Writing Minilessons For Middle School By: Kasey Kiehl e l p Sam ing t i r W n o s s ile n i M E x planatio n Of Parts Template For Planning Rationales for Writing Minilessons • By limiting a daily minilesson to 10-15 minutes during the Writing Workshop, as a teacher, you are allowing your students a significant amount of time to write in their Writer’s Notebook and/or draft/edit/revise/publish a piece of writing. • Minilessons are one, focused concept that can be applied to writing. Keeping a lesson focused to one concept allows students to focus in and be successful at practicing a specific writing behavior each day. • Minilessons allow teachers the time during independent writing to have writing conferences with their students to determine their strengths and weaknesses as individual students and determine each student’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Once this is determined, teachers are able to have collaborative conferences with students to build on what they know and help students add to their knowledge about writing to ultimately make themselves better writers. • Minilessons allow teachers the time during independent writing to meet with guided writing groups. • Writing minilessons teach students how to think like a writer/author. • Writing minilessons can be applied to all students’ independent writing, regardless of skill level. This allows the teacher to teach a whole group lesson that all students can apply while still having time for small group guided writing and individual writing conferences. • Minilessons are structured in a way that allows students to construct their own meaning from a writing concept each day and apply it to their independent writing. • During minilessons, teachers are modeling what writers do as they are writing in order to take on different types of thinking and skills surrounding writing. This modeling of thinking supports inquiry-based learning. Explanation of Minilesson Parts Author Talk (1-2 minutes): During an author talk, the goal for teachers is to give students information about famous authors that will get students to see that authors are real people who have gone through the same struggles, processes, and successes that they have as writers. Getting students to build that bridge helps them view themselves as writers. An author talk can be a quote from a famous author, a piece of an author interview, a clip of author biographical information, etc. that will illicit some talk surrounding that author that can be referred to again and again. Rationale/Activate Background Knowledge (2-3 minutes): During this portion of a minilesson, teachers may ask students a question about what they know relating to today’s minilesson and have students either turn and talk with a partner, share in a small group, or share a few responses with the whole class. This is the time in a minilesson where teachers are also explaining to their students why they are learning what they are learning today in Writing Workshop. Minilesson Statement (1-2 minutes): A minilesson statement is telling what the learning goal or target is for the day. One of the most important things to remember when constructing a minilesson statement is that it should be one concept pertaining to writing, not multiple concepts. Minilesson statements are always phrased in a way that will show students what they should be taking on as learners for today. For that reason, all minilessons are phrased like, “Writers (complete a certain reading behavior) so that (providing the rationale for why they are learning that skill). Students should always write the minilesson down in their Writer’s Notebook in order to have a record of all the skills that they’re taking on as writers. Modeling (3-5 minutes): The modeling is the portion of the lesson where the teacher is modeling exactly what it is that he/she would like students to do as writers on that day. Modeling can at times be explicit teaching to explain what it is that students will be doing as writers for that day, but it also could be a fishbowl where students are watching a writing behavior that is being demonstrated to the class and noticing what it is that is going on and writing it down in their Writer’s Notebooks. Another way to model is for teachers to demonstrate what they are asking students to do in writing that day through their own writing in their Writer’s Notebook and sharing it with students. Seeing their teacher as a writer completing the same concepts as them is very motivating to students. Using mentor texts can also be an effective form of modeling for the Writing Workshop. Have-a-go (2-3 minutes): This is a time for students to give what the teacher is talking about during the modeling portion of the minilesson a try. A have-a-go is meant for students to get a little support and start finding ideas that will help them be successful in the application of the day’s minilesson. A have-a-go could be asking students to turn and talk with their neighbor about their ideas surrounding the day’s minilesson, making a chart or list as a class that will help them generate ideas about the days minilesson, etc. Application (15-30 minutes): This is the time for students to try out the minilesson concept while writing in their Writer’s Notebook or drafting, editing, revising, or publishing a piece of writing. This is also the time for teachers to hold individual writing conferences with students and/or hold guided writing groups. Share/Self-Evaluation (3-5 minutes): During this time, students share with the whole class, small groups, or partners what it is that they learned as writers that day, why it was helpful/important to learn that, and/or how they will apply this writing concept in the future. This is a great place for teachers to be able to take notes to understand which students understood the concept and which students may need further