The Joy of Writing Mentor Texts

It’s my fifth year teaching fifth grade, and my third year teaching Writer’s Workshop to fifth graders. Last fall, I was excited to attend an online session with Hareem A Khan and Eric Hand for their new Graphic Novels unit for Grades 4-6. I was blown away by the work they did and immediately pre-ordered the unit. When it came in the spring, I eagerly launched into teaching it, knowing my student writers would love it.

Last year, though, we were only able to do the first bend, as it was close to the end of the year and we had limited time. Instead of writing my own mentor text, I based mine off of Hareem’s, which is great, as it worked for all of the mini-lessons, but it wasn’t my own. I didn’t have to actually go through the writing process of generating an idea, bookmapping, considering panels as I sketched my thumbnails, or really working on my cartooning skills either when drafting. I didn’t have (or get) to experience the time-consuming yet rewarding process of creating my own short graphic novel. Until this year.

This year, we had enough time to teach the full unit. I didn’t reinvent the wheel with the first bend, so I still used my Hareem-inspired graphic novel for that. For Bend II, in which the children write graphic memoirs, I knew I wanted to challenge myself to create my own, and I knew exactly the small moment I wanted to use for it: the fridge debacle.

Throughout the unit, Kim has remarked over and over again how incredible it is to watch the writers’ engagement in this medium. As graphic novel lovers, they thrived (with only a few gripes here and there of “I’m no good at drawing!” — but once they realized they could get away with stick figures, it was full steam ahead). And for me, as someone who enjoys doodling herself, I was thrilled to be working in the new medium as well. I even enjoyed students’ feedback for revisions during mini-lessons, such as the lesson where I modeled how to build suspense by deciding on the number of tiers and panels within each tier. I revised an original thumbnail of 3 tiers, 2 panels per tier, to 3 tiers, one panel per tier, because as R suggested, it would be much more impactful: dun, dun, DUN! Or when E remarked that I could start the story right at the loud noise waking me up, and flashback to the preceding trouble later on.

And the result has been so much more rewarding than creating a mentor text that I can use for future teaching: I used writing and cartooning to create art out of one of the more annoying and stressful moments of my adult life. It took lots of time, stolen at lunch, or while the children were reading or writing or taking a math test, or at home while I watched Netflix. The joy of sharing this piece with my students who have followed along and assisted me in the process has been so special, as has sharing it with my friends and family who experienced the debacle alongside me.

I present to you, The Fridge Debacle: