What Are Mentor Texts?

Mentor texts or anchor texts are any text that can be used as an example of good writing for writers.  Writers use a mentor text to inform their own writing. Ralph Fletcher explains that mentor texts are, "...any texts that you can learn from, and every writer, no matter how skilled you are or how beginning you are, encounters and reads something that can lift and inform and infuse their own writing. I'd say anything that you can learn from - not by talking about but just looking at the actual writing itself, being used in really skillful, powerful way." To read or listen to Ralph talk more about mentor texts, you can listen this great Choice Literacy podcast.  

I started Teach Mentor Texts as a place to focus on sharing how to use authentic texts to impact writing. When I read, my writer's eye looks for what I can learn from a text and how it can inform my own my writing. My mentor texts posts highlight texts that writers might use as mentor texts.