work with the concept in a small group or individual conference. This is the part of the minilesson that makes learning generative and gives the teacher a quick, formative assessment based on student response. Extension: An optional part of the minilesson would be to have students continue to work on this concept of writing during assigned writing time at night to further enhance their understanding of the writing minilesson. Template for Planning a Minilesson Author Talk (Name of Author/What I will cover about that author): Rationale/Activate Background Knowledge (Question to activate background knowledge, key understanding that I will share with students): Minilesson Statement (Writers ________________________ so that ____________________________.): Modeling (How will I model this concept to students so that they are able to take on the writing concept from today’s minilesson during the application?): Have-a-go (How will I support students to get them thinking about this minilesson in relation to themselves as writers before asking them to apply the concept independently?): Application (What will I ask students to do as writers today to demonstrate that they understand the minilesson concept?): Share/Self-Evaluation (What question will I ask my students to share about their learning as writers today? How will they share?): Extension (Would I like them to continue this learning in their independent writing tonight? If so, how would I like them to do this?): Self-Evaluation of the Writing Minilesson: -Did I include all of the essential elements of the minilesson, including an author talk, minilesson statement, model, have-a-go, application, share, and extension? -How long was my minilesson? If my minilesson was too long, was it because of one of the common reasons for long minilessons below? • I gave too many examples during the modeling. • I talked for too long while I was explaining the minilesson, telling my students versus allowing them to construct their own knowledge. • I wasn’t prepared for the lesson and had to scramble to find materials. • My minilesson wasn’t based on a single concept, but instead, I expected my students to apply multiple concepts to their independent writing today. • I did unnecessary things like such as showing video clips instead of teaching my students. • I allowed for too many tangents, side-talk, and/or stories instead of staying focused on the learning concept for the day. -What did my students learn as writers today? How do I know they learned this? Does what they learned match up to what I wanted them to learn? -Did I provide a supportive model to my students that allowed them to understand the thinking surrounding writing that I was asking them to do during the application of the minilesson? -Which students will I have to confer with about this thinking? Should I pull a small group of students to reinforce this concept or visit it further in guided writing? -What do my students need next as writers? Types of Writing Minilessons *Teaching writing is so much more than giving a writing assignment, explaining it to students, and having them take a pencil and going for it. Students need explicit writing instruction through modeling and guided practice before being released into the writing lesson for that day. Minilessons should happen daily through each phase of the writing process in order to break the process into meaningful, achievable chunks for students. • Free write minilessons o Example: “Writers write freely about topics of their choice so that they’re able to explore and establish themselves as writers.” • Idea-generating minilessons o Example: “Writers can sketch before writing words so that they are able to generate ideas to help their readers visualize what’s going on in their writing.” • Drafting minilessons o Example: “Writers write all of their ideas about a topic they would like to pursue into draft form so that all of their ideas are in one place.” • Revising minilessons o Example: “Writers revise their writing to add meaningful dialogue so that the reader is able to better understand the characters in the story.” • Editing minilessons o Example: “Writers edit their writing for correct homophone usage so that their readers are able to fully understand the author’s intent.” Sample Writing Minilesson (Revision Minilesson for Memoir Writing) Author Talk “Good feedback forces writers to re-envision certain parts of our work. To the stubborn, defensive writer, this new vision is hostile; it threatens us and our writing, and we try to come up with excuses or defenses for what exists in our work so that we don't have to change it. To the writer with a beginner's mind, though, this new vision is an opportunity to experience our work in a new, different way-- like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, offering a different path that may actually be more enjoyable than the first.” (Taken from Veronica Roth, author of the Divergent series, blog post titled, “Beginner’s Mind and Revision.”) Share this quote with students and discuss its implication in to their writing as they do a revision minilesson today. Rationale/Activating Background Knowledge Pose the question to students, “When you’re reading a book, how does what characters say in dialogue help you get to know them as a reader?” Minilesson Statement “Writers revise their writing to add meaningful dialogue so that their readers are better able to understand the characters intentions, personalities, and relationships to other characters in their writing.” Modeling Project the draft of your memoir onto your Smartboard and think aloud to students about revising the places you currently have dialogue to make the dialogue more meaningful. Also think aloud about places to add dialogue where it currently doesn’t exist and explain why you believe this would improve your memoir. Also critically examