactly, but not far o . And he had climbed onto
the central seat so that his face was almost on the same level as the bear9s. And he was poking his ûnger into
the bear9s fur for emphasis.

Actually, he thought, that9s probably not a good idea. I should stop poking the bear.
8Don9t poke me,9 said the bear.
8I9ll poke you if I want to,9 said the boy.
He poked the bear again, hard, in the ribs.
I really wish I wasn9t doing that, he thought.
8I won9t warn you again,9 said the bear.
8You can9t tell me what to do,9 the boy heard himself say. He watched his ûnger jabbing into the bear and
wondered why it wouldn9t stop.

8I9m the captain,9 said the bear. 8I can order you to stop.9
8Ha!9 said the boy. 8Some captain you are! Days at sea with no sign of land. No food. No idea where we are…9
8We are not lost!9 shouted the bear.
8... and your stupid hat doesn9t even ût properly,9 said the boy.

His ûnger, like something that was no longer part of him, stopped poking at the bear and shot up as if to knock
the hat from the bear9s head. It didn9t get there. The bear9s paw grabbed his wrist and held it still with an
uncomfortably ûrm grip.

8Don't you ever,9 growled the bear, 8touch the captain9s hat.9

He stared angrily into the boy's eye. The boy stared angrily back. He didn't want to but somehow he couldn9t stop
himself. I should apologise, thought the boy. If I say the wrong thing now he might actually break my hand o . I
should apologise. I9ll apologise.

Finally, using these mentor texts as a teacher, he invited the children in his class to revise their drafted stories,
looking for opportunities to develop their characters.

Adopt picturebooks as mentors

Picturebooks make great mentor texts because they are short, span all genres, and are enjoyed by children of all ages
and stages of language and literacy development. Studying a picturebook as a mentor text, and then inviting children
to write one of their own, using their own ideas, perfectly supports the reading/writing connection, since picturebooks
are a familiar literary genre and children know how they work, including understanding the role of the pictures. In the
interests of sustaining interest and maintaining writing stamina, we recommend generally that class writing projects
are short, and so in this respect picturebooks make excellent models.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 18

As we said earlier, well-written picturebooks for all ages and across all genres can be readily mined for the craft
moves their authors have made, to be then taught as mini-lessons. You have only to look at the text and the structure
of any good picturebook, even the shortest, simplest ones, to see how many signiûcant writing lessons can be taken
from them.

For example, we found a whole host of craft moves in a very simple book: Mog At The Zoo by Helen Nicoll & Jan
Pienkowski. We recorded them using the proforma below. We did the same with a nonûction picturebook written for
KS2 children: This or That Animal Debate by Joan Axelrod-Contrada, in which she gives two separate pieces of
information about each animal, and then poses a series of either/or questions for children to discuss. It9s important to
understand that the focus here is not on the book9s story or information content. It isn9t about comprehending the
text as a reader. Instead, we are concerned with showing you how to spot the great craft moves authors use so you
can use them in your own writing and pass them on to the children. We suggest you take a book you really love and
start reading it with a copy of this proforma in hand. As you read, try and ûll it with all the craft moves you spot the
author using. Once you can spot and use this craft knowledge for yourself, you are in a great position to turn it into
powerful writing instruction that will beneût your pupils immensely.

The process of reading as a writer-teacher

For EYFS/KS1

Title, author and illustrator:

Mog At The Zoo by Helen Nicoll (author) and Jan Pienkowski (illustrator)

Page number: Craft moves and possible writing lessons:

Front cover On the front cover there9s the title of the book and a picture. Jan and Helen
have put the title MOG at the ZOO at the top in big and little letters. You
could write your title however you like on your front cover.

Front and back cover The author (Helen) and the illustrator (Jan) have put their names at the
bottom of the front cover. You could put your name on your front cover too.
And you could put it with a picture on the back cover if you like, just as
Helen and Jan have done.

Front and back cover You can write the title again on the ûrst page if you want to. Jan and Helen
have used capital letters on this page, but it9s up to you.

Inside the front cover There9s a little bit about the story inside the front cover - it tells your reader
what to expect. You could do that too if you liked.

Following page There9s something called a dedication on the next page. It says9 for Emms9.
That must be somebody that Helen and Jan know - perhaps she9s one of
their friends - and they wanted to show her that they were thinking about

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 19

 her when they wrote the book. Maybe you could write your book especially
for someone you know, and put their name inside the front cover.

Every page Every page (except for one at the beginning and one at the end) has a
picture and some writing on it.

Page 2, 6, 7, 11 and 21 The writing is in lots of di erent places - at the bottom of the page (PAGE 2),
at the top (PAGE 7), right down in one corner (PAGE 6), down one side of the
page (PAGE11). It even looks as if it was going downstairs on one page! (PAGE
21). You could try putting your writing in di erent places on your pages if you
wanted to.

Page 4 Did you notice how sometimes the writing was in capital letters, like on the
signs in the zoo? (PAGE 4)

Page 23 and 24 You can write words for noises (PAGES 23 and 24), like Helen and Jan have
done.

Page 6 You can make your writing really big if you want the words to sound very
loud, just like Helen and Jan did when the keepers shouted on page 6. And
they put an exclamation mark at the end to make it sound even louder!

Page 5, 15 and 16 Sometimes Helen and Jan put writing inside di erent shapes, like when Meg
says a spell (PAGE 15), or when someone9s talking or thinking (PAGES 5 and
16) . You could have a go at doing that too if you like.

Last page On the very last page the story ends with Meg, Mog and Owl saying
8Goodbye9. You could do that to end your picture book if you wanted.

The Mog books in general Helen and Jan have written lots of other picture books about Meg, Mog and
Owl. You could write a series just like they9ve done, and put the same
characters in di erent picture books.

For KS2

Title, author and illustrator:

This Or That Animal Debate by Joan Axelrod-Contrada.

Page number: Craft moves and possible writing lessons:

Double-page spreads You could use Joan9s idea of a double-page spread to present your two
throughout the book pieces of information separately.

Every page Joan makes her information accurate by backing up the facts with numerical
data.

Every page There are three bullet points about the topic at the top of each page. This is
another way in which Joan is trying to capture her readers9 interest and give
them an idea of what they9re going to read about. You could do this too if
you wanted.

Every page Joan has made sure that the information she9s giving is targeted to the
question she9s asking (pp.6 & 7). She9s used short sentences so she can
include lots of information.

Pages 16 and 17 Here, Joan has put in a little real-life story for extra interest. Maybe you
could give that a go too.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 20

 Page 22 and 23 Did you notice how she uses a humorous conversational tone here to
entertain her readers? You could do this too if you like the idea.

Last page At the end of the book, Joan has made a list of 8quick-ûre9 either/or
questions to be played like a game. Doing this could be fun and could give
you ideas for more discussion texts.

Below, we can see how writer-teacher Tobias Hayden invites his Year Three class to read as writers. He asks them to
record on the exact same proforma he uses when reading and 8hunting for craft moves9 for his writing.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 21

Through reading or listening to their favourite picturebooks, young children can be shown that writers write stories
with di erent shapes. Stories may be linear, with a deûnite beginning, middle and end, or circular, with a character
returning to the place or the circumstances where the story began, or cumulative, with a new thing on every page
adding to what9s gone before. Children can be invited to try out these shapes in their own writing and picturebook
making too (see our eBook: No More: I Don9t Know What To Write Next… Lessons That Help Children Plan Great Writing).

By reading picturebooks in independent reading time, or listening to them during read-aloud, children become attuned
to patterns of language - for example, to repeated phrases or to rhythmic or poetic devices such as beginning or
ending each page with the same line, devices which are characteristic of some of the best picturebooks (Young &
Ferguson 2021). They then have a structure for their own writing if they wish to take it up. In any event, this is a
valuable lesson about the writers9 craft which children can learn and use now and later in all kinds and genres of
writing. Children new to English will have the added beneût of the opportunity to become familiar with a variety of
language patterns and to practise them in both speaking and writing (Ferguson & Young 2022).

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 22

Sharing di erent types of nonûction
By writing about what they know and care about, children learn that they can use their expertise to inspire and
awaken the minds and hearts of others.

Based on the work of Stewart & Correia (2021), we consider there to be six major types of nonûction that children like
to read and write. It9s therefore important that the mentor texts we share with children reüect these options. This
way, children know they can write in these ways too as part of a class writing project. The six popular types of
nonûction are:

● Traditional nonûction (objective straight teaching)

● Browseable nonûction (teaching through grazing)
● Narrative nonûction (teaching through telling a story)
● Literary nonûction (teaching and painting with words)
● 8Doing9 nonûction (teaching by getting them doing)
● Faction (teaching about fantasy)

Traditional nonûction Browseable nonûction

Literary nonûction Narrative nonûction

8Doing9 nonûction Faction

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 23

Sharing di erent types of ûction
Too often we see teachers explaining to children that a story must have a problem and a solution. Children groan as
another story mountain planning sheet is handed out (Young & Ferguson 2023). Problem-solution stories don9t
regularly match the types of picturebooks, short stories, üash-ûction and other literature children love to read. It9s
therefore important that the mentor texts we share with children reüect the di erent types of ûction that are
available to them. This way, children know they can write in these ways too as part of a class writing project. The six
most common story arcs used in children9s literature are:

● Steady rise (rag to riches)

● Steady fall (riches to rags)
● Fall-rise (man in hole)
● Rise-fall (Macbeth)
● Rise-fall-rise (Cinderella)
● Fall-rise-fall (The boy who cried wolf)

In addition you have circular (a character returning to the place or the circumstances where the story began) and
cumulative stories (with a new thing on every page adding to what9s gone before). Children in Nursery are capable of
writing stories in a variety of di erent story arcs. For example, just read four-year-old Wyatt9s emotional picturebook
which uses a steady fall story arc.

Untitled by Wyatt This is Alien with two eyes and no He rolls up into a ball.
legs.

Then there was a dinosaur It is big (pointing to the neck). It is The alien rolled up into a ball.
scary.

Look. He is rolling fast! He is rolling, rolling. Super fast now…!

He jumps at the dinosaur The alien covers the dinosaur all up. The alien is all by himself.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 24

 Steady rise Steady fall

Fall-rise Rise-fall

Rise-fall-rise Fall-rise-fall

Circular Cumulative

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 25

Sharing di erent types of poetry
Based on the work of Michael Rosen (2016), it9s important that we show children
the di erent reasons poets are moved to write poetry. Rosen considers there to
be a number of major reasons children and adult poets are moved to read and
write poetry. It9s therefore important that the mentor texts we share with children
reüect these options. This way, children know they can write in these ways too as
part of a class writing project. Here are just some of the reasons Rosen shares in
his book What Is Poetry? The Essential Guide To Reading & Writing Poems:

● Poetry can suggest things

● Poetry can give an impression
● Poetry can express a belief or culture
● Poetry can play about with words
● Poetry can be symbolic
● Poetry can be personal
● Poetry can borrow voices
● Poetry can capture a moment
● Poetry can be ironic
● Poetry can make no sense / new sense
● Poetry can make familiar things unfamiliar and unfamiliar things familiar

***

To read the list of poetry and picturebooks we think are great for teaching about great writing, see our Appendix.

Finally, you may ûnd the handout on the next page useful when undertaking long-term planning with your colleagues.
This handout helps you consider which mentor texts you9d like to use for each of your class writing projects
throughout the year.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 26

 Year Three: Class Writing Projects & Mentor Texts

Class writing project: Mentor texts:

● Usborne Illustrated Fairy Tales by Rosie Dickins (commercial)

● The Cat, the Dog, Little Red, the Exploding Eggs, the Wolf and Grandma9s
Wardrobe by Christyan Fox (commercial)
● The two gingerbread ladies (teacher)
● Christopher9s big foot (teacher)
● The footballer and the fairy (pupil)
● The naughty elves (pupil)
Fairytales

● The Way Things Work by David Macaulay and Neil Ardley (commercial)
● Until I Met Dudley by Roger McGough (commercial)
● Looking after tomatoes (teacher)
● A Snoglebog (teacher)
● What happens at gymnastics club (pupil)
● Fixing motorbikes (pupil)
Information texts

● Gregory Cool by Caroline Binch (commercial)

● Down by the River: Afro-Caribbean Rhymes, Games and Songs for Children
by Grace Hallworth (commercial)
● The day my… life changed! (teacher)
● The day I… met my hero (teacher)
● Where9s the snake?! (pupil)
● Dad, Paris is trapped in the bathroom! (pupil)

Memoirs

● A Year Of Nature Poems by Joseph Coelho (commercial)

● I Am The Seed That Grew The Tree by Fiona Waters (commercial)
● Lonely but it9s OK (teacher)
● Nature is crafty (teacher)
● Seagull poo (pupil)
● Cycling is a breeze (pupil)

Natural world poetry

● Dear World, How Are You? - Toby Little (commercial)

● Letter to Arsene Wenger (teacher)
● Letter to the Je Buckley estate (teacher)
● Letter to Christian Horner (pupil)
● Letter to Reverend Peters (pupil)
● Letter to Southern Water (pupil)

Curiosity letters

● Very Short Fables to Read Together by Mary Ann Hoberman (commercial)

● Fables by Arnold Lobel (commercial)
● The Selûsh Giant by Oscar Wilde (commercial)
● The ant and the grasshopper (teacher)
● The Skoda and Mercedes (teacher)
● Cheeky monkey loses his banana (pupil)
● The carrot trick (pupil)
Fables
Example of a Year Three team considering what some of their class writing projects are for the year and the mentor texts they would
like to use with their classes. As you can see, the teachers have ensured they9ve got a variety of texts including: commercial texts,
texts written by themselves, and texts written by children in previous years. A blank version of this handout is available in the
Appendix.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 27

PART THREE
Writing your own mentor texts
Teachers must experience the magic of writing, if genuine enthusiasm for writing and being a writer is to be
communicated to children.

