January 19th - Mentor Texts - Movie Reviews

January 19^th, 2015 – Mentor Texts

The mentor text I selected was a movie review for the upcoming film, Paddington. The text could be a valuable contribution to an English class as students could be asked to compose a movie review as a summative assignment. I could envision this writing task at the conclusion of a novel study. The students would watch a film adaptation of the book that has been read in class, and would then write a review of the movie. The mentor text would serve as an example of a review and would demonstrate the features and conventions of a movie review that students would be asked to include in their assignment.

This genre is useful because it is an example of a piece of writing that serves a specific purpose. Movie reviews have distinct conventions and are ultimately used to present an argument about the film (usually whether it is of good or poor quality). The movie review is also a useful genre because it diversifies the variety of texts used in an English class. Usually English classes rely on narrative texts such as short stories, novels, poetry etc. Therefore, bringing in a form of writing that students may not be familiar with would be a beneficial way of broadening their horizons and teaching them how authors use different forms of writing to achieve different purposes.

Here is a link to Roger Ebert's website which includes an ongoing blog as well as a ton of published reviews from the renowned movie critic. 

http://www.rogerebert.com/
This is a link from the BBC website that may be useful for teaching students the fundamentals of a movie review. It includes information on what  a review should include as well as examples students could look at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english/creativewriting/movingimagesrev2.shtml