How do you choose mentor texts for your students? How do you mine them for the craft lessons you want your students to learn?

Craft Moves does the hardest work for you, offering 180 lessons drawn from 20 recently published picture books that teach various craft "moves" that will help your students become better writers. The book first discusses picture as teaching tools, and simple ways to integrate them into classroom learning and discussion. It also offers routines and classroom procedures to help students focus during independent writing, and helps you prepare for small-group instruction.

Using picture books as mentor texts will help your students not only read as writers and write with joy, but also become writers who can effectively communicate meaning, structure their writing, write with detail, and give their writing a unique voice.