Being a writer-teacher is a vitally important part of your practice. For all sorts of reasons, it9s very hard to teach
writing if you don9t write. It9s like trying to teach the tuba if you9ve never played one. For example, it9s di cult to
teach craft moves because, while you may be able to spot them from the perspective of a reader, you don9t know how
they are crafted from the perspective of a writer. It9s di cult to convince children to take your instruction seriously
when you lack credibility. If you can9t lead your instruction with phrases like: 8Hey, I was trying this craft move out last
night. I thought you might want to try it in your writing too…9 or 8I wrote this the other day and really enjoyed it. I
thought we could all have a go at writing something like this,9 then you9re at a serious disadvantage.

Research suggests that a teacher9s personal commitment to writing can have a markedly positive e ect on their
pupils9 motivation and their written outcomes (Young & Ferguson 2021a, 2023a). Joining your class during writing time
to work on your own writing project, sharing your writer9s notebook, and always being ready to talk about writing (and
being a writer) with your class in a reciprocal way are all the hallmarks of an exceptional writing teacher. Composing
your own mentor texts carries particular signiûcance in developing yourself as an excellent teacher of writing
because:

● You can share your own insights, expertise and craft knowledge with your children from the standpoint of a
writer, in a way that a teacher who only uses commercially published texts cannot (Young & Ferguson 2021a).
● Children trust and listen to you when they know they are about to learn something from someone who is a
fellow-writer as well as a teacher (Young & Ferguson 2020; Young et al. 2021). They know that every day they
are going to learn useful tips, tricks and secrets about crafting quality writing and how to live the writer9s life.
● Even If you feel that you9re not a proûcient writer yourself, you are in the fortunate position of being a role
model for the children in your class who may well feel the same. You can share your own writing
vulnerabilities, and create a community of writers in your classroom who have empathy for one another as
people who come together every day to get better at writing. This can even lead them towards making useful
suggestions as to what might make you a better writer - beneûcial for them and you!
● You will have gained valuable knowledge of what is involved in writing for a particular Class Writing Project,
and you can pass these insights on to your class.

Furthermore, your children will love the fact that you have written something that9s for them. They will enjoy reading
and discussing your piece and hearing about what went into its making. They will feel lucky that they are fortunate
enough to be taught by a teacher who is also, in their eyes, a 8real9 writer whom they can look up to, learn from,
emulate - and maybe even outshine. They (and you) need to understand that your mentor texts show them a
possibility for their own piece; they may want to adopt the spirit of your writing and to try out the strategies and
techniques that you used, but the writing ideas will be theirs. This happens in the EYFS too (see our Class Writing
Projects for more details). Finally, there are genuine beneûts for you. You may ûnd yourself adopting your own writing
mentor; you will certainly be drawing on your own reading. Reading as a writer, you will be increasing and improving
your own writerly knowledge and becoming a better teacher of writing.

Composing a mentor text for your class is an authentic and fun way to begin developing yourself as a writer,
particularly if you are initially lacking in conûdence. We can assure you of this from personal experience. Here are
what we consider to be the essential requirements for writing your own engaging and e ective mentor texts:

Looking for texts which could act as mentors for you

We always provide examples of the mentor texts which we have written in our Class Writing Projects, but we stress
that they are only there to provide guidance to help teachers write their own. We think it9s imperative that you write
your own with your own class in mind.

Over the pages that follow, you9ll see a few examples of picturebooks we wrote ourselves which span the primary
age-range.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 28

 Nursery & Reception:
I love my… book

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 29

 Nursery & Reception:
Story picturebook

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 30

 KS1:
Fairytale picturebook

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 31

 Year 3:
Memoir picturebook

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 32

Write in response to a text that9s moved you
The easiest and best way to write a mentor text is to 8leapfrog9 o of a text you truly love or admire. Read it and
make your own by 8ri ng9 o of it. This is exactly the type of writing we encourage children to do through our I Loved
Your Book, Here9s Mine, Let9s Make A Picturebook Series, and Let9s Make A Chapter Book Series writing projects [LINK].

Develop your writerly knowledge

This is the big one. You need to know about the craft of writing - the writerly knowledge, techniques and strategies
writers employ when they are writing for speciûc reasons and for a speciûc audience. You9ll also need genre
knowledge - the typical textual, linguistic, literary, and grammatical features genres employ to be at their most
meaningful and successful. The best place to go if you9re interested in acquiring this knowledge is our eBook: The Big
Book Of Writing Mini-Lessons: Lessons That Teach Powerful Craft Knowledge For 3-11 Year Olds

You may also like to read our collection of mentor texts as inspiration for creating your own. Each of our Class Writing
Projects comes with a variety of mentor texts we9ve written for our classes over the years.

Know the writer9s process

The process of generating an idea, planning, drafting, revising, editing and publishing is a vital part of craft knowledge.
Follow the process we describe in our Class Writing Projects yourself, just as you ask your pupils to do.

Know your class

Consider what would appeal to them in terms of the content and the tone of your writing. You can choose an
unconventional topic if you think your class would like it - but remember to write about it well. Writing well, whatever
the topic, is what we want children to do.

Make each mentor text as e ective a piece of writing as you can

This includes nonûction texts (see our example of an explanation text given on the next page). Remember that, once
written, you can use them as many times as you like in subsequent years.

Don9t cram as many craft moves into your mentor texts as your possibly can
Doing this will result in a stilted and artiûcial piece of writing. Instead, write naturally and use craft moves genuinely.

Write an authentic text

For example, write a persuasive letter that you genuinely intend to send to someone who may be able to make the
change you are asking for. Be realistic. Don9t manufacture a topic or a purpose. Write for real and write when you are
moved to.

Write lots, experiment with the writing, take risks

This is how you will get better at writing them. Ask children what they want you to write about or what genre they
would like to see you try out. Tell them you9ll go o and do it!

Stop yourself making your text too long

We have a general rule that 8a page is plenty9. You should certainly try to make a page and a half your absolute
maximum.

Enjoy writing them

It will exercise your writing muscles, and give you the feeling of writing for pleasure.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 33

An example of practice - KS2
The example of practice below shows you how a particular mentor text (in this case an explanation text) was written.
A great strategy for beginning an explanation text is to think of something you9re curious about or intrigued by, and
frame it as a question to yourself. This technique helps you to keep a focus for your piece, and to consider further
questions which you may need to research. You can then start to make a plan. We would also point out that a
nonûction text is greatly enhanced if you allow your own voice to come through, with a personal comment, a
reüection, an anecdote or even a joke, rather than just a succession of hard objective facts.

Face to Face with the Imaginators

I have often wondered about the workmen who lived in

Mediaeval times and built the amazing cathedrals we can visit
all over England. There are so many questions to ask. How
long did it take to build a cathedral? Who was in charge? Was
it dangerous work? Were there di erent jobs for di erent
people? Were they paid? How many workmen were involved?
And what is it that makes me want to write about them?

Not long ago I found myself in a kind of open metal cage

which was clanking and rattling slowly up the outside of Bell
Harry, the central tower of Canterbury Cathedral. Higher and
higher it went, and then it stopped near the top. I got out and
began to walk along a balcony which went round all sides of
the tower. As I came round the ûrst corner I had a shock.
There I was, face to face with a row of life-size statues. Kings
and saints, all staring out into the distance, some with their
features üattened and smoothed over by centuries of wind
and weather, others missing noses or ûngers, some looking
sad, some proud, but all there where they had been put ûve
hundred years ago, by the hands of real people. And up there
in the close company of these kings and saints it was
impossible not to think about these real people, who they
were and what their lives were like.

In every part of the cathedral you can ûnd evidence of its

[Link] master masons were the brilliantly clever ones who planned, designed and directed the whole
project. Ordinary labourers were needed to quarry the massive blocks of limestone (cut them out of the hillside)
and then take them in carts pulled by oxen and load them onto boats to be transported by river to where the
cathedral was going to be built. The foundations had to be dug, and labourers did that [Link] came the task of
cutting the stone to the right shape and size so the blocks would ût together. This is where it needed skilled
workmen who knew how to use the tools. These stone masons, as they were called, had learned their skill
through serving an apprenticeship which might have lasted as long as seven years, so they certainly knew what
they were doing. The next back-breaking job for the labourers was winching the stone up with ropes and pulleys,
laying the blocks in the right place and ûlling the gaps between each one with mortar. Finally, there were the
stone carvers or stone sculptors, who used chisels and mallets to carve out all kinds of fantastic faces, ûgures,
devils, birds, animals, leaves and üowers and decorate the building with them. Records show that everyone was
paid for the job they did. Some of the very exceptional carvers were known as 8Imaginators9 and no doubt they
asked a high price for their very imaginative work!

I was given a hard hat to wear, but hats weren9t hard in those days, and if you were unlucky enough to be in the
wrong place when a loose chunk of stone fell from above, that was likely to be the end of your contribution to
the work. Many must have died from being crushed. The master mason William of Sens, while working on repairs
to Canterbury Cathedral after a ûre, toppled o the sca olding and was badly injured. He died a couple of years
later because of his injuries. You can ûnd the place where he fell, just in front of the altar. We know that this was
the sad fate of not just a few but of many workmen all over the country.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 34

 Hundreds of ordinary people, day in, day out, did the impossibly hard work of building the buildings which so
amaze us. I was moved to write about them because we usually don9t spend more than a minute trying to
imagine or really believe in their real lives. Being up in the tower that day, within touching distance of the stone
ûgures created by the mediaeval Imaginators, gave me the feeling of being a little closer to all of them who have
gone before, whose lives should still matter to us because they are a part of our history as human beings, and
whose work will be here long after we have disappeared.

I am aware that not everyone is conûdent when it comes to composing and presenting a mentor text, so this
practical example is intended to be both reassuring and helpful. I wrote it for inclusion in our Year 5 Information
Class Writing Project, and I used the elements of idea generation, planning and drafting set out in the project as a
guide while writing. I also made running notes on the authentic process I went through during the composition. This
is an important thing for you to do as you write, because when you present your text for discussion you can share
with the class your own experience, the discoveries you made about yourself as a writer, the problems you
encountered and the solutions you found (Young & Ferguson 2020, 2021a).

Aims: I spent some time thinking about what I wanted this text to do, both for myself and my audience. My feeling
was that I wanted to be factually informative about something which interests me and which others might ûnd
interesting, but to combine this with expressing my own strong personal response to the topic and so bring the
facts to life for the audience. A combination of teaching, entertaining and being reüective.

In practice, this meant writing a hybrid text which could include facts, questions, an anecdote or a short memoir,
maybe even a joke or two. It is really vital to spend time thinking about what precisely you want your text to do for
your reader. When you present it, discuss with the children whether they felt you were successful in your aims, and
encourage them to think hard about their own intentions when they write their own information pieces

Description: I began by using the Question Webbing technique (see

the minilessons section of the Year 5 Information Writing Project)
as a way of bringing together and beginning to organise what
information I had, adding more detailed notes under each
question. Asking questions is an excellent way of starting the
process of planning. It also helps you establish your own voice at
the outset. I then circled and expanded the part of the web which
I intuitively sensed would be the 8diamond9 of the piece - the most
signiûcant moment - although what this was exactly only became
clear while I was actually drafting and doing ongoing revision. I
followed the advice in one of our mini-lessons to delay deciding on
a title till the piece was ûnished, precisely because the meaning
was only gradually emerging during the writing.

Being clear about my intentions for the piece meant that the shape or structure of the text began to form itself
quite quickly: a preview for the audience of what they were going to read about, with myself as the writer at the
centre, the objective facts and a memoir which would link in to them, and a conclusion underlining the whole
motivation for writing such a text. Creating headings to introduce each paragraph was a typical option I tried but
rejected because it didn9t suit the tenor of a piece which overlaid facts with a great deal of personal response. The
draft was easy to write and I made ongoing revisions to it as I wrote, which has always been my preferred process.
Identifying and naming your own writing process (I am a sentence stacker !) is always a good way to get children
thinking and talking about theirs (Young & Ferguson 2020).

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 35

 Reüection: In retrospect, I realise how much the composition was guided and held together by my own voice,
which enabled me in a natural and unforced way to directly address the reader, show and reüect on my feelings,
pose questions, be occasionally disrespectful, and speculate about and comment on the information. Writing in
your own voice is something to talk with your children about. I also realise that I have done much more than write
a mentor text for others to study and learn something from. We write in order to ûnd out what we think, so writing
is communicating with yourself as well as with others. This was exactly what was happening as I drafted and
revised my text. You can discuss this idea too with your class.

Finally, what makes it an e ective mentor text?

1. It9s not written with the sole and limited purpose of highlighting particular linguistic features or use of
vocabulary for emulation by the children.
2. It9s a rich text with an authentic purpose: to inform, entertain and reüect. It is the result of a real act of
writing, something I was moved to write.
3. It9s a text which invites me to talk about and share with the children my own insights into the processes
involved in its composition. Children will draw on what we have shared and talked about together when
they write their own texts.

We conclude Part Three by emphasising that it9s through reading as a writer, and writing your own mentor text in
response to what you learn, that you can begin to ûgure out what it is you want to teach your class during a Class
Writing Project. Remember, for some children, you may be the only teacher they ever meet who is a passionate
reader-writer-teacher.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 36

PART FOUR
How to use mentor texts to the best e ect
Through others, we become ourselves.
- Lev S. Vygotsky

Above, we see an area of Tobias Hayden9s class where children can access great mentor texts. This is available to
Tobias and the children in his class whenever they need it. It means they can access them during writing time, during
personal project time, and as part of their independent reading time. In addition, Tobias encourages children to take
mentor texts home to read and discuss as part of their Class Writing Project study week.

This is also a place for Tobias to store any new mentor texts he ûnds throughout the year - all ready for when he next
needs to teach a class writing project. It9s actually a good idea for a school to have in the sta room a series of these
8mentor text boxes,9 like the ones photographed above. This way, teachers can work together to source and share the
great mentor texts they9ve found and have written. Finally, it9s the perfect place to store great examples pupils have
written to share with children in other classes. or with your own class the following year. To create your own mentor
text library, we suggest:

● You have di erent boxes for di erent types of texts.

● Teachers always put the mentor texts they write for their class in the sta room library for other teachers to
use too.
● Teachers keep an eye out for potential mentor texts written by others 8out in the world9. These could include:
letters, opinion pieces, news or magazine articles, poems, memoirs, information texts and short stories.
● Teachers place excellent pieces of writing made by the children in their class in the boxes too.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 37

Reading and discussing

Stage One Get excited! Read some mentor texts for pleasure

Stage Two Deeper reading. Looking for craft moves and establish product goals

Devote a number of sessions at the start of a new class

writing project to reading and discussing as many
examples of the type of writing children are about to
undertake, and read them together socially and for
pleasure. On the ûrst day, just read one or two with your
class for pleasure. Use the texts as a way to get the
children excited about the project and about the
prospect that they are going to be invited to write
something like it for themselves. If you decide to read
them aloud (and children new to English will beneût from
this), do it with panache - your enthusiasm will be
catching. You can see stage one sessions as being like a
8book-tasting9. For more information, please read Sadie
Phillips9 example of practice on book-tasting on the
Reading For Pleasure website.

Let the children respond to the content ûrst. Ask: 8Does anyone want to say anything…? Does this piece remind you of
anything…?9 By doing this, you9re giving them a real taste of what their writing could look and feel like too. As the
children hear and read them, let them chat about the ones they like and why they like them.

Here is an example of a classroom display showing a collection of di erent mentor texts that were studied during a genre-study week
for an 8Information Texts9 class project. In this case, eight texts were studied, including two written by the class teacher, one written by
another writer-teacher, two by children from previously taught classes and three commercially published examples. Variety was also
sought in relation to how the pieces were published. For example, three were handwritten and ûve were typed. Three of the pieces
were considered to be 8faction9 pieces and ûve were more traditional objective nonûction pieces (see page 23).

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 38

The next day, read your mentor texts together again. This time, you9ll be asking children to read (or listen) as writers
for the craft moves the author has used. You can think of this as 8deep9 or 8close9 reading. It9s this kind of reading that
creates children who read as writers (Young & Ferguson 2020, 202a; Young & Hayden 2022). A word of caution - don9t
spend too long on this at the expense of children maintaining their interest; this is a good reason for not focusing on
the 8analysis9 of one text with the whole class. If your texts are short, you shouldn9t need more than a few sessions to
read and discuss a variety.

To support such sessions, you may want to focus on di erent types of craft moves on di erent days. For example:

Session One:
1. Purpose. What9s the 8diamond9 moment or idea? What moved them to write?
2. Voice. What9s their 8writing personality9 like? How do they decide to 8talk9 to you?

Session Two:
1. Structure and organisational devices. How do the writers organise their writing for their readers? How do they
help us keep up with what they9re saying?
2. Conventions. How do they write with clarity and accuracy?

Session Three:
1. Showing detail and 8painting with words9. What beautiful craft moves do we like? Where has the writer shown
some artistry?

Reading as a writer: Keeping a lookout for craft moves

Purpose
What9s the 8diamond9 moment or idea? What moved them to write?

Structure and Showing detail and

organisational devices 8painting with words’

Voice Conventions
What9s their 8writing personality9 How do they write with clarity
like? How do they decide to 8talk9 and accuracy?
to you?

The di erent types of craft move you and your class can discuss when reading mentor texts

Children may also like to read more examples during independent reading time, hear one or two again in read-aloud,
and even take a couple home alongside their chosen book. Literature should be seen by young writers as their best
friend. Nowhere is this more clear than in writer-teacher Tobias Hayden9s classroom where he makes mentor texts
available and in evidence on the children9s tables and in the class library throughout a writing project. This is an
excellent idea because they are then to hand as a support at all stages of the writing process: idea generation,
planning, drafting, and revising, as well as during conferencing (Young & Hayden 2022). In Tobias9 class, children feel
that mentor texts can sit right alongside their own developing compositions.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 39

 Here we see examples of children taking mentor texts home to read, study and discuss with loved ones.

Here we see examples of children working on their own compositions whilst also having access to a variety of mentor texts. These
mentor texts match the kind of writing the children are trying to produce for themselves.

We know that some teachers are unconûdent about knowing the best way to open the door for the class to begin
discussing the writerly techniques used in the mentor texts. The examples below may be useful. We have always
found that open questions like the ones in this table are far more likely to invite thoughtful discussion than ones
which tend to be closed o , such as: I made my character seem sinister - how did I do it?

The kind of language you might use when discussing mentor texts

● What are our readers going to want from ● What makes these the best texts in the whole
our texts? entire world ever..?
● What9s really good about these mentor ● What are we going to have to do or include to
texts? write the best texts ever?
● What interesting things have the authors ● What have we learnt about writing from looking
done that we could do too? at these texts?
● What cool craft moves have the authors ● What techniques might you steal for your text?
used that we could use too? ● What craft moves have you found in these texts
● What9s the best thing about this text? that you want to use too?
● What might you try and copy in your text? ● Why is that part so good? What9s the writer done
● What makes these texts so good? there? Can we do that in ours too?
● What are your favourite bits? What has ● Why does that part work so well? What craft
the author done? Can we steal their move has the writer used? What should we call
techniques for our own texts? that move?
● What sorts of things do you think I need
to teach you so you can write pieces like
this?

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 40

EASE is a particular mentor-text discussion strategy developed by Cynthia Dollins (2020). It involves children going
through a process of examining, assessing, suggesting and envisioning as they read mentor texts, and gives you a way
of structuring the discussion.

1. Examine: What does the author do? What craft moves do they use (e.g., ûgurative language, ellipsis)
2. Assess: Why did the author write in this particular way? What were they wanting to do and what craft
moves did they use to do it? How do their craft moves a ect their audience? Where have they been clever
and why? How do their craft moves a ect the meaning, tone, voice and style of the writing?
3. Suggest: How might you write like this? What might you write about? How could this mentor text have
been written di erently? How would you have written it? How might you have written one of the craft
moves the author used?
4. Envision: What craft moves are you going to use? Why?

If you are introducing a text you have written yourself, you9ll ûnd that children will want to get into a conversation
with you about your writing. They will want you to tell them how you developed the piece. Where did you get the
idea? How did you do that? Why did you do that? When sharing a mentor text you9ve written, you can engage your
pupils in rich discussion about your intentions, how you kept an eye on your audience, the craft decisions you made,
the strategies you employed, and what you might need to revise and reconsider.

As a writer-teacher, one of the greatest professional joys you will ever experience is that sense of a social bond
created by having an audience right in front of you who you know care about you, and who will be learning something
valuable from you. We will never forget a remarkable discussion that took place when Ross presented his self-written
mentor text to our class during a writing project on Memoir. The immediate response from the children was
wholehearted and sympathetic. They were curious to know more about the place, the time and the characters. They
wanted to know what were the consequences of his illicit 8day out9. They learned from his text that you can
sometimes use a little hyperbole and that this is an entirely acceptable thing to do. They understood how he
employed the strategy of 8show don9t tell9 to suggest his characters9 personalities, and how he described the weather
and the setting so they helped him convey his feelings on that day. But what was most a ecting was that the children
knew intuitively why he had written the piece, why he had been moved to write it. Not just to tell a story, but to share
a deeply personal meaning with them as his class of students. They got to know him even better through his text, and
the most important lesson they learned was that they could emulate him as a person and a writer-teacher they liked
and respected by doing the same in their own writing.

It9s during discussion time that children are already thinking about what they might want to write about too. They9ve
found out what you cared about and what you wanted to achieve when writing in that genre 3 now they turn their

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 41

attention towards what they are interested in pursuing. In keeping with the Writing For Pleasure pedagogy, it9s the
promise to children that they will get to use the genre being studied for themselves by choosing their own writing idea
that creates the wonderful sense of purpose and urgency in exploring the texts of others (Young & Ferguson 2021a;
Young et al. 2022a).

Using mentor texts to help you teach grammar craft moves

Mentor texts and the writing of others are the springboard from which to teach craft moves. Mini-lessons might be
about a particular item of grammar or why a particular sentence is structured as it is (Young et al. 2021; Young &
Ferguson 2022c, 2022d).

Teaching about a grammatical item is far more successfully done in the context of a mentor text, when you have the
opportunity of linking the item to the author9s intentions: why they chose that particular way of creating an e ect or
conveying a meaning (Myhill et al 2018). Below are some examples of mini-lessons we9ve taught to demonstrate how
to teach children a craft move. First, we name the move. Then we explain its function and, importantly, show how and
why a published author or we (as a writer-teacher) have used it. Then we simply invite children to do the same in
their writing that day. This structure ensures you are helping your pupils to become independent and self-regulating.

Simple and multi-clause sentences

I9ve always liked this from author

Gary Provost: This sentence has ûve
words. Here are ûve more words.
Five-word sentences are ûne. But
several together becomes
monotonous. Listen to what is
happening. The writing is getting
boring. The sound of it drones. It9s
like a stuck record. The ear demands
some variety. Now listen. I vary the
sentence length, and I create music.
Music. The writing sings. It has a
pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony.

It9s good to consider your use of

sentences and to ensure you9re
providing a variety. Too many simple
sentences, and you annoy your reader
because they can9t get going. Too
many multi-clause sentences and it9s
like running through treacle. It9s also
exhausting.

This kind of mini-lesson is best taught

when the majority of your class are
revising their pieces. The best thing to
do is showcase some of your own
writing where your use of sentences
has been particularly successful.
Better still – use a child9s piece that9s
particularly impressed you.

Ask them to explain the thought

process. Why did they write it the way
they did? What were they hoping to do
for their readership? Finally, you can
invite children to look at and consider
their own and others9 writing during
that day9s writing time.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 42

 Expanded noun phrases

I9ve always considered crafting expanded noun phrases

as one way in which I can paint with words. There are
other ways too, which are discussed throughout these
mini-lessons. Addjectives and expanded noun phrases
are there to add to your noun. Words that expand a noun
can appear before or after the noun itself. Phrases added
to a noun can do a variety of jobs. For example:

● It was a grey and ghostly twilight.

● Our cottage, deep in the heart of Devon, hadn9t
been lived in for years.
● The woman with the long nose stared down it at
the children on the bus.
● He studied the ancient brass-bound book with
interest.

Readers do enjoy it when a writer has taken time to

paint with words. They are able to picture the things,
people or places they are reading about. It creates a
mood. Most children use expanded noun phrases quite
naturally, particularly when they are writing something of
personal interest, so you don9t need to labour the point.

With this mini-lesson, it9s good to share some of the

favourite descriptions and 8painting with words9 that
you9ve crafted or admired in other writers9 work. In
addition, you can invite children to leaf through their
reading books to ûnd examples of beautifully constructed
noun phrases. Finally, after some discussion and sharing,
you can invite children to try it out for themselves during that day9s writing time.

Prepositional phrases

There are three very good reasons to use prepositional phrases in

your writing: to tell your reader where things are, when things
happen and where they happen. They give your reader a better
picture in their mind. For example:

● When morning came, we put out the ûre.

● Ten children sat round the table waiting for dinner
● The box was hidden away in the cupboard for years.

It9s nice to look at the literature in your classroom library for this
particular mini-lesson. Looking at examples of prepositional
phrases and ûnding particularly beautiful ones is a worthwhile
activity. You should also showcase where you9ve used them in the
past in your own writer9s notebook. You can then invite children to
craft some during that day9s writing time.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 43

This lesson structure is one of the most validated and e ective practices a teacher of writing can employ in their
classroom (Young & Ferguson 2021a, 2023a, 2023b). Case studies show that the most e ective writing teachers deliver
instruction directed towards self-regulation when teaching 8craft knowledge9 (Young et al. 2021), 8sentence-level
strategies9 (Young & Ferguson 2022d) and 8functional grammar lessons9 (Young & Ferguson 2022c). It9s worth noting
here that children can be reminded to use the craft move more than once in their piece if appropriate.

