Mentor Sentences: The Secret to Teaching Grammar

As a middle school ELA teacher, you have a jam-packed daily schedule. From making time for independent reading to getting students to actually write, it seems impossible to squeeze in one more thing. And therefore, grammar once again falls to the wayside… Teaching grammar is necessary, but you don’t know how to fit it in or how to teach it (without putting the class to sleep). Luckily, there is a solution: mentor sentences. 

The Current Problem with Grammar in Middle School

Do you remember how you learned grammar? I remember lugging home grammar worksheets in middle school and working through grammar workbooks. While this grammar strategy isn’t wrong (and your students might walk away with some knowledge), it isn’t the best way to build grammar skills.

Using grammar worksheets in middle school won’t cut it alone, so you’re probably teaching a mini-lesson first. That means you have to carve out 15-20 minutes a day just for grammar. (Who has time for that?) Or maybe you spend one day a week working on grammar but don’t review the skills throughout the week. Which means that skill goes in one ear…and out the other.

With this strategy, you’re also teaching grammar in isolation. Instead of teaching grammar alongside your other content, it’s taught and reviewed separately. Students retain information best when it’s used in real-world contexts, so worksheets doesn’t do grammar justice.

The Future of Teaching Grammar: Mentor Sentences

Instead of teaching grammar in isolation and relying on drill-and-kill worksheets, the future of grammar is pivoting toward mentor sentences. Mentor sentences model for students a grammar skill (or multiple skills) in action. They are well-written sentences, usually taken from works of literature.

If you want to feel confident using mentor sentences, check out my workshop, Mentor Sentence Magic. I give you a step-by-step breakdown of how to implement this grammar strategy in your classroom, plus where to find authentic mentor sentences to use with students.

Why Mentor Sentences Work

There are a few things research tells us work when teaching grammar. Teach it authentically. Use lots of examples. Invite students to analyze.

Want to guess which strategy incorporates all of those elements? Yep, it’s mentor sentences. With mentor sentences, you can skip the drawn-out lessons and ditch the worksheets. Instead, students will be analyzing a sentence from an authentic text, and then modeling what they see in their own writing. By the end of the year, they will have collected tons of examples of grammar in action.

How to Use Mentor Sentences

Here’s the best part about mentor sentences: it’s possible to teach grammar every day for just 5-10 minutes a day. You can end your class period with mentor sentences, or use it as your warm-up. However you choose to do it, it’s easy to keep grammar skills fresh and connect reading, writing, and grammar content together.

Let’s talk about what creating that weekly routine can look like.

(Want to learn more about using mentor sentences? In my workshop, Mentor Sentence Magic, I share my best tips for planning your week, finding mentor sentences, and even using texts from your reading unit.)

Monday Musings: Each Monday, you will introduce a new mentor sentence. Students will write down what they notice about the mentor sentence. Students will also label the entire sentence.

Teacher Tuesday: You will explicitly teach the grammar focus of that sentence. For instance, you may teach a 5-minute lesson on commas in a list and use the mentor sentence as an example.

Wednesday Work-It: Students will practice working with the grammar skill. Students will change the sentence in some way that focuses on the new grammar skill.

Thinking Thursday: Students will think of their own sentence that uses the grammar skill of the week. They can model their sentence after the mentor sentence.

Final Friday: Students are assessed on the grammar skill. This can be a more formal quiz or an extension of their knowledge, like having them write a paragraph that uses the new skill.

Then you rinse and repeat! This is my favorite routine, but you can change up the days or the format to fit your classroom.

Mentor Sentence Magic Workshop

Ready to teach grammar in just 5-10 minutes a day? In Mentor Sentence Magic, I’m sharing my weekly grammar routine and giving you a step-by-step breakdown – so you can confidently implement it in your classroom. I’ll also show you how to find mentor sentences in the texts you’re reading in class.

The workshop comes with bonus resources, including six weeks of mentor sentences, 100 grammar exit tickets, and 39 grammar interactive notebook pages.
Get instant access to Mentor Sentence Magic, or join The Hungry Teacher’s Hub for this workshop and hundreds of ready-to-go ELA resources.