Choice Lit Topic: 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.
Results
Student-Led Minilessons in Middle School
“Can I try teaching a minilesson?” Marta asked after class one day. I have been teaching middle school social studies in a workshop model for about 10 years now. Each...
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.
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.
Fall Fluster
I’ve been teaching for more than 20 years, yet I continue to be surprised by what I call the “fall fluster.” I spend my summer catching up on professional reading,...
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, and demonstrates how she moves between a novel and Web resources.
Keeping Minilessons Short
Ten minutes go by fast when I’m doing a minilesson. Therefore, I’m always excited when I come up with a strategy that gets students off the rug and to their...
The Importance of Context Minilesson
Christy Rush-Levine shares a vivid anecdote with her middle school students to highlight the importance of context in literary analysis.
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
When we take a vacation to Disney World, our family has almost as much fun planning the trip as we do going on it. Once we decide how we’ll get...
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 minilesson, Gigi McAllister uses her own writing as a model for adding character traits to a draft.
Teaching Students to Start at the Right Place
I read a lot of student writing. Somehow, no matter how many years students have heard about small moments, they fall into the trap of making stories longer by making...
Minilesson on Facts and Sources
Katherine Sokolowski presents a minilesson to fifth graders on ferreting out facts while completing independent research projects.
Increasing Student Engagement During Minilessons
It can be challenging to engage children in our minilessons. Sometimes those challenges arise because of behavior issues—there’s the syndrome when as soon as you address one student’s behavior, another...
Celebrating Completed Books and Presenting New Ones
Gigi McAllister shares a quick daily routine of asking students to celebrate books they have finished reading before she introduces a new book to her fourth-grade class.
Teaching Revision Strategies: Introduction and Modeling
Heather Rader introduces a strategy for peer conferring over revision in fifth grade in this first installment of a two-part video series.
Picking a Partner: Demonstration Lesson and Debrief
In this demonstration lesson from a K-2 classroom, Joan Moser leads students through guided practice in picking a partner.
Debating How to Begin Stories
Last week, I read Eli’s piece over his shoulder. He had the classic beginning: It was a beautiful November day at the zipline park. He continued his piece with this:...
Understanding Character Traits: Part 2
Jason DiCarlo leads a lesson in a third-grade classroom about understanding character traits. He continues the lesson with a read-aloud of the book Henry's Freedom Box. This is the second...