Spotting gaps? Plug them by using literature

Remember, literature is with us every day as an additional teacher in our writing classrooms.

All children, but particularly struggling or less experienced writers, need high-quality teaching and explicit instruction
if they are to fulûl their potential as writers. This is why SRSD instruction works so well. The concept is simple. Teach
your class one writerly technique, process or strategy (what we call a craft move) before inviting them to use the
move for themselves in their writing that day. Case studies show that the most e ective writing teachers deliver
instruction in keeping with SRSD when teaching 8craft knowledge9 (Young et al. 2021), 8sentence-level strategies9 (Young
& Ferguson 2022c) and 8functional grammar lessons9 (Young & Ferguson 2021b).

Readers need to read and hear language used skilfully by master writers. The topic for your writing lessons is always
dictated by the needs of your class. If you have noticed a deûcit or an issue in your class9 writing development, a
mini-lesson is where you attend to it. Use pieces of literature or other writings to illustrate the speciûc technique or
strategy you want your class to use and apply in their compositions before inviting them to use it during that day9s
writing time. You should be able to begin this sort of mini-lesson by saying something along the lines of: 8the reason
I9m showing you this craft move is because I think it will really add value to our pieces…9 or 8check out this amazing
craft move I saw [David Almond] use, I thought we could try using it today too9. Show them what the writer has done
and how they achieved it. Next, show them how you9ve used it. At the end of any mini-lesson, you want your class to
be able to say: 8I can see what [David Almond] and my writer-teacher did 3 I can do that too!9

Writing instruction, using literature, typically goes something like this:

1. Share 2. Discuss 3. Model

Share the 8craft move9 you found Sell the 8craft move9 - explain Show them how you9ve used the
in literature. why it9s so fantastic. 8craft move9 yourself.

4. Provide Information 5. Invite 6. Evaluate

Explain any conventions. Children use and apply the craft Pupil-conference during writing
move during writing time. time. Share great examples you
hear with the rest of the class.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 44

 Writing a conversation:
Dialogue

If you9re using dialogue

3 say it aloud as you
write it. Only then will it
have the sound of
speech
3 John Steinbeck

Film-maker Quentin
Tarantino is well-known
for being one of the
kings of character
dialogue. According to
Tarantino, good dialogue
reveals something about
the character you
wouldn9t have otherwise
known. You gain a little
insight into their history,
psyche, motivation and
morality. How characters
talk to each other and
what they choose as
topics of conversation
tells you a lot about
them.

For this mini-lesson,

show children a great
example of dialogue
taken from literature.

You should also show

them your use of
dialogue too.

Discuss how the

examples share something about the characters. You can then invite your class to apply this 8craft move9 during that
day9s writing time.

Establishing product goals

Children read stories, poems and letters di erently when they see these texts as things they themselves could
produce.
- Frank Smith

Product goals (or success criteria) for the project are derived from the study and discussion of mentor texts. They are
what the children and you jointly decide will need to be done for their pieces to be engaging, successful and
meaningful. This involves children and teacher looking beyond what is being told or shared in a text. We want them to
start recognizing why the author decided to write it in a certain way so that they can make their own choices.

Product goals are absolutely not limited to grammatical features or text conventions. When we ask the class our ûrst
most challenging and exciting question: What will you have to do to make this the best short story that was ever
written?, we won9t be expecting the main response to be 8good punctuation9 (important as this is), or 8extended noun
phrases9. We will want ûrstly to hear children identifying things which connect with the essence of the genre. The
following authentic set of product goals shows what we mean:

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 45

 Here you9ll notice writer-teacher Tobias Hayden writes 8see class poster9 next to some of the goals. This is to tell the children that
they9ve already received a lesson on this 8craft move9 (Young et al. 2021) this year and that there is a poster on display in the
classroom which explains how to do it.

How you record product goals is important, and it9s not an easy thing to do. For more information on di erent ways of
recording, see our mini-book entitled Getting Success Criteria Right for Writing: Helping 3-11 Year Olds Write Their Best
Texts (Young & Hayden 2022).

You don9t want to produce product goals which look like the example below.

1. You don9t want to produce a list of product goals on the children9s behalf during your planning and
preparation time.
2. You don9t want to give them a list that is out of context - without ûrst letting the children participate in genre
study.
3. You don9t want the list to look this depressing - failing to share with the children why any of these craft
moves will be so useful.
4. You don9t want a list which is exclusively about grammar craft moves.
5. You don9t want to include things to do with proof-reading - these can have their own checklist and be
discussed later into a project.

Feature Tick

Title

Paragraphs

Capital letters and fullstops

Di erent sentence types

Past progressive

Speech

Fronted adverbials

Correct spellings

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 46

This list of product goals is in no way inspiring. It does not have children on the edge of their seats - excited to begin
writing 8the best short stories in the whole-wide world ever…9 No one is looking forward to being taught mini-lessons
about these things, unless they have the assurance that attention to them will make their stories all the greater!

Going on a craft move hunt

A more sophisticated way of establishing product goals (and this would probably work better with more experienced
writers) is to encourage them to ûnd in a text the craft moves they like, and give them names (Shubitz 2016; Young et
al. 2021). When children do this, they are not only identifying those important and striking elements of the text being
studied, but they are also naming and designing the mini-lesson instruction they need from their teacher.
Children at one of our Writing For Pleasure schools even do this independently as part of the writing process when
working on their personal writing projects (Young & Ferguson 2021b). They will ûnd a mentor text independently, and
write down all the craft moves from it that they want to use in their own writing. They do all this in their personal
writing journals.

Here you can see an example of a group of children identifying in a mentor text 8craft moves9 they want to use when they write their
own pieces (Young et al. 2021). The right hand picture shows children giving these craft moves names. For example: Onomatopoeia:
make your story talk; Make your reader think: get your thinking cap on; Describe your setting: where are you?

The cool things I want to do in my text!

A small adaptation of 8mini-lesson hunting9 is to ask children to read a mentor text and simply write a list of all the
cool things they think the writer has done that they will want to do too; in this way, they are essentially making their
own product goals list. If all the children do it, their ideas can be pooled to create a whole-class list.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 47

 Here you can see how two friends in Year Four have written a 8cool things I want to do in my text9 list as they read an information
mentor text. These goals then contributed towards a whole-class product goal list. The list will be put on display throughout the class
writing project and the teacher will make sure they teach the class how to do the things on the list in their own texts.

Squirrel books

Imitation is not just the sincerest form of üattery – it9s the sincerest form of learning.
- George Bernard Shaw

A 8squirrel book9 is a notebook where children can store excellent examples of craft moves they ûnd from their
reading. They can simply copy this great writing out into their notebook - ready to ri o it when they write their own
pieces. Have your own squirrel book to hand in which you collect great examples of craft when you read as a
writer-teacher. This helps show children what9s possible.

To introduce these squirrel books, very early on in the year, we used to set our classes a challenge to do at home. We
would ask them to ûnd a line or a passage from a book that had really struck them. We set no other parameters.
Children could discuss the task with people at home, use the book they were currently reading or use an all-time
favourite. We did this not just because it was a great way of getting to know the children in our class, but it prepared
them for the kind of work we were going to be doing that year.

You want the children in your class to read texts and exclaim 8I want to write like that!9

Children enjoy the challenge of supplying the class with a healthy stock of great craft move examples. This is
particularly useful if there is a learning point you know you want to cover with the children. Let them know
beforehand so that they can prepare. For example, 8We are going to be looking at how writers write great setting
descriptions soon, so keep a lookout for any good examples during your reading9.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 48

Over the course of the year, children will be ready and able to supply the
class with excellent examples of titles, characters, settings, object
descriptions, poetic lines, unusual ways of seeing things, plot ideas, story
openers or endings, and voice used in nonûction, all stored in their writing
notebooks.

Having a whole-class 8squirrel9 book that lives in the library can be a good
model for some children and shows them how they can start their own. It
can act like a scrapbook. During genre-study sessions and beyond,
encourage children to do the following in their squirrel books:

● Write down any 8I wish I had written that9 lines.

● Write down any spectacular passages.
● Write down any interesting vocabulary.

Sharing examples of writing produced by children in previous years

It9s a good idea to keep some pieces written in previous years by other children in your or another school (with the
proviso that they are anonymised). You9ll ûnd that these texts will create increased interest and motivation among the
children who receive them, because they will see the possibility that they can write like this too. You can also show
examples of where a pupil9s text has failed to achieve its goals, which always seems to galvanise even the most
reluctant writers to do better themselves.

Linked to what we discussed about using literature to teach craft moves (see page 44), don9t be shy to hold children9s
writing up to showcase where they9ve used a great craft move. This is incredibly e ective. Children lean in and take
notice when you name and explain the craft move a peer has used before inviting the class to use it too.

Below, there are a couple of pieces of highly successful writing by two children in our own Year Five class, which we
later used as mentor texts. What craft moves do you think these texts could teach your class?

Fairy tales: a Cinderella story

By Zac Michaels (10 Years Old)

Have you ever wanted to know the truth about fairy tales? Read on, and before midnight strikes you9ll be the belle
of the ball!

Welcome to a place where anyone can have a 8once upon a time …9 I am your tour guide in this world of written
daydreams. I will help you ûnd out who Ariel9s true love actually married and the Grimm truth about the glass
slipper.

The Little Mermaid

Did you know that Ariel9s happy ending in the Disney ûlm is not real? The true story, written by Hans Christian
Andersen in 1836, goes something like this: Ariel becomes a human, but in order to get a soul she must win the
heart of the prince and marry him otherwise she will die of a broken heart and DISSOLVE into sea foam. Sadly, the
prince marries a princess from a neighbouring village. Ariel9s heart is so broken that she dives into the sea and is
gone forever!

The glass slipper

There are many di erent versions of the Cinderella story, but did you know that in an early version, written by the
Brothers Grimm in 1812, the ugly sisters chop o their toes to try to ût their feet into the glass slipper?
Unfortunately, the blood dripping from the glass slipper gives them away! Another version sees the ugly sisters
having their eyes pecked out by doves at Cinderella9s wedding to the prince.

The Hans holding the pen

Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author in the 1800s. As well as fairy tales, he wrote novels, travel guides,
poems and plays. Andersen wrote many stories which you probably still know today. He wrote Thumbelina, The
Little Mermaid, The Princess and the Pea and many more. You should deûnitely try to ûnd these and read them for
yourselves!

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 49

 Don9t be so Grimm!
The Brothers Grimm lived in a German town called Hanau in the early 1800s. As they grew up, the two men
developed a curiosity for German folklore, which grew into a lifelong dedication to writing German folktales. Their
ûrst story was The Frog King.

The Brothers Grimm wrote many stories which you probably still know today. They wrote Hansel and Gretel, Little
Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and many more. You should deûnitely try to ûnd these and read them for yourselves!

Happily ever after

My last word on this topic is that I believe everyone is starting to forget the wonders of books. Fairy tales might be
works of ûction, but their authors always make sure there is a bit of truth inside the story.

Here we see a writer who has written in a strong personal voice. Zac has crafted a hybrid text which teaches, is
playful and entertaining, and ends on a reüective note. It9s also very well organised, and he has cleverly included
linguistic jokes and literary references in some of the sub-headings.

Superglue
By Emily Govern (10 years old)

I was desperately sitting in front of the incubator watching the duck eggs. Although I knew they weren9t ready to
hatch, I still sat there waiting.

One afternoon, when I came back from school, my dad told me one of the duck eggs had started hatching. I was so
excited until… I found out it was about two or three weeks early. My parents had to superglue it together. We all
thought it wouldn9t hatch but we were wrong. We all knew that if it hatched the duck lurking inside would be called
superglue.

Soon, the ducks started poking their tiny, orange beaks out of their little turquoise house. First to hatch was an
adorable little male duck, who we called Gamima (at the time we thought he was a female). The second one to
hatch was small compared to Gamima. We called her Da y. Over the course of the next few days, the other eggs
started to hatch 3 all of them except Superglue.

Finally, his egg started to form a lightning bolt across the top and a small beak pecked its way through the shell. As
soon as I laid my eyes on him I knew he was my favourite. In some way he was the most special. He was a small
pile of adorable, yellow üu and I loved him dearly.

Soon, I and the rest of my family were allowed to hold the ducks. It was the most amazing experience I had ever
had. They had the beautiful shape and were too soft to describe! They closed their eyes when you stroked them
and leant their head to my body. As I stroked their head, I felt their soft skull beneath their warm feathery skin.
They were so light they could fall over if a light breeze hit them. Their tiny webbed feet griped to my relaxed
ûngers.

That weekend it was time for the ducks to have their ûrst adventure outside. It was a beautiful, hot summer9s day
and the blazing sun shone over our garden. Daisies had started sprouting from the grass and apples were hanging
from our small apple tree. The ducks were all so happy. After an hour outside, it was time for the ducks to go back
into the house. My dad scooped up six of the ducks and took them inside. The only one left was superglue who was
wandering around in the garden. Me, my mum and my brother were watching him. The minute we turned our backs
away, there was the sound of a faint quacking and a fox running. A fox had superglue in his mouth. When my dad
tried to catch the fox, it ran out of the garden and disappeared.

