Digital Middle School Grammar Mentor Sentences to Teach CCSS Grammar

My Middle School Mentor Sentences to Teach Grammar  (both Volume One and Volume Two) are now completely digital in Google Slides and Google Forms and I wanted to outline all the digital components of this resource. There have been huge updates to the assessments. They are now self-grading in Google Forms, plus all other components are digital in slides. There are grammar interactive notebooks lessons, daily grammar editing and improving work, and the the display slides.

WHAT ARE  MIDDLE SCHOOL MENTOR SENTENCES?

When it come to Mentor Sentences, I’ve realized that most teachers fall into the following categories when it comes to implementing mentor sentences:

1. I have no idea what mentor sentences are, but I am intrigued now.
2. I have seen mentor sentences, but didn’t really know where to start.
3. Most mentor sentence ideas seem to be for elementary students, and I want to implement them with my middle school students.

I was in the third category. I have seen tons of stuff and ideas for mentor sentences for elementary students. Now, to be fair, I have seen some ideas and examples for mentor sentences for middle school, but there was nothing comprehensive for a middle school classroom, and there definitely wasn’t anything challenging enough for what I needed for my middle school students.

From what I have seen about mentor sentences, most follow a structure where students make their own noticings about the mentor sentence for the week, on Mondays. After that, the rest of the week is spent focusing on working with the sentence and grammar/language skills.

The images below are what a typical week looks like in my middle school ELA classroom:

 

In order to prevent students from saying, “I don’t notice anything,” I created the following Monday Musings sheets for students to reference each Monday. I laminated some for each of my table groups and taped them to a desk. I also made chart papers to make sure they have no excuses for what they need to do.

Eventually this becomes second nature to students, but in the beginning, it’s definitely a necessity.

As a teacher who has gone from 5th to 6th and then to 7th and 8th grade, I’ve realized that my needs for my students change each time I move grade levels. So even if I use the same concepts or structures in each of the grades, I often need to make adjustments based on the challenge I need my students to have or the amount of time I have in my class periods.

Because of that, I created three different options (each one with my three different schools and grade levels in mind) hopefully to meet all your needs too. For digital, there are two different options for how students complete the Mentor Sentences.

This first option is great if students are digital or have one-to-one devices. I love this set up, because students know exactly what to do. The con would be that they might want to try and do all they work ahead of time (not the end of the world– but something that could and probably will happen).

I also know how difficult the first years of teaching middle school English are. Answer keys and examples were crucial, so I have possible answers for each week. I have gotten better as I’ve created these resources. The examples and answers will get better as I continue to make the quarters ;), but it definitely helps to have a start.

This is another option for both digital and in person students. These are just slides to project. They are in PowerPoint, Google Slides, and also in JPEG format so you can use them however you need. The only issue with these is that students might copy the mentor sentences down incorrectly, but other than that, these are a great option as well.

I have already tried to outline the Tuesday lessons to the assessments that I created for Fridays. I realized I need to have much more explicit instruction for students to learn the middle school grammar skills. Because of that, I have created simple interactive notebook lessons for students and teachers to use each Tuesday. They are a little overloaded in the beginning, but they slow down as the students learn more skills. All of these have been put into Google Slides for students to fill int the text boxes and make their own interactive grammar notebooks in Google Slides.

Here is a lesson that I teach before we even start using the mentor sentences:

Here is an example of lessons based on the mentor sentence for week one. The first week has a few lessons, but it’s something that the students will need to notice each week.

I have also created assessments that students will do each Friday. The best part is that they are now 100% self-grading in Google Forms! The assessments are based on the mentor sentences and the pre-selected language skills and lessons that are taught on Tuesdays. Each assessment comes with answer keys. Even if you don’t use the Tuesday lessons, you can still look at the assessments. Then you can make sure students have an understanding of the skills that are assessed on Friday.

1. Middle School Mentor Sentences Volume I has been done and updated repeatedly for the last three years. This has both the digital and print version.
2. DIGITAL ONLY Middle School Mentor Sentences Volume I: This has the digital only version.
3. Middle School Mentor Sentences Volume II is currently a growing bundle but it is almost done!
4. DIGITAL ONLY Middle School Mentor Sentences Volume II: This has the digital only version.

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1. Using Mentor Sentences to Teach Grammar in Middle School