Essay
How a Teenager Found Her Writing Voice - The New York Times.pdfThis is a student essay from the New York Times Learning Network. It's filled with voice and craft so it has the potential of nurturing student writers.
If you want to see more student writing that would serve well as mentor text, go to the New York Times Learning Network.
Doyle.pdfThis beautiful essay is about hummingbirds. Check out how Brian Doyle conveys information. Could students do this too?
As we think about the essay, we would be wise to read Katherine Bomer's introduction to The Journey is Everything.
Ideas for the college essay
Katherine Bomer pushes our current understanding of essays. Take a look at some essays she's collected:
MENTOR ESSAYS
Essays to study
George Orwell's A Hanging
George Orwell's Revenge is Sour
Sample This I Believe essays.
Essays that work -- from John Hopkins University
Scott Brown's essay on Facebook is edgy, relevant, and filled with voice. (Thanks to Lisa Dennis's blog on Three Teachers Talk for this essay.)
This is a beautiful, moving essay that does what an essay should: show a trail of thought.
Granta is an online magazine with lots of wonderful essays, including The Trip to Rose Garden.
Video Essays
Check out NerdWriter's video essays -- great mentor text
Personal Essay
Check out this fun essay from Amy Tan. It's filled with craft from organization to the use of detail and figurative language. Amy Tan also has written a This I Believe essay.
In this essay, the writer explains how she grew up because of Harry Potter.
And go to this page on this very google site.
The following sites contain links to essays that students might study and emulate:
This is Adolescence: a series of essays about parenting a teen
60 Essays (but remember that effective mentor text needs to be short so it can be read and reread often.)
What Makes an Essay American (Warning: some graphic language so be sure to read carefully.)
COLLEGE ESSAYS
50 SUCCESSFUL HARVARD APPLICATION ESSAYS
JOHNS HOPKINS college application essays
REVIEWS
In English classes, students are often asked to write a literary analysis. What if the assignment were shifted a bit and they had to write movie or book reviews? Consider, for example, that student had studied Claudia Puig's work, the movie reviewer for USA Today. Here's her review for the documentary, Bully: Harrowing Story of Teen Cruelty
Using the framework of HOC, MOC, and LOC (see below), students could study those higher order concerns of organization, focus, and ideas. As they think about the middle order concerns of style and word choice, they might think about her use of questions and verb choice. A discussion of the lower order concerns could guide students into understanding how they might use parenthesis when they write.
Check out this review of Unbreakable Kimmy. Consider the thinking that students need to do when they analyze literature. What's different/the same in this review?
Book Reviews
NPR's Book Reviews, which includes PG 13: Risky Reads: Transformative Tales for Teens