Keeping it short, relevant, and meaningful is the challenge when it comes to designing lessons. Here is where you'll find practical advice and dozens of video examples of master teachers in action.
Dana Murphy reminds us of the power of an anchor chart in a digital world.
Gwen Blumberg teaches an asynchronous lesson for a spelling strategy.
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills consider the power of asynchronous lessons in creating a student-centered learning environment.
Jen Court completes an interactive read aloud in a second-grade classroom.
Hayley Whitaker leads a minilesson in kindergarten on how to plan a narrative writing draft.
Melissa Atwood leads her first-grade class with a minilesson early in the school year on making connections to text.
Stella Villalba teaches young writers about writer’s craft. So how come evidence of learning from the minilessons isn’t showing up when she confers with her students? She decides to develop a plan to help students link craft lessons with their writing.
Nawal Qarooni Casiano outlines the process for empowering students to lead lessons for classmates.
Jen Court uses text sets from three authors to help second graders ferret out different elements of the authors’ styles.
Ruth Ayres shows how one first-grade teacher saves precious time by not ending minilessons with lots of directions for independent work.
Mark Levine explains how picture books are powerful teaching tools in his middle school classroom.
Franki Sibberson leads a minilesson in her fifth-grade classroom to help students design their own lessons. Students also assess what goes into a high-quality minilesson.
Franki Sibberson shares how she integrates student choice and collaboration into reading response during daily read alouds.
Christy Rush-Levine finds her students sometimes need to stop and be challenged to think in more positive ways about their reading abilities. She describes how she designs minilessons for impromptu resets in her middle school classroom.
Franki Sibberson helps Lucas plan his minilesson for his fifth-grade classmates on how to connect words and facts from two different sources.
Franki Sibberson initiates student-led minilessons, and finds the process takes her literacy workshops to a new level of independence and energy.
Lucas leads a minilesson in Franki Sibberson’s fifth-grade class on connecting facts from different sources.
One student’s request to lead a minilesson is a catalyst for Mark Levine to see the value of student-led minilessons as an assignment for all in his middle school classroom.
Bitsy Parks is stressed from trying to “cover” all the lessons in the first required reading unit of the year with her first graders. She takes a deep breath and decides to integrate more of her own lessons into her instruction.
Gigi McAllister helps her fourth graders develop the characters in their writing with a minilesson. She uses three mentor texts, one of which is her own writing.
This fifth-grade minilesson from Franki Sibberson is a lovely mix of mentor texts, Franki's own writing, and honesty about the writing process.
Linda Karamatic explores poetry with her second graders. She displays poems students have written and teaches them about fresh language using a poem about a pencil sharpener.
Katherine Sokolowski models how readers make choices as questions arise while reading independently. She also demonstrates how she moves between a novel and web resources.
Christy Rush-Levine uses a vivid anecdote from her youth to teach her middle school students about the importance of context in literary analysis.
Melanie Meehan gives three quick management tips for tackling the challenge many teachers face — keeping minilessons short.
Katherine Sokolowski refreshes the quick-write routine in her fifth-grade classroom by using a video as a prompt.
Franki Sibberson believes planning a unit of study should be just as much fun as planning a trip to Disney World. She explains her planning process for one of her first units of study, on narrative writing.
Bitsy Parks teaches her first graders early in the year how to read like writers, highlighting examples from favorite mentor texts.
In this week’s video, Gigi McAllister models writing in front of her fourth-grade class. She takes advice from students as she develops the characters in her story.
Melanie Meehan uses focus questions for teaching students to start at the right place in their writing, moving them beyond the bed-to-bed stories that plague so many literacy workshops.
Get full access to all Choice Literacy article content
Get full access to all Choice Literacy video content
Access Choice Literacy course curriculum and training