Determining Importance {Mentor Text Monday}

I'm linking up with Emily from The Reading Tutor today for her mentor text linky.  This week's topic is determining importance.

When I heard this week's topic, the first book that came to mind was "The Important Book" by Margaret Wise Brown.  I have never used this book with my second graders, but I should!  I actually used this book as a model lesson when I was interviewing for my very first teaching job with first graders.  

The book follows a repetitive pattern of "The important thing about...is..." at both the beginning and the end of each page.  The middle of the page contains more details about the topic of the page.  Each page is about a different item or idea.

If you don't have the book, here is a pretty good You Tube read aloud version of it.
The book is perfect for having younger students create their own versions by choosing their own item, determining the most important thing about it, and then adding additional details.  I was also thinking it could work for determining importance about characters.  Students could determine the most important thing about the character and then add details following the same format.

I made a quick template that you can download to use by clicking the image above.  Enjoy!

Tomorrow I'll be posting about making inferences over on Andrea's blog, Reading Toward the Stars.  Check it out for another freebie!