Season 2, Episode 9:

"Moving Writers with Mentor Text: A Conversation with Rebekah O'Dell and Allison Marchetti"

Episode Description: “Do real writers get assigned topics and have to force them into five-paragraph essays by their editors?” Allison Marchetti and Rebekah O’Dell, co-authors of the popular blog movingwriters.org, Writing with Mentors, and Beyond Literary Analysis, use real world texts as mentor texts to teach the skills of writing. In this episode, Marchetti and O’Dell chat with co-host, Kim, discussing engaging and relevant writing instruction, the writer’s notebook, and partnering with parents to support student writing. With so many changes to 21st-century education and learning, what should we try tomorrow, this week, and this month?

Bios

Allison Marchetti has her Masters in the Teaching of English, 6-12. After college, she taught in a public suburban school in Chesterfield County for five years and then joined a small independent school in Richmond where she has been for five years. She is the co-writer of the popular blog movingwriters.org and the books: Writing With Mentors and Beyond Literary Analysis. You can follow her on Twitter at @AllisonMarchett. Read her bio for Heinemann.

Rebekah O’Dell is a graduate of the University of Virginia and now teaches English at an independent school in Richmond Virginia. Before that, she taught in public school for several years. She is the co-writer of the popular blog movingwriters.org and the books: Writing With Mentors and Beyond Literary Analysis. You can follow her on Twitter at @RebekahODell1. Read her bio for Heinemann.

Items Mentioned

Click HERE to access the Google Doc of the Team / PLC Discussion Questions for this episode.

Team/PLC Discussion

Season 3, Episode 9: Moving Writers with Mentor Texts with Marchetti and O’Dell

Listen to the episode, featuring Rebekah O’Dell and Allison Marchetti, as a team or listen individually before your next team meeting.

Select questions from the options below or create your own questions for group discussion.

    • Marchetti provides a definition of mentor texts in this episode. What are some examples of professional, real-world writing that you might use in your classroom to model a skill or to demonstrate (or analyze) as an exemplar quality writing?
    • Marchetti says that conferences are where most of their instruction happens. What does she mean by this? How does conferring help the teacher reach every student?
    • O’ Dell says that her students start with five to ten minutes of class in notebook time, which is just risk-free play. What does she mean by “risk-free play”? Do your students have the opportunity for “risk-free play”?
    • Marchetti shares that they’ve invited parents into student’s digital notebooks and portfolios through Google Docs. How do you share student writing with parents?
    • Which piece or pieces of advice offered by O’Dell and Marchetti might you implement in your classroom?