Planning Minilessons

A Lifelong Conversation Around Books and

Reading

What are mybeliefs about Minilessons?

#1 Designed with a vision of helping students gain the necessary skills, strategies, and behaviors to become independent readers.  #2 Scaffolded across time to deepen and enrich understanding of concepts. They are not activities delivered in isolation.  #3 Part of larger conversations that we as a community have about our reading lives and that these conversations build over time.   #4 Interactive. Students should be the ones doing the thinking, not the teacher.  #5 Planned with the needs of current students in mind. They can't be canned, scripted or duplicated year after year.  

#6 The right length to match your teaching point. There is no magic number of minutes for an effective minilesson.  #7 Organized in a way that makes the most sense to the teacher, school, or district. There is no one right way to organize lessons.  #8 Based on what we know about teaching and learning. No matter the mandates and pressures of state testing, there is no reason to compromise best teaching practice.  #9 Designed to teach the reader not the book.   #10 Designed by the teachers who is doing the teaching, not corporations.

Big Questions for Minilesson Planning

Why do we teach this? How does it fit into the bigger picture?

What are the big goals I have?

Which books might I use?

How will I provide for students to enter at own level?

What will I be assessing? Does assessment match the big picture goals?

Minilesson Cycles Can BeLots of Ways to Plan

Strategies—comprehension, word work

Behaviors and Habits—book choice, stamina

Literary Elements—character, theme

Genre—nonfiction, mystery, historical fiction

What Are We Assessing?

What we don’t do, however, is use our experience to direct or guide towards our own understanding of any given text…..we need to teach each student the way readers think as they read, not what to think, helping them to experience texts as readers, rather that putting specific thoughts about texts into their heads.

The Stranger

Unpacking Standards: PlotK-Retell or re-enact a story that has been heard.

1-Retell the beginning, middle and ending of a story including its important events.

2-Retell the plot of a story.

3-Retell the plot sequence.

4-Identify the main incidents of a plot sequence, identifying the major conflict and its resolution.

5-Identify the main incidents of a plot sequence and how they influence future action.

6th+Distinguish between main and minor plot

incidents.

Pace, subplots, parallel episodes, and climax

Compare and contrast stories/characters with similar conflicts

How do voice and narrator affect plot

Plot

A story with very obvious problem

and solution

Plot

Two stories with similar plots to

discuss parts of a story.

Plot

Same Problem

Different Solution

Unpacking the Common Core

Character CycleBig Goals/Learning

-Authors let us get to know characters in a variety of ways.

-The more we know about a character, the better we can predict and understand his/her actions.

-Important characters often change over time.

-Understanding how a character sees the world is critical to understanding their thoughts, relationships, and actions.

-There are words that readers use when they think and talk about characters in fiction. These words give us ways to think and talk at a deeper level.

Scaffolding with a Menu of Books

A book that is more character-based than plot based and might be a good one for this cycle. 

Several books that focus on the same character/characters

Books with 2 characters who are great friends or who are siblings. These often make for the best conversations about relationships.

 Books that include several short stories about the same character(s)

 Characters that the students love and talk about on their own.

CharactersWe learn about

characters through their relationships with others.

CharacterWe learn about

a character from the way he/she behaves and

reacts in a story.

CharacterReaders learn

about characters by the things

they say. (voice)

CharacterThe more we know about a character, the better we can

predict and understand his/her

actions and behaviors.

CharacterImportant

characters in a book often

change over the course of the

story.

Big Picture of Theme Cycle: What Am I Setting Up?

Understandings I Want My Students to Come Away With in this Cycle

*Readers have the power to determine the theme in a text.

Authors often write a story with a bigger message about life to the reader.

There is often more than one theme in a book.

There are universal themes that appear often in books.

A theme works across an entire piece.

 

How do they get there from where they are now?

Plot vs. Theme

Stated vs. Implied Theme

When Two Storylines Come Together

Repeated Language

Symbolism/Metaphors

General vs. Specific Theme

Universal Themes

YouTube Video Clipshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv015LtqA0A

Stated Vs. Implied Theme

29

A Circle of Friends

Wordless Book

A Good First Look at Title

Significance of word “circle”

The Enormous TurnipTraditional Tales

with obvious and accessible themes are a great way to introduce the concept of theme as well as universal themes to students.

Artie and Julie

How do Storylines come together?

Many Stories of Friendship

Wanda’s Roses/The Curious Garden

A Menu of Options

Titles are often a metaphor and a

clue into the theme of the

story.

Walk On!A Guide for Babies of All

Ages

By Marla Frazee

Dedication

“to my son, Graham, off to college”

“Any of these details….are, in effect, entryways into deeper meanings of the text. None is inherently more important than the other and no one inference about them is necessarily “right”…What’s important is not which detail readers notice but what they do with them…..what they can make of what they notice.”

What Readers Really Do

Share

Timem

e

Readicide by Kelly Gallagher

If we are to find our way again--if students are to become avid readers again--we, as language arts teachers, must find our courage to recognize the difference between the political worlds and the authentic worlds in which we teach, to swim against those current educational practices that are killing young readers, and to step up and do what is right for our students.

We need to find this courage. Today. Nothing less than a generation of readers hangs in the balance.