Strategy 2:
Mini Lessons
What is it? Teachers teach short, focused lessons on literacy strategies and skills.
Purpose? Teachers must actively engage, encourage and scaffold children while they're learning, and mini lessons let children use the strategies and skills they are being taught. Implementation: Teachers teach mini lessons on literacy strategies and skills as a part of reading and writing workshops or other instructional approaches. Sometimes they are used to address specific concepts, such as nouns or verbs. Steps 1. Introduce the topic, and make a connection between it and ongoing classroom activities. 2. Share examples from children's writing or from books children are reading. 3. Provide information about the topic and demonstrate how they use the strategy or skill. 4. Supervise practice. 5. Assess learning. Monitor their progress and evaluate their use of the strategy or skill. |
Example
Mini lesson topic: Teaching reading strategies Grade: First Grade Time: Fifteen minute period 1. Teacher is reviewing reading strategies with her students. She wants to remind them of the different strategies they can use to tackle words they are familiar with in their books, such as trying' lion, or stretchy snake. 2. Teacher goes over the eight strategies she has already taught them. Next she chooses a book to share with the class, and as she reads it aloud, she pauses at different places and pretends to be unable to read the word. 3. Using one of the strategies, the teacher and the students figure out together what the unfamiliar word is before continuing on with the rest of the story. 4. By the time the story is finished, the teacher and her class have reviewed and used all eight of the strategies. 5. Now that it has been modelled for the students, she instructs them to choose one of their levelled readers and find a comfortable space in the classroom to read to self. The students are encouraged to practice the strategies they have just seen and practiced. |