Superglue was gone forever.

This is one of our all time favourite memoirs. It reads like a story with lots of suggestion and tension. We are left
with that dramatic ûnal line. It gives the reader no other option than to sit and reüect on what they have just read.
An emotional rollercoaster.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 50

 Shoot To Kill
By Henry Lightfoot (10 year olds)
The sun hadn9t risen yet and the city didn9t stir.

The assassin9s black balaclava and jungle kit added no extra camouüage. He could scurry through this city as
nimble as a spider. He knew full well what a terrible thing he was about to do. He stationed himself under a
wooden bench. His warty ûngers slithered into his backpack and pulled out something.

A gun.

A gun, with a hungry metal mouth and glistening barrel. In front of him, a massive building loomed large, with
gleaming windows and huge brass doors.

BANG!

The doors opened to reveal a plump blustery man with a bald red pompous face and small darting eyes. This was
Yeldrid Temes and he was a brutal and merciless man, leader of a terrorist gang based in America. He wore a smart
suit, with the buttons undone on his jacket, letting his tie üap limply. The assassin had one chance and this was it.

He ûred and a bullet leapt forward like a dog let o its leash and struck the man in the chest. He screamed a shrill
scream of pain and crumpled to the ground immediately, blood staining his shirt and his face a ghastly white.

The assassin drew back his gun. The job was done. He would now be paid three thousand US dollars for taking this
man down.

He turned to go.
8Freeze,9 yelled a voice.

There was a ûgure behind in black, a gun pointed towards him.

Before he knew it, a bullet had travelled from the barrel of the gun to the assassin9s heart.

The man who had shot him was the legendary Yeldrid Temes.

Henry was a well-loved writer amongst his peer-group. The class ghobbled up his action-packed yet richly
descriptive Flash-Fictions. You could always rely on him to provide rich examples of craft moves that his peers would
want to try out too. What craft moves do you see Henry using here that you9d want your class to use?

The end of the climb

By Emily Li (9 Years Old)
We got to the top and the sky seemed to open up. The air was scented with good feeling and happiness. I was ûrst
up the steep cli , with my brother Jamie hot on my heels.

<We made it, we made it!= he gasped, jumping up and down like an over-excited kangaroo. Mum and Dad came
panting up, holding hands and laughing breathlessly. Five minutes later, up hobbled Grandpa, leaning heavily on his
walking stick.

But our delight was short-lived. Even though Grandpa had made it to the top and was smiling at us all, there was a
sadness in his eyes. He suddenly let go of his stick, walked forward towards the cli edge, and stepped o into the
nothingness beneath.

This writer has really understood what makes a great üash ûction. She has crafted a fragment of what could have
been a longer story. The class especially noticed how she 8painted with words9, and how she used strong verbs and
sensory and emotive language to produce a shocked response in her readers.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 51

Show me! Using mentor texts to teach other parts of the writer9s process

It9s important to recognise that you can (and should) use your mentor texts to help you teach any part of the writer9s
process. If you want children to generate great writing ideas, show them how you do it when you write your mentor
texts (Young & Ferguson 2022b). One of the best ways to help children plan is to show them the planning technique
you used when writing your own text (Young & Ferguson 2023c). If you want children to revise their compositions
using beautiful craft moves, you need to show them how you did it (Young et al. 2021). If children are unsure how a
convention is used, they should know that they can turn to their favourite books to ûnd out. Finally, if you want to
develop children as great proof-readers, show them how you go about proof-reading your manuscripts (Young &
Ferguson 2022e).

Here we can see how Ross has taken the planning technique he used from his writer9s notebook and turned it into a poster. Children
were then invited to try out the planning technique for themselves.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 52

 Phil shows how she 8tried out9 the craft move of 8monologue9 while revising her piece before inviting her class to try it out during that
day9s writing time. She presents this as a poster so all the children can see.

In this class, Ross models how he proof-reads capital letters for names. He then invites children to do the same for their manuscripts.
A poster like this can stay up for days, weeks or even months - for as long as it is required.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 53

Teaching children how writers 8leapfrog9 o their favourite books

In every story there hides a hundred other stories.

If we want reading to raise the quality of children9s writing, we should give pupils a choice over the books they might
want to 8leapfrog9 o when creating their own writing. Leapfrogging is the idea that writing (and therefore writers) will
be inüuenced or inspired by things read, watched or heard. We must ûrst let our young apprentice writers know that
this is an utterly natural thing for writers to do and then encourage them to do it for themselves. It9s useful to actively
model and teach this to children explicitly and a number of our class writing projects look to achieve this. For
example:

● The List Books children make in the EYFS [LINK]

● I Loved Your Book, Here9s Mine [LINK]
● Let9s Make A Picturebook Series [LINK]
● Let9s Make A Chapter Book Series [LINK]

Engaging in intertextuality when generating your own writing ideas

Writers are magpies by nature, always looking for the connections in things.
- John Connolly

We are always looking to make connections with the texts we read. They are like a friend and we are in conversation
with them. The connections we make can be a rich source for generating our own ideas for writing. This is called
intertextuality.

Sometimes, you can engage in intertextuality as a whole class and come up with writing ideas together. For this type
of lesson all you9ll need is a mentor text and some üipchart paper. After reading a mentor text together, you can ask
your class a select few questions from the list below. Write their responses up on the üipchart paper. Once you feel
you9re ready, you can invite the children to use what9s on the üipchart to come up with a plan for their own writing.
You can do this as a whole class, in groups or individually.

Text-to-self
● What does this remind you of from your life?
● What is this similar to in your life?
● Has something like this ever happened to you?
● What were your feelings when we read this?
● How is this di erent from your life?

Text-to-text
● Does this remind you of anything else you9ve read, seen or heard?
● How is this similar to other things you9ve read?
● How is this di erent from other things you9ve read?
● Have you read about something like this before?

Text-to-world
● Does this remind you of anything in the real world?
● How is this text similar to things that happen in the real world?
● How is it di erent to things that happen in the real world?
● How does this text relate to the world around us?

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 54

 Here9s an example taken from Ross9 class which features in the book Real-World Writers (2020 p.97)

Once children are comfortable with the concept of intertextuality, you could invite them to use the prompt sheet on
the next page. It9s a great way to help children generate their own writing ideas from their reading. It can be given out
during independent reading time, while children are studying mentor texts, or whilst you9re reading your class novel.
The best thing to do is share how you9ve used the prompt sheet yourself while reading before inviting children to give
it a try for themselves.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 55

 Finding Ideas In Your Reading
When we are reading, we can come up with our own story ideas. This sheet will help you
collect writing ideas as you read your book.

My reading and me ● Does this book remind you of anything from your
life?
● This book reminds me of a time when…

My reading and other books, ● Does this book remind you of anything else you9ve
ûlms and video games seen, played or read?
● This book is a bit like…

My book and the world ● Does this book remind you of something going on
in the world?
● This book is like real life when…

My writing ideas:
I could write about…

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 56

Conclusion
Writing is slippery stu . How does anyone learn to do it well?
- Ralph Fletcher

Properly used, a mentor text does what it says on the tin - it teaches. It o ers children possibilities for their own
compositions, and the chance to see the writer9s craft in action and move their own writing forward in a long-term
way. It9s not a model to be unthinkingly copied or imitated. As we9ve seen, mentor texts help children develop the
crucial connection between reading and writing; they can be read, re-read, discussed and returned to at any stage of
the writing process, particularly during idea generation, conferencing, revising, and proof-reading. They also form the
basis of what we call product goals - goals which help children know what they have to do to write successfully and
meaningfully - and mini-lessons, which show them how to do it. And following on from our determined advice that
you should ûnd your own mentors to help you write your own texts, we suggest that you use those you have written
in a professional development capacity by bringing them to teacher study groups, where you can study the writers9
craft together and think about how to bring that learning back to your young apprentice writers.

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 57

References
● Anderson, C. (2000) How9s It Going? Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
● Corden, R. (2007) Developing Reading/ Writing Connections: The Impact of Explicit Instruction of Literary
Devices on the Quality of Children9s Narrative Writing, Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 21(3)
● Ferguson, F., Young, R. (2022) A Teacher9s Guide To Writing With Multilingual Children Brighton: The Writing For
Pleasure Centre
● Fletcher, R. (2011) Mentor Author, Mentor Texts: Short Texts, Craft Notes, and Practical Classroom Uses
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
● Gabas, C., Cabell, S., Copp, S., Campbell, M. (2022) Evidence-based Features of Writing Instruction in Widely
Used Kindergarten English Language Arts Curricula, Literacy Research and Instruction, DOI:
10.1080/19388071.2022.2059420
● Graham, S., Liu, K., Aitken, A., Ng, C., Bartlett, B., Harris, K. R., & Holzapel, J. (2018a). Balancing reading and
writing instruction: A meta-analysis. Reading Research Quarterly, 53, 2793304
● Graham, S., Liu, K., Bartlett, B., Ng, C., Harris, K. R., Aitken, A., Barkel, A., Kavanaugh, C., & Talukdar, J. (2018b).
Reading for writing: A meta-analysis of the impact of reading and reading instruction on writing. Review of
Educational Research, 88, 2433284
● Harwayne, S. (2021) Above & Beyond The Writing Workshop USA: Stenhouse
● He ernan, L. (2017) Back and Forth: Using an Editor9s Mindset to Improve Student Writing Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann
● Kim, Y.-S.G. (2022) Co-Occurrence of Reading and Writing Di culties: The Application of the Interactive
Dynamic Literacy Model, Journal of learning disabilities, doi:10.1177/00222194211060868
● Meek, M.(1988) How Texts Teach What Readers Learn Stroud:Thimble Press
● Myhill, D., Cremin, T., Oliver, L. (2021) Writing as a craft: Re-considering teacher subject content knowledge for
teaching writing, Research Papers in Education, DOI: 10.1080/02671522.2021.1977376
● Prose, F. (2006) Reading Like a Writer New York: HarperCollins
● Rosen, M. (2016) What Is Poetry?: The Essential Guide to Reading and Writing Poems London: Walker Books
● Smith, F. (1983) Reading like a writer, Language Arts, 60(5), 5583567
● Stewart, M. Correia, M., (2021) 5 Kinds of Nonûction: Enriching Reading and Writing Instruction with Children's
Books USA: Stenhouse Publishers
● Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2020) Real-World Writers London: Routledge
● Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2021a) Writing For Pleasure: Theory, Research & Practice London: Routledge
● Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2021b) The Writing For Pleasure Centre9s Guide To Personal Writing Projects & Writing
Clubs For 3-11 Year Olds Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre
● Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2021c) The Writing For Pleasure Centre9s Writing Development Scales & Assessment
Toolkit Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre
● Young, R., Ferguson, F. Hayden, T., Vasques, M. (2021) The Writing For Pleasure Centre9s Big Book Of
Mini-Lessons: Lessons That Teach Powerful Craft Knowledge For 3-11 Year Olds Brighton: The Writing For
Pleasure Centre
● Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2022a) The Science Of Teaching Primary Writing Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure
Centre
● Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2022b) No More: I Don't Know What To Write About. Lessons That Help Children
Generate Great Ideas Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre
● Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2022c) The Writing For Pleasure Centre9s Grammar Mini-Lessons For 5-11 Year Olds
Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre
● Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2022d) The Writing For Pleasure Centre9s Sentence-Level Instruction: Lessons That Help
Children Find Their Style And Voice Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre
● Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2022e) No More: 8My Pupils Can9t Edit!9 A Whole-School Approach To Developing
Proof-Readers Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre
● Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2022f) Getting Children Up And Running As Book-Makers: Lessons For EYFS-KS1
Teachers Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre
● Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2022g) A Teacher9s Guide To Writing With Multilingual Children Brighton: The Writing For
Pleasure Centre
● Young, R., Hayden, T. (2022) Getting Success Criteria Right For Writing: Helping 3-11 Year Olds Write Their Best
Texts Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre
● Young, R., Govender, N., Kaufman, D., Ferguson, F. (2022a) Writing Realities Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure
Centre
● Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2023a) The Writing For Pleasure Centre9s Handbook Of Research On Teaching Young
Writers Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 58

 ● Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2023b) Supporting Children With SEND: A Guide For Teachers And SENCOS Brighton:
The Writing For Pleasure Centre
● Young, R., Ferguson, F. (2023c) No More: I Don9t Know What To Write Next… Lessons That Help Children Plan
Great Writing Brighton: The Writing For Pleasure Centre

Further Reading
● Anderson, C., (2022) A Teacher9s Guide To Mentor Texts Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
● Barrs, M., Cork, V. (2001) The Reader in the Writer Case Studies in Children's Writing London: CLPE
● Bradley, L.G., Donovan, C.A. (2010) Information Book Read-Alouds as Models for Second-Grade Authors, The
Reading Teacher, 64: 246-260
● Brugar, K. (2019) Inquiry By the Book: Using Children9s Nonûction as Mentor Texts for Inquiry, The Social
Studies, 110:4, 155-160
● Crawford, P., Sobolak, M., Foster, A. (2017) Focus on Elementary: Knowing and Growing With Mentor Texts,
Childhood Education, 93:1, 82-86
● Cruz, M. (2018) Writers Read Better: nonûction: 50+ Paired Lessons That Turn Writing Craft Work Into Powerful
Genre Reading USA: Corwin
● Cruz, M. (2019) Writers Read Better: Narrative: 50+ Paired Lessons That Turn Writing Craft Work Into Powerful
Genre Reading USA: Corwin
● Culham, R. (2014) The Writing Thief: Using Mentor Texts to Teach the Craft of Writing USA: Stenhouse
● Culham, R. (2018) Reading with a writer9s eye: Why book choice matters, The Reading Teacher, 72(4), 5093513
● DeFauw, D., Saad, K. (2014) Creating Science Picture Books for an Authentic Audience, Science Activities, 51:4,
101-115
● Dollins, C.A. (2016) Crafting creative nonûction: From close reading to close writing, The Reading Teacher, 70(1),
49358
● Dollins, C.A. (2020) A Critical Inquiry Approach to Mentor Texts: Learn It With EASE, The Reading Teacher, 74(
2), 1913 199
● Dorfman, L. Cappelli, R. (2007a) Nonûction Mentor Texts: Teaching Informational Writing Through Children's
Literature USA: Stenhouse
● Dorfman, L. Capelli, R. (2007b) Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing Through Children9s Literature, K-6 USA:
Stenhouse
● Gallagher, K. (2014) Making the most of mentor texts, Educational Leadership, 71(7), 28333
● Hansen, J. (2001) When Writers Read Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
● Hubble, G., Lamb, H. (2014) Building Momentum in Writing Instruction Through the Use of Mentor Texts In
Texas Association For Literacy Education Yearbook pp. 16-25
● Johnson, P. (1990) A Book Of One9s Own: Developing Literacy Through Making Books London: Hodder &
Stoughton
● Laist, R. (2021) <Good Writing=: Deûning It and Teaching It, Transformative Dialogues: Teaching and Learning
Journal, 14(2) 115-125
● Laminack, L.L., Wadsworth, R.M (2015) Writers are readers: Flipping reading instruction into writing
opportunities Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
● Marchetti, A., O9Dell, R. (2015) Writing with Mentors: How to Reach Every Writer in the Room Using Current,
Engaging Mentor Texts Portsmouth: Heinemann
● Marchetti, A., O9Dell, R., Wood Ray, K. (2021) A Teacher's Guide to Mentor Texts Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
● Mielke, T. L. (2016) Revisiting classic mentor texts: Establishing a community of writers, Practical Literacy: The
Early and Primary Years, 21(3), 24326.
● Myhill, D., Lines, H., Jones, S. (2018) Texts that teach: Examining the e cacy of using texts as models
L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 18(2), 1324. [Link]
● Paraskevas, C. (2020) Exploring Grammar through Texts: Reading and Writing the Structure of English London:
Routledge
● Premont, D., Young, T., Wilcox, B., Dean, D., Morrison, T. (2017) Picture Books as Mentor Texts for 10th Grade
Struggling Writers, Literacy Research and Instruction, 56:4, 290-310
● Ray, K.W. (2006) Exploring inquiry as a teaching stance in the writing workshop, Language Arts, 83(3), 2383247
● Shubitz, S. (2016) Craft Moves: Lesson Sets for Teaching Writing with Mentor Texts USA: Stenhouse
● Ward, B., Collet, V., & Eilers, L. (2021) Using published authors as mentors to teach grammatical conventions,
Research Papers in Education, DOI: 10.1080/02671522.2020.1864764

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 59

Appendix
Class Writing Projects & Mentor Texts

Class writing project: Mentor texts:

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 60

 A list of great texts which teach great writing:
Mentor texts for 3-103 year olds
EYFS
Early List Books

ABC Books [LINK]

● The Very Hungry Caterpillar9s ABC Board Book

● A Little Alphabet Board Book- Oliver Je ers
● Roald Dahl9s ABC
● ABC Zoo - Rod Campbell
● The Calypso Alphabet - John Agard
● Dinosaurs from A To Z - Cryss Bills
● B Is for Baby – Atinuke & Angela Brooksbank
● Animal ABC – Nikolas Ilic
● Animal ABC – Jannie Ho

Counting Books [LINK]

● I Can Count to 100 - Christie Hainsby

● The Counting Book - Judy Hindley
● Best Counting Book Ever- Richard Scarry
● 5 Little Ducks - Ian Beck
● Ten Nine Eight - Molly Bang
● Handa9s Hen - Eileen Browne
● Count With Little Fish – Lucy Cousins

I Love… Books [LINK]

● Goodnight Moon - Margaret Wise Brown

● My Brown Bear Barney - Dorothy Butler
● The Baby9s Catalogue - Allan & Janet Ahlberg
● I Like Bees, I Don9t Like Honey – Simon Bishop & Fiona Lumbers

I Wish… Books [LINK]

● Astro Girl - Ken Wilson-Max

● I Wish I Could Fly - Ron Maris

My Book Of Food [LINK]

● The Very Hungry Caterpillar - Eric Clarke

● Handa9s Surprise - Eileen Browne
● Eat Your Peas- Kes Gray and Nick Sharratt
● Food - Jan Pienkowski
● Baby Touch: Food - Ladybird

My Book Of Animals [LINK]

● Dear Zoo - Rod Campbell

● Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? - Bill Martin Jnr
● First 100 Animals - Roger Priddy

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 61

My Book Of First Words [LINK]

● First 100 Words - Heather Amery

● First 100 Animals - Friggens, Munday & Oliver
● 100 First Dinosaur Words - Dawn Sirett

My Book Of People [LINK]

● What If We Were All The Same? - [Link]

● Busiest People Ever - Richard Scarry

Pattern Book [LINK]

● Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?- Bill Martin Jnr
● Where9s Spot? - Eric Hill
● Would You Rather?- John Burningham
● My Brown Bear Barney – Dorothy Butler

Things I Like [LINK]

● Things I Like - Anthony Browne

● I Like Books - Anthony Browne

EYFS
Narrative Books

A Story About Me [LINK]

● The Snowy Day - Ezra Jack Keats

● Peter9s Chair - Ezra Jack Keats
● Alûe Gets In First - Shirley Hughes
● The Dancing Class - Helen Oxenbury
● The Blanket - John Burningham
● So Much - Trish Cooke

A Story About… [LINK]

● My Grandma Is Wonderful- Nick Butterworth

● The Sister Book- Todd Parr
● Smart Aunties - Nick Sharratt
● Full, Full, Full Of Love - Trish Cooke
● My Brother Sean - Petronella Breinberg

Animal Stories [LINK]

● Farmer Duck - Martin Waddell

● Mog The Forgetful Cat - Judith Kerr
● Ginger Finds A Home - Charlotte Voake
● Mr Scru – Simon James
● Cheeky Monkey – Zehra Hicks

Character-focused Stories [LINK]

● Not Now, Bernard - David Mc Kee

● The Snowy Day- Ezra Jack Keats
● Peter9s Chair - Ezra Jack Keats
● Jamela9s Dress - Niki Daly
● The Tiger Who Came For Tea – Judith Kerr

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 62

 ● The Gru alo – Julia Donaldson
● The Elephant & The Bad Baby – Elfrida Vipont & Raymond Briggs
● Beegu – Alexis Deacon
● Rosie9s Walk – Pat Hutchins
● Avocado Baby – John Burningham
● The Snowman – Raymond Briggs

Journey Stories [LINK]

● Going On A Bear Hunt - Michael Rosen

● The Spooky Old Tree -Stan and Jan Berenstain
● Whatever Next! - Jill Murphy

My Friend… Stories [LINK]

● Big Dog, Little Dog - P.D. Eastman

● Leon And Bob - Simon James
● Pumpkin Soup- Helen Cooper

Once Upon A Time… Stories [LINK]

● Once Upon A Time - John Prater

● One Day, The End - Rebecca Kai Dotlich

Someone At Home Stories [LINK]

● My Brother - Anthony Browne

● My Mum - Anthony Browne
● My Dad Is Brilliant - Nick Butterworth

True Stories [LINK]

● An Evening At Alûe9s - Shirley Hughes

● Stanley And Rhoda - Rosemary Wells
● Alûe Gets In First-Shirley Hughes
● If All The World Were - Joseph Coelho & Allison Colpoys
● Polonius The Pit Pony – Richard O9Neil & Feronia Parker-Thomas

EYFS
Nonûction Books

All About… [LINK]

● Baby 101 series - Jonathan Litton and Thomas Elliott

● My First Encyclopaedia – Usbourne
● My First Encyclopaedia Of Why? – Sophie Lamoureux
● My First Encyclopaedia Of How? – Sophie Lamoureux
● Lift The Flap General Knowledge – Alex Frith
● My First Book Of Planets – Bruce Betts
● First Facts Bugs – DK
● My First Yoga - DK
● Poo – Nicola Davies
● How Do Apples Grow? – Jill McDonald
● Hey, Water – Antoinette Portis
● How It Works: Tractor – Amelia Hepworth
● Tool Book – Gail Gibbons
● All About Families – Usbourne

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 63

A Book About A Place [LINK]

● A Dark, Dark Tale - Ruth Brown

● Each Peach, Pear, Plum - Allan Ahlberg and Janet Ahlberg
● What The Jackdaw Saw - Julia Donaldson

A Family & Friends Book [LINK]

● So Much - Trish Cooke

● The Family Book - Todd Parr
● Peekaboo Morning - Rachel Isadora
● Titch - Pat Hutchins
● Friends - Rob Lewis
● I Want A Friend - Tony Ross

All About Me Books [LINK]

● The Feelings Book - Todd Parr

● I Like Me - Nancy Carlson
● How Do You Feel? - Anthony Browne

KS1
Narrative Books

Story Books [LINK]

● When Willy Went To The Wedding - Judith Kerr

● The Little Mole Who Knew None Of It Was His Business- Werner Holzwarth & Wolf Erlbruch
● Five Minutes9 Peace - Jill Murphy
● Superhero Max - Bob Graham
● Traction Man - Mini Grey
● Winnie The Witch - Korky Paul
● The Bears Who Stayed Indoors - Susanna Gretz
● Gorilla - Anthony Browne
● The Doorbell Rang - Pat Hutchins ( 8to be continued9 ending)
● Jim And The Beanstalk - Raymond Briggs ( 8to be continued9 ending)
● Where The Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak
● Would You Rather... - John Burningham (Questions inviting answers)
● Six Dinner Sid - Inga Moore
● Don9t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus - Mo Willems
● The Pigeon HAS To Go To School - Mo Willems (Speech bubbles, large text)
● Burglar Bill - Janet & Allan Ahlberg
● Peepo! - Janet & Allan Ahlberg
● Funnybones -Janet & Allan Ahlberg
● School For Dads - Adam & Charlotte Guillain
● I Want My Hat Back - Jon Klassen
● Into The Forest - Anthony Browne
● The Dark - Lemony Snicket
● I Can Only Draw Worms- Will Mabbitt
● The Growing Story - Ruth Krauss
● This Book Just Ate My Dog - Richard Byrne

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 64

Memoir Books [LINK]

● When I Was Five - Arthur Howard

● Memoirs Of A Goldûsh - Devin Scillian
● The Park In The Dark - Martin Waddell
● Wilfred Gordon McDonald Partridge - Mem Fox
● Grandpa Green - Lane Smith

I Loved Your Book, Here9s Mine [LINK]

● The Paper-bag Princess - Robert Munsch

● When Willy Went To The Wedding - Judith Kerr
● The Little Mole Who Knew None Of It Was His Business- Werner Holzwarth & Wolf Erlbruch
● Five Minutes9 Peace - Jill Murphy
● Superhero Max - Bob Graham
● Traction Man - Mini Grey
● Winnie The Witch - Korky Paul
● The Bears Who Stayed Indoors - Susanna Gretz
● The Doorbell Rang - Pat Hutchins ( 8to be continued9 ending)
● Jim And The Beanstalk - Raymond Briggs ( 8to be continued9 ending)
● Where The Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak
● Would You Rather... - John Burningham (Questions inviting answers)
● Six Dinner Sid - Inga Moore
● Don9t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus - Mo Willems
● The Pigeon HAS To Go To School - Mo Willems(Speech bubbles, large text)
● Burglar Bill - Janet & Allan Ahlberg
● Peepo! - Janet & Allan Ahlberg
● Funnybones -Janet & Allan Ahlberg
● School For Dads - Adam & Charlotte Guillain
● I Want My Hat Back - Jon Klassen
● Gorilla - Anthony Browne
● Into The Forest - Anthony Browne
● The Tunnel - Anthony Browne
● Piggybook - Anthony Browne
● The Dark - Lemony Snicket
● I Can Only Draw Worms- Will Mabbitt
● The Growing Story - Ruth Krauss
● This Book Just Ate My Dog - Richard Byrne
● I Really Want The Cake -Simon Philip
● I Really Want To Win - Simon Philip
● I Really Want To Shout -Simon Philip
● Tortoise9s Dream- Joanna Troughton

Let9s Make A Picturebook Series [LINK]

