Looking Closely at Informational Texts: Considering the Role(s) of Mentor Texts for Kindergarten Children

Abstract

To fully consider the potential of informational texts to serve as mentor texts in the elementary classroom, the authors propose an inquiry about the intersections among the author’s intentions, instructional contexts, a teacher’s approaches, and students’ responses to informational texts when contemplating the roles these texts might serve. In this article, the authors investigate how the intentions of the author-illustrator, classroom teacher, and students relate and differ when introducing an informational picture book in the context of an inquiry-based kindergarten classroom. The analysis involves the perspectives of a children’s author-illustrator, a classroom teacher, and kindergarten students as they self-selected an informational picture book to use as a mentor text.