Using Picture Books to Teach Writing Traits: An Annotated Bibliography of More Than 150 Mentor Texts with Teacher-Tested Lessons

This is a valuable comprehensive bibliography of sophisticated children's books. The authors review books that have been published in the last 5-10 years and some classics. All books are classified by their instructional potential to teach one the six writing traits (Ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, and presentation. For each trait, Culham & Coutu present lesson plans based on two or three of those mentor books. The lessons are clearly designed and well detailed. Overall an inovative book that will encourage teachers to use more sophisticated books in their teaching. Unfortunateky no Canadian book neither British book is mentionned.Monique Richard, Professor Emeritus, School of ECE, Ryerson University.Blog: [...]

Ideas for using picture books is so helpful for teachers. Picture books are usually rich with vocabulary and content. Often picture books have an emotional hook. This book is such a help in using that rich resource. Why reinvent the wheel? Just buy this book and plug the ideas into your writing curriculum. I teach third and fourth graders and I can adapt these ideas. Picture books are for all ages.

I am a multi-grade teacher who uses picture books as writing prompts. This book contains book titles and the various ideas on how you could incorporate picture books in lesson planning.

I bought this mainly to use as a booklist, I haven't tried the lessons included in the book and couldn't really tell you if it improved my son's writing skills. It's best used in a classroom as most of the activities can be boring when done alone.

Colleague had a copy, and I borrowed and used it a few times. Thought it would be good to have my own copy!