Six Questions for Penny Kittle

Last chance to sign up and join our professional conversation

I’m 20 pages into Micro Mentor Texts and I’m already finding it so practical and wise.

Below are six questions I want to ask the author Penny Kittle. They came up for me during my initial reading, and I anticipate others might have similar questions.

• What’s your definition of a mentor text? What makes a mentor text “micro”?

• Your approach with micro mentor texts seems to resemble writers workshops that I have participated in. Is this intentional? What’s different, if anything?

• You seem to prefer to write in front of and with your students vs. showing them what you’ve already written. What benefits do students derive from your modeling and shared demonstration?

• Where do you collect and organize your favorite mentor texts? How do you organize them? Is this a process you teach to students?

• You’ve been a teacher for over 40 years. How disruptive, for better or for worse, has technology been to literacy in general, and to writing specifically as of late?

• You share a powerful visual with readers: a library without books. To combat this, what classroom conditions are essential to help kids write for real and for life?

Full subscribers are able to engage in this live conversation with Penny via Zoom on January 8 at 5:30pm CST. The RSVP link is below. Join us!