What is Mentor Text

Integrating high-quality children's tradebooks into elementary content areas has long been considered a best practice. When teachers choose to incorporate these texts into content area lessons, they are exposing students to art through the pictures and reaching an array of visual learners. There is a delicate balance between teaching the literacy strategies needed to read these texts and the actual content materials that students need to learn in the STEAM areas. This chapter explores how to incorporate texts appropriately into content area lessons so that students can focus on the content, as well as apply literacy strategies for comprehension.