● The Scaredy Squirrel series - Melanie Watt

● The Knu e Bunny series - Mo Willems
● The Pigeon series - Mo Willems
● The Meg And Mog series - Helen Nicoll and Jan Pienkowski
● The Nutshell Library series – Maurice Sendak
● The Bear & Mouse series - Bonny Becker
● The Olivia series - Ian Falcone
● The Charlie & Lola series - Lauren Child
● The Peter Rabbit series – Beatrix Potter

Let9s Make A Chapter Book Series [LINK]

● Frog & Toad series - Arnold Lobel

● Oliver & Amanda Pig series - Jean Van Leeuwen
● Little Bear series - Else Holmelund Minarik
© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 65
 ● Captain Underpants series - Dav Pilkey
● A Bargain For Frances - Russell Hoban and Lillian Hoban

Fables [LINK]

● Very Short Fables to Read Together by Mary Ann Hoberman

● Fables by Arnold Lobel
● The Selûsh Giant by Oscar Wilde
● Fifty Fables for Children by Johann Wilhelm
● Cautionary Tales for Children by Hilaire Belloc
● Aesop9s Fables by Michael Rosen
● Aesop9s Fables by Michael Morpurgo
● Aesop9s Funky Fables by Vivian French
● The Best Aesop9s Fables For Little Kids by Lily Wilson
● Aesop9s Fables For Little Children by Usborne

Fairytales [LINK]

Collections

● Usborne Illustrated Fairy Tales by Rosie Dickins

● A First Book of Fairy Tales by Mary Ho man and Julie Downing
● Illustrated Hans Christian Andersen9s Fairy Tales by Usborne Publishing
● A Year Full of Stories by Angela McAllister & Christopher Corr
● English Fairy Tales Collected by Joseph Jacobs
● The Illustrated Anansi by Philip M. Sherlock

Individual tales (Picturebooks)

● Hansel and Gretel by Anthony Browne

● The Princess and the Pea by Lauren Child
● Cendrillon: A Caribbean Cinderella by Robert D. San Souci
● The Twelve Dancing Princesses by Errol le Cain
● Thorn Rose by Errol le Cain
● Molly Whuppie by Walter de la Mare
● Anansi and Mr Dry-Bone by Fiona French
● The Old Woman and the Red Pumpkin by Betsy Bang
● Bimwili and the Zimwi by Verna Aardema
● Mufaro9s Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe
● What Made Tiddalik Laugh by Joanna Troughton
● Tortoise9s Dream by Joanna Troughton

Subversive fairy and folk tales

● Fairy Tales: The Villain9s Version by Kaye Umansky

● Mixed Up Fairy Tales by Hilary Robinson
● The Cat, the Dog, Little Red, the Exploding Eggs, the Wolf and Grandma9s Wardrobe by Christyan Fox
● Snow White in New York by Fiona French
● Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
● Once Upon a Wood by Chris Riddell
● After the Fall by Dan Santat
● The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka
● Inside the Villains by Clotilde Perrin
● The Gingerbread Man 2: What Happened Later? by Stephen Dixon
● Beware of the Bears by Alan MacDonald
● The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig by Eugene Trivizas
● The Wolf9s Story: What Really Happened to Little Red Riding Hood by Toby Forward
● Little Red Reading Hood by Lucy Rowland
● Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs by Mo Willems
● The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka
© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 66
 ● Prince Cinders by Babette Cole
● The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
● Jim and the Beanstalk by Raymond Briggs
● Seriously Silly Stories by Lawrence Anholt
● Not All Princesses Dress in Pink by Jane Yolen
● The Knight Who Wouldn9t Fight by Helen Docherty

KS1
Nonûction Books

Information Books [LINK]

● Disgusting Critters: The Bat - Elise Gravel

● Yucky Worms - Vivian French
● Why Do Cats Meow? - Nick Crumpton & Lily Snowden-Fine
● Why Don't Fish Drown? - Anna Claybourne & Claire Goble
● The Emperor9s Egg - Martin Jenkins
● How Dogs Really Work - Alan Snow
● Why Do Dogs Sni Bottoms? - Nick Crumpton & Lily Snowden-Fine
● Animals Brag About Their Bottoms - Maki Sato & Brian Bergstrom
● When Cloud Became A Cloud - Rob Hodgson
● Never Smile at a Monkey: And 17 Other Important Things to Remember by Steve Jenkins
● Pink Is for Blobûsh: Discovering the World9s Perfectly Pink Animals by Jess Keating
● Sun: One in a Billion by Stacey McAnulty
● The Cat in the Hat9s Learning Library by Dr. Seuss

Curiosity Letters [LINK]

● Dear World, How Are You? - Toby Little

● Dragon Post – Emma Yarlett
● Yours Sincerely Gira e – Megumi Iwasa and Jun Takabatake
● Paddington9s Post – Michael Bond
● Meerkat Mail – Emily Gravett
● Dear Teacher – Amy Husband
● Peppa Pig: Peppa9s Post – Peppa Pig
● Mr Busy9s Post: A Letter Book – Egmont Publishing

Instruction Books [LINK]

● How To Wash A Woolly Mammoth by Michelle Robinson

● How To Babysit A Grandma by Jean Reagan
● How To Babysit A Grandad by Jean Reagan
● How To Feed Your Cheeky Monkey by Jane Clarke
● How To Bath Your Little Dinosaur by Jane Clarke
● How To Brush Your Teeth With Snappy Croc by Jane Clarke
● How To Tuck In Your Sleepy Lion by Jane Clarke
● How To by Julie Morstad
● This Is How We Do It by Matt Lamothe
● Everything You Need to Build a Treehouse by Carter Higgins
● How to Look After Your Cat by Colin Hawkins

Let9s Make A Magazine [LINK]

● Dot Magazine
● Chrip Magazine
● Okido Magazine
● The Week Magazine
● First News

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 67

 KS1
Poetry

My First Poetry Anthology [LINK]

● Little Poems For Tiny Ears - Lin Oliver & Tomie dePaola
● A Great Big Cuddle: Poems For The Very Young - Michael Rosen & Chris Riddell
● The Pu n Book Of Fantastic First Poems - June Crebbin
● Here9s A Little Poem: A Very First Book Of Poetry - Jane Yolen
● Poems Out Loud! First Poems To Read & Perform - Ladybird Books
● I Am A Potato - John Hegley
● Jelly Boots Smelly Boots - Michael Rosen
● First Rhymes - Rod Campbell

My First Haiku Book [LINK]

● Haiku Baby - Betsy E. Snyder

● Haiku Night – Betsy E. Snyder
● Little Poems For Tiny Ears - Lin Oliver & Tomie dePaola
● A Great Big Cuddle: Poems For The Very Young - Michael Rosen & Chris Riddell
● The Pu n Book Of Fantastic First Poems - June Crebbin
● Here9s A Little Poem: A Very First Book Of Poetry – Jane Yolen
● Poems Out Loud! First Poems To Read & Perform - Ladybird Books
● I Am A Potato - John Hegley
● Jelly Boots Smelly Boots - Michael Rosen
● First Rhymes - Rod Campbell

KS2
Narrative Books

Fables [LINK]

● Very Short Fables to Read Together by Mary Ann Hoberman

● Fables by Arnold Lobel
● The Selûsh Giant by Oscar Wilde
● Fifty Fables for Children by Johann Wilhelm
● Cautionary Tales for Children by Hilaire Belloc
● Aesop9s Fables by Michael Rosen
● Aesop9s Fables by Michael Morpurgo
● Aesop9s Funky Fables by Vivian French
● The Best Aesop9s Fables For Little Kids by Lily Wilson
● Aesop9s Fables For Little Children by Usborne

Fairytales [LINK]

Collections

● Usborne Illustrated Fairy Tales by Rosie Dickins

● A First Book of Fairy Tales by Mary Ho man and Julie Downing
● Illustrated Hans Christian Andersen9s Fairy Tales by Usborne Publishing
● A Year Full of Stories by Angela McAllister & Christopher Corr
● English Fairy Tales Collected by Joseph Jacobs
● The Illustrated Anansi by Philip M. Sherlock

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 68

Individual tales (Picturebooks)

● Hansel and Gretel by Anthony Browne

● The Princess and the Pea by Lauren Child
● Cendrillon: A Caribbean Cinderella by Robert D. San Souci
● The Twelve Dancing Princesses by Errol le Cain
● Thorn Rose by Errol le Cain
● Molly Whuppie by Walter de la Mare
● Anansi and Mr Dry-Bone by Fiona French
● The Old Woman and the Red Pumpkin by Betsy Bang
● Bimwili and the Zimwi by Verna Aardema
● Mufaro9s Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe
● What Made Tiddalik Laugh by Joanna Troughton
● Tortoise9s Dream by Joanna Troughton

Subversive fairy and folk tales

● Fairy Tales: The Villain9s Version by Kaye Umansky

● Mixed Up Fairy Tales by Hilary Robinson
● The Cat, the Dog, Little Red, the Exploding Eggs, the Wolf and Grandma9s Wardrobe by Christyan Fox
● Snow White in New York by Fiona French
● Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
● Once Upon a Wood by Chris Riddell
● After the Fall by Dan Santat
● The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka
● Inside the Villains by Clotilde Perrin
● The Gingerbread Man 2: What Happened Later? by Stephen Dixon
● Beware of the Bears by Alan MacDonald
● The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig by Eugene Trivizas
● The Wolf9s Story: What Really Happened to Little Red Riding Hood by Toby Forward
● Little Red Reading Hood by Lucy Rowland
● Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs by Mo Willems
● The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka
● Prince Cinders by Babette Cole
● The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
● Jim and the Beanstalk by Raymond Briggs
● Seriously Silly Stories by Lawrence Anholt
● Not All Princesses Dress in Pink by Jane Yolen
● The Knight Who Wouldn9t Fight by Helen Docherty

Character-driven And Setting-focused Short Stories [LINK]

● A Sackful of Stories for Eight-Year-Olds by Pat Thomson

● Story Shop: Stories for Literacy by Nikki Gamble
● Stories for Eight-Year-Olds by Wendy Cooling
● Summertime Stories by Enid Blyton
● Scary Stories by Val Bierman
● Topsy Turvy Tales by Leila Berg
● Granny9s Wonderful Chair by Frances Brown (collection)
● Shakespeare Stories and Greek Myths by Orchard Publishing
● Tales from the Caribbean by Trish Cooke
● Short Christmas Stories by Maggie Pearson

Developed Short Stories [LINK]

● A Sackful of Stories for Eight-Year-Olds by Pat Thomson

● Story Shop: Stories for Literacy by Nikki Gamble
● Stories for Eight-Year-Olds by Wendy Cooling
● Summertime Stories by Enid Blyton
● Scary Stories by Val Bierman
© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 69
 ● Topsy Turvy Tales by Leila Berg
● Granny9s Wonderful Chair by Frances Brown (collection)
● Shakespeare Stories and Greek Myths by Orchard Publishing
● Tales from the Caribbean by Trish Cooke
● Short Christmas Stories by Maggie Pearson
● Mind-Swapping Madness by Tom E. Mo att
● Body-Hopping Hysterics by Tom E. Mo att
● Mixed-Up Mayhem by Tom E. Mo att

Graphic Novels [LINK]

● The British Library Website for examples of graphic novels in process

[[Link]
● The Arrival by Shaun Tan
● Northern Lights: The Graphic Novel by Philip Pullman
● The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
● The Adventures of John Blake by Philip Pullman
● Bravo Mr William Shakespeare by Marcia Williams
● The Iliad and the Odyssey by Marcia Williams
● Chaucer9s Canterbury Tales by Marcia Williams
● Oliver Twist by Marcia Williams
● Some Swell Pup or Are You Sure You Want a Dog by Maurice Sendak
● Mr Wolf9s Class (series) by Aron Nels Steinke
● Glitch by Sarah Graley
● Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea!; Super Narwhal and Jelly Jolt; Peanut Butter and Jelly by Ben Clanton
● The Cardboard Kingdom by Chad Sell
● Hilda (series) by Luke Pearson
● Kai and the Monkey King; Arthur and the Golden Rope; Marcy and the Riddle of the Sphinx by Joe Todd Stanton
● Amulet (series) by Kazu Kibuishi
● New Kid by Jerry Craft
● El Deafo by Cece Bell
● Akissi by Mathieu Sapin
● Mega Robo Bros by Neill Cameron
● Bunny vs. Monkey by Jamie Smart

Flash-ûction [LINK]

● Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan

● Tales From The Inner City by Shaun Tan
● Short! A Book of Very Short Stories by Kevin Crossley-Holland
● Short Too! by Kevin Crossley-Holland
● A Pocketful of Stories by Stuart Purcell
● Bonkers Short Stories by Tom E. Mo att

For adults

● Microûction edited by Jerome Stern

● Best Microûction edited by various
● New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction by James Thomas & Robert Scotellaro
● The Rose Metal Press Field Guide To Writing Flash-Fiction edited by Tara Masih
● Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories from Around the World edited by James Thomas
● Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories edited by Robert Shapard
● New Sudden Fiction: Short-Short Stories from America and Beyond edited by Robert Shapard and James
Thomas
● Flash Fiction Forward 80 Very Short Stories by Robert Shapard
● Writing Flash Fiction by Carly Berg

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 70

Memoir (Personal Narrative) [LINK]

● The BBC9s 8childhood9 archive website

● The British Library9s 8children9s playground games9 archive website
● Michael Rosen9s Sad Book by Michael Rosen
● Quick, Let9s Get Out of Here by Michael Rosen
● Hey World! Here I Am by Jean Little
● Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street by Roni Schotter
● When I Was Young in the Mountains by Cynthia Rylant
● My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother by Patricia Polacco
● Gregory Cool by Caroline Binch
● Down by the River: Afro-Caribbean Rhymes, Games and Songs for Children by Grace Hallworth
● When I Was Nine by James Stevenson
● Keeping Clear of Paradise Street by Brian Moses
● The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend
● Home by Carson Ellis
● Homecoming by Michael Morpurgo
● Boy by Roald Dahl
● Going Solo by Roald Dahl
● War Boy: A Wartime Childhood by Michael Foreman
● The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
● What I9ll Remember When I9m a Grown Up by Gina Willner-Pard
● The Fib, the Swap, the Trick and other stories by George Layton

KS2
Nonûction Books

Information Texts [LINK]

● The Earth Book by Jonathan Litton

● Dragonology: The Complete Book of Dragons by Dugald Steer, Helen Ward and Douglas Carrel
● True or False by Andrea Mills
● Until I Met Dudley by Roger McGough
● Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Cracking Contraptions Manual by Derek Smith and Graham Bleathman
● Flanimals by Ricky Gervais
● Sharks For Kids by David McGuire
● Spi-ku: A Clutter of Short Verse on Eight Legs by Leslie Bulion
● This Is How We Do It by Matt Lamothe
● The Emperor9s Egg by Martin Jenkins
● The Way Things Work by David Macaulay and Neil Ardley
● Corpse Talk (series) by Adam Murphy and Lisa Murphy
● A Viking Adventure; A Roman Adventure; An Egyptian Adventure by The Histronauts
● Chop, Sizzle, Wow by The Silver Spoon
● What9s The Di erence? by Strack Plantevin and Guillaume Plantevin
● Creaturepedia; Plantopedia by Adrienne Barman
● The World of the Unknown (series): Ghosts, Monsters, Mysteries of the Unknown, UFOs by Usborne
● Ick! Delightfully Disgusting Animal Dinners, Dwellings, and Defences by Melissa Stewart
● Itch! Everything You Didn9t Want to Know About What Makes You Scratch by Anita Sanchez
● Giant Squid by Candace Fleming

Instructions [LINK]

● How To by Julie Morstad

● This Is How We Do It by Matt Lamothe
● Everything You Need to Build a Treehouse by Carter Higgins
● How to Look After Your Cat by Colin Hawkins

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 71

Explanation Texts [LINK]

● How to Handle Grownups by Jim Eldridge

● Why? Encyclopaedia: Brilliant Answers to Ba ing Questions by DK
● How Dogs Really Work by Alan Snow
● How Things Work by Tamara J. Resler
● How Things Work Encyclopedia by DK
● The Way Things Work by David Macaulay and Neil Ardley
● How to Wash a Woolly Mammoth by Michelle Robinson
● What on Earth Happened?: The Complete Story of the Planet, Life and People from the Big Bang to the Present
Day by Christopher Lloyd
● Before And After by Matthias Arégui and Anne-Margot Ramstein

Discussion Texts [LINK]

● The Philosophy Book by Dorling Kindersley

● This New Season: Our Class, Our Schools, Our World by Chris Searle
● Stepney Words by Chris Searle
● England: Poems From A School
● Poetry For A Change by Otter-Barry
● If I Were In Charge Of The World by Judith Viorst
● Real-Life Mysteries by Susan Martineau
● Thinkers9 Games by Jason Buckley
● Politics for Beginners by Louie Stowell
● The If Machine: Philosophical Enquiry in the Classroom by Peter Worley
● The Philosophy Shop by Peter Worley
● History9s Mysteries by Kitson Jazynka and National Geographic Kids
● What Is Right and Wrong? Who Decides? Where Do Values Come From? And Other Big Questions by Michael
Rosen and Annemarie Young
● First News
● Newsround

Science Reports [LINK]

● How to Be a Scientist by Steve Mould

● 101 Great Science Experiments by DK
● 101 Brilliant Things for Kids to Do in Science by Dawn Isaac

Persuasive Letter (For Personal Gain) [LINK]

● How To Change The World by Rashmi Sirdeshpander

● Dear World, How Are You? By Toby Little

Advocacy Journalism (Newspaper Report) [LINK]

● Local paper
● Community magazines
● Amnesty International9s website ([Link])
● First News
● The Week
● The Happy News
● Charity magazines

Community Activism (Magazine Articles And Persuasive Letters) [LINK]

● Local papers and First News

● This Book Is Not Rubbish by Isabel Thomas
● Politics for Beginners by Usborne
● All About Politics: How Governments Make the World Go Round by DK Publishing
● Rise Up: Ordinary Kids with Extraordinary Stories by Amanda Li
© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 72
People9s History [LINK]

● Visit your library or local history centre where you will ûnd many examples of people9s history, often
self-published, by local historians.
● Reader9s Digest Local History Detective by Reader9s Digest
● QueenSpark Books is an interesting website which showcases local history publishing (adult only)

Biography [LINK]

● Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo
● Stories for Boys Who Dare to Be Di erent by Ben Brooks
● Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World by Rachel Ignotofsky
● Little People, Big Dreams (series) by Frances Lincoln Children9s Books

Autobiography [LINK]

● How to Write Your Life Story by Ralph Fletcher

● Looking Back: A Book of Memories by Lois Lowry
● The BBC9s 8childhood9 archive website
● The British Library9s 8children9s playground games9 archive website
● Michael Rosen9s Sad Book by Michael Rosen
● Quick, Let9s Get Out of Here by Michael Rosen
● Hey World! Here I Am by Jean Little
● Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street by Roni Schotter
● When I Was Young in the Mountains by Cynthia Rylant
● My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother by Patricia Polacco
● Gregory Cool by Caroline Binch
● Down by the River: Afro-Caribbean Rhymes, Games and Songs for Children by Grace Hallworth
● When I Was Nine by James Stevenson
● Keeping Clear of Paradise Street by Brian Moses
● The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend
● Home by Carson Ellis
● Homecoming by Michael Morpurgo
● Boy by Roald Dahl
● Going Solo by Roald Dahl
● War Boy: A Wartime Childhood by Michael Foreman
● The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
● What I9ll Remember When I9m a Grown Up by Gina Willner-Pard
● The Fib, the Swap, the Trick and other stories by George Layton

Historical Account [LINK]

● History9s Mysteries by Kitson Jazynka and National Geographic Kids

● Our Island Story by H.E. Marshall
● What on Earth Happened? by Christopher Lloyd
● What Happened When in the World by DK Publishing
● 100 Things to Know About History by various authors

KS2
Poetry

Animals And Pets Poetry [LINK]

● Cats (and Other Crazy Cuddlies) by Richard and Helen Exley

● The Nation9s Best Animal Poems by various authors
● The Penguin in Lost Property by Jan Dean and Roger Stevens
● Animal Poems – Jennifer Curry
● Pet Poems – Jennifer Curry

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 73

 ● Where Zebras Go – Sue Hardy-Dawson
● Perfectly Peculiar Pets – Elli Woollard
● Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright – Fiona Waters
● Spi-ku: A Clutter of Short Verse on Eight Legs by Leslie Bulion

The Natural World [LINK]

● Poetry Please: The Seasons by Various authors

● Vacation Time Poems For Children by Nikki Giovanni
● I Am The Seed That Grew The Tree by Fiona Waters
● All the Wild Wonders: Poems of our Earth by Wendy Cooling
● A Year Of Nature Poems by Joseph Coelho
● Overheard In A Tower Block by Joseph Coelho
● [Link]: an American based nature poetry journal and website

Sensory Poetry [LINK]

● Sensational by Roger Mc Gough

● Unexplained Things about My Dad (Ian McMillan, p 25)
● The Puddle (Jean Sprackland, p 29)
● Who Has Seen the Wind? (Christina Rossetti, p 49)
● Paint Box (Phoebe Hesketh, p 58)
● What is . . . the Sun? (Wes Magee, p 65)
● Quieter than Snow (Berlie Doherty, p 81)
● November Night (Adelaide Crapsey, p 92)
● Joy at the Sound (Roger McGough, p 97)
● Pleasant Sounds (John Clare, p 102)
● Life Is a Bucket (Roger McGough, p 110)
● Peach (Rose Rauter, p 115)
● The Apple9s Song (Edwin Morgan, p 116)
● Gregory Gruber (Marian Swinger, p 190)
● Vegan (Benjamin Zephaniah, p 200)
● Hot Food (Michael Rosen, p 204)
● How to Eat a Poem (Eve Merriam in 8You9ll Love This Stu 9 edited by Morag Styles, p 96)
● The Beach (William Hart-Smith, in 8You9ll Love This Stu 9 edited by Morag Styles, p 85)
● Stopping by Woods (Robert Frost, in 8A Shame to Miss9 edited by Anne Fine, vol. 1, p 113)
● Blackberry eating by Galway Kinnell [LINK]

Inspired By… Poetry [LINK]

● Love That Dog by Sharon Creech

● Poetry for a Change by various
● Rhythm and Poetry by Karl Nova
● Happy Poems by Roger McGough
● Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
● Poetry Jump-Up! by Grace Nichols
● You9ll Love This Stu by Morag Styles
● Things You Find in a Poet9s Beard by A.F. Harold

Poetry That Hides In Things [LINK]

● All My Own Stu by Adrian Mitchell

● Love That Dog by Sharon Creech
● Happy Poems by Roger McGough
● Sky In The Pie by Roger McGough
● Moon Juice by Kate Wakeling
● Cloud Soup by Kate Wakeling

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 74

Anthology Of Life [LINK]

● What I9ll Remember When I Am a Grownup by Gina Willner-Pardo

● 101 Poems about Childhood edited by Michael Donaghy
● Grow Your Own Poems by Peter Dixon
● Been to Yesterday: Poems of a Life by Lee Hopkins (adult only)
● Baseball, Snakes, and Summer Squash: Poems about Growing Up by Donald Graves
● The Best of Children9s Poetry edited by Jennifer Curry
● Heard It in the Playground by Allan Ahlberg
● Please Mrs Butler by Allan Ahlberg
● A Kid in My Class by Rachel Rooney
● Overheard in a Tower Block by Joseph Coelho
● Quick, Let9s Get Out of Here by Michael Rosen
● Neighbourhood Odes by Gary Soto
● A Fire in My Hands by Gary Soto
● A Caribbean Dozen: Poems from 13 Caribbean Poets by Grace Nichols
● Swings and Shadows: A Childhood in Poetry by Anne Harvey
● The Nation9s Favourite Poems of Childhood by Esther Rantzen (adult only)

Social And Political Poetry [LINK]

● If I Were in Charge of the World and Other Worries by Judith Viorst

● Dreams of Freedom: In Words and Pictures by Amnesty International
● Reaching for the Stars: Poems about Extraordinary Women and Girls by Liz Brownlee, Jan Dean and Michela
Morgan
● England: Poems From a School by Kate Clanchy
● Poetry For A Change by The Arts Foundation
● Funky Chickens by Benjamin Zephaniah
● Ranters, Ravers and Rhymers: Poems by Black and Asian Poets by Farrukh Dhondy
● Rise Like Lions: Poetry for the Many by Ben Okri
● Stepney Words by Chris Searle
● World in a Classroom by Chris Searle
● Classroom of resistance by Chris Searle
● Be The Change: Poems To Help You Save The World by Liz Brownlee, Matt Goodfellow and Roger Stevens
● Belonging Street by Mandy Coe
● The Same Inside by Roger Stevens, Matt Goodfellow and Liz Brownlee

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 75

Recommended further reading and resources

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 76

© The Writing For Pleasure Centre 77
Reading In The Writing Classroom will tell you everything you need to
know about mentor texts. It shows you how to draw on children9s
literature, including ûction, poetry and nonûction, in the quest to ûnd
just the right texts to use as models, and then how to get the very
most out of them during a class writing project. More than that, you9ll
learn how easy it is to ûnd your own literary mentors, write your own
great texts tailored to your class, and, as a reader-writer-teacher, be
conûdent that you are helping children create their own best texts
too.

In this eBook, we cover:

● How to read deeply as a writer reads.

● How to teach children to read deeply as a writer reads.
● What mentor texts do for writers.
● How using mentor texts makes writing techniques visible and
utterly attainable for teachers and children.
● How to ûnd craft moves from your reading to use in your own
writing.
● How children can ûnd craft moves from their reading to use in
their own writing.
● The untold beneûts of writing your own mentor texts as a
writer-teacher.
● Advice and activities which help children get the most out of
studying mentor texts.
● A booklist of great texts which teach great writing: mentor texts
for 3-103 year olds.

Using mentor texts brings reading and writing together in profound

ways and is therefore an essential part of developing yourself as a
world-class teacher of both reading and writing. By studying mentor
texts with your class, you will be able to show them in an explicit way
what writers do. Put simply, through reading and discussing powerful
models, children see what 8good writing9 is before producing it for
themselves in their very own pieces.