Writers study author's craft...

Third grade writers studied a mentor text, Come On, Rain! by Karen Hesse.

We worked in partnerships to find examples of powerful language that really pulled us in as readers. We looked for parts that helped us start the mental movies in our minds.  We starred these meaningful parts of the text and wrote about what made them powerful.

We found poetic language, great leads, sensory details, action sequences that helped us make mental movies, and much, much more.  We made a list of all the powerful parts and decided that we would try to use some of these same techniques in our own writing! Here are a few examples of our work.
  

Text - And that's when I see it coming, clouds rolling in, gray clouds, bunched and bulging under a purple sky.
"We like this part because it sounds really good and it's fun to say."

Text - Come on, rain!  I say squinting into the endless heat.
"I like how they say come on rain as in it hasn't rained for a long time."

Text - Not a sign of my friends Liz or Rosemary, not a peep from my pal Jackie-Joyce.
"We like how it said 'not a peep' from Jackie Joyce instead of  'no words' from Jackie Joyce."

Text - Come on, rain!  I say squinting into the endless heat.
"It (the lead) pulls me into the story because it tells us it a place that hasn't had rain in awhile."

Text - "Come on, rain!" I say squinting into the endless heat.
"I like it cause I can imagine what it's like in that heat."

Text - Three weeks and not a drop.
"Me and my partner like it because it said how many weeks it has not rained"