Minilessons
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.
Latest Content
The Power of an Anchor Chart in a Digital World
Dana Murphy reminds us of the power of an anchor chart in a digital world.
Whale Talk: An Asynchronous Minilesson
Gwen Blumberg teaches an asynchronous lesson for a spelling strategy.
Student-Centered Learning Through Video Lessons
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills consider the power of asynchronous lessons in creating a student-centered learning environment.
Interactive Read Aloud in Second Grade
Jen Court completes an interactive read aloud in a second-grade classroom.
Planning Writing in Kindergarten
Hayley Whitaker leads a minilesson in kindergarten on how to plan a narrative writing draft.
First Grade Minilesson: Connections
Melissa Atwood leads her first-grade class with a minilesson early in the school year on making connections to text.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Accountability for Young Writers
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.
Kids Teaching Kids: Student-Led Lessons
Nawal Qarooni Casiano outlines the process for empowering students to lead lessons for classmates.
Comparing Authors Minilesson
Jen Court uses text sets from three authors to help second graders ferret out different elements of the authors’ styles.
Field Notes: Preserving Minilesson Time
Ruth Ayres shows how one first-grade teacher saves precious time by not ending minilessons with lots of directions for independent work.
Introducing Social Studies Concepts with Picture Books
Mark Levine explains how picture books are powerful teaching tools in his middle school classroom.
A Minilesson on Minilessons
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.
Thoughtful Read Aloud Structures
Franki Sibberson shares how she integrates student choice and collaboration into reading response during daily read alouds.
Reset
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.
Planning a Student-Led Minilesson
Franki Sibberson helps Lucas plan his minilesson for his fifth-grade classmates on how to connect words and facts from two different sources.
Student-Led Minilessons in Fifth Grade
Franki Sibberson initiates student-led minilessons, and finds the process takes her literacy workshops to a new level of independence and energy.
Student-Led Minilesson: Connecting Facts from Different Sources
Lucas leads a minilesson in Franki Sibberson’s fifth-grade class on connecting facts from different sources.
Student-Led Minilessons in Middle School
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.
Fall Fluster
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.
Fourth-Grade Minilesson: Character Traits
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.
Leads Minilesson
This fifth-grade minilesson from Franki Sibberson is a lovely mix of mentor texts, Franki's own writing, and honesty about the writing process.
Object Poetry Lesson in Second Grade
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.
Big Question Minilesson
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.
The Importance of Context Minilesson
Christy Rush-Levine uses a vivid anecdote from her youth to teach her middle school students about the importance of context in literary analysis.
Keeping Minilessons Short
Melanie Meehan gives three quick management tips for tackling the challenge many teachers face — keeping minilessons short.
Quick-Write with a Video Prompt
Katherine Sokolowski refreshes the quick-write routine in her fifth-grade classroom by using a video as a prompt.
Planning for a Narrative Writing Unit of Study
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.
First-Grade Minilesson: Reading Like Writers
Bitsy Parks teaches her first graders early in the year how to read like writers, highlighting examples from favorite mentor texts.
Minilesson: Writing a Mentor Text
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.
Teaching Students to Start at the Right Place
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.
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