Mini-Lesson

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Home : 2004 : November : 28

Mini-Lesson
By Pam

Fountas and Pinnell are the current "gurus" on the subject as was mentioned. I'm assuming you're using the Reader's Workshop format. For brevity's sake (not to sound "the expert"), I'll enumerate steps to consider.

1.
Plan your opening mini-lessons CAREFULLY. 10-15 minutes MAX to introduce the day's concept that will apply to all 4 novels.
2. If your students have never worked in this format before, this week will have to be FULL of procedural mini lessons: acceptable noise levels, where to work, what is to be accomplished independently, NOT to interrupt you while you're working with a group (and

how they DO handle problems while you're occupied), etc.
3. The novels you've picked are pretty much on grade level so I'm assuming you don't have any struggling readers. If this is the case, you don't have to meet with all four groups each day. If you want to meet with all of them at first to give everyone a "taste" of the procedures, you could have a 5-minute session daily to introduce the concepts: journaling, timelines, overview of the book ...
4. If you do have struggling readers, you MUST meet with those students daily. Your top group only needs to see you, at most, twice a week.

I've used this format for eight years, and do training on mini-lessons, scheduling, and "at-the-group" sessions. If you have any specific questions, I'll try to help. You'll really enjoy this type of teaching. It is extremely effective because you're with those students who need you the most every day.