Readers Are Writers: Using Romeo and Juliet as a Mentor Text

A cornerstone of my literature instruction is to treat every text as a mentor text. I want my students to see that readers are writers and writers are readers — even when the text feels intimidating at first. Lately, my high school ELD students have been studying Romeo and Juliet, and while Shakespeare’s language can feel overwhelming, his figurative language is actually the perfect invitation into creative writing.

Today’s lesson focused on similes and metaphors from the scenes when Romeo and Juliet first meet and later speak on the balcony. Before diving into Shakespeare’s lines, we started with a low-pressure brainstorm warm-up. Students made lists of people, foods/flavors, activities, sensory experiences, and things in nature that make them happy. This gave everyone a bank of ideas and images to pull from later.

Next, we reviewed teacher-generated examples of figurative language together:

• “Mrs. Selter’s smile shines bright like the sun.”
• “Ms. Virgin is a tornado of energy dropping assignments on our desks as she twirls around the room.”

We talked about the two parts of each comparison and discussed the deeper meaning behind the imagery. The goal was not just identifying similes and metaphors, but understanding what each comparison communicates.

Then students collaborated with partners to create their own figurative sentences. They:

1. Chose a topic card (“my best friend,” “school,” “the first day of school,” etc.)
2. Chose a positive or negative image from the board (“rollercoaster,” “sunflower,” “hug,” “volcano,” “traffic,” “broken pencil”)
3. Combined the ideas into original similes and metaphors

This part of the lesson was so much fun because the combinations led to some fresh and original figurative comparisons. Afterward, students completed a gallery walk where they read classmates’ examples, wrote down three favorites, and illustrated one image that stood out to them.

The second half of class brought us back to Shakespeare. Together, we studied six figurative language examples from Romeo and Juliet. We color-coded the “focus” of the comparison (Juliet, her eyes, Romeo, our love) in pink and the comparison image (sun, stars, lightning, dove) in blue. This visual support helped students clearly see how figurative language is constructed while also discussing the emotional meaning behind the imagery.

To support independent writing, I broke the lines we studied into accessible sentence stems students could build from:

• “If ___’s ___ were ___, it would…”
• “Our ___ is like ___.”
• “___ is a/an ___.”

Students then returned to their original brainstorm lists and began crafting their own figurative writing independently.

A cornerstone of my writing instruction is writing alongside my students. Throughout the lesson, I pause to model my own thinking, draft examples in real time, and share both the writing that works and the writing that absolutely does not. I want students — especially language learners — to see that strong writing is not about getting it perfect on the first try. It’s about experimenting with language, revising ideas, and sometimes laughing at the metaphors that flop before finding one that finally clicks.

As a culminating activity, students will choose one figurative sentence they crafted and turn it into a “figurative doodle” that we’ll publish on our classroom writing walls. I also create and share my own finished figurative doodle as an example before students begin their final project. Having a teacher model gives students guidance and inspiration, but I think it also communicates something important: I’m not asking them to do anything I’m unwilling to do myself. We’re all writers in the room together.

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Kelly Virgin is a WCWP teacher leader who teaches high school English for the Kennett Consolidated School District.