Mentor Texts

What is a mentor text? How is it used in teaching writing? Is it a realistic and effective way to teach writing?

My understanding of a mentor text is a piece of writing, typically a book, that is used by a teacher and/or a student as a model for how to write a certain way. Because a book can be such a long form, picture books tend to be recommended for this type of teaching.

Some ways mentor texts are used:
1. Formally (the teacher reads the text and tells the students what to look for or imitate)
2. Informally (students are given a variety of texts to study independently during writers workshop)
3. To model form (poetry, short story, etc.) or trait (organization, word choice, etc.).
3. To serve as inspiration for a topic
4. To open a writing lesson
5. To illustrate a teaching point (strong ending, varied sentence openers, transitions)

ReadWriteThink has a lesson on using mentor texts to teach organization within a comparison/contrast paper. This is an "inquiry" lesson where students are to discover their best method of organization as they read and study their mentor texts. (I think you would need some highly motivated and focused students in order to have success in this manner of teaching.)
http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=974

Corbett Harrison, Director of the Northern Nevada Writing Project, often uses mentor texts to illustrate teaching points: sometimes at the beginning of a lesson to inspire kids to write or give them a form to mimic, and sometimes right before they are to revise. Here he lists his top ten mentor texts and gives a brief description of how he uses them in the classroom (very helpful!):
http://corbettharrison.com/mentortext.html

More mentor texts and lesson plans can be found at Corbett Harrison's other website, WritingFix.com. The lessons are listed alphabetically by mentor text, not skills focus, although at the bottom of the page there are mentor texts organized by the Six Traits (no lesson plans listed for these though).
http://writingfix.com/About_us/books.htm

I think that mentor texts are often presented to teachers as a way to have students learn by being exposed to great writing, but without a "how-to" and having the mentor texts in hand, this method can easily be dismissed. It would be helpful to have teachers or coaches demonstrate how they use mentor texts since they can be adapted to so many teaching styles (Teachers, can you ask your principal to cover your class while you visit a colleague's classroom, with their permission of course?).

Mentor texts are one tool for teaching writing; they are not an established writing "program." I think to be most effective, a teacher should look at an entire year of writing objectives (considering the teaching of form as well as "the six traits"), sketch out a sequence in which to teach them (or use the one provided by the district, if available), and then plug in mentor texts as mini-lessons to illustrate teaching points.

Surely you can teach mentor texts as isolated writing lessons, and I did this very thing my first year or two of teaching, knowing nothing else (I didn't call them "mentor texts" though!). As I taught each lesson I saved student writing samples along with an index card listing my objective and the steps in which I taught the lesson, and put them into a plastic page protector. I filed the lessons in a 3-ring-binder with monthly dividers. Then in following years, I was able to organize the lessons into a scope and sequence that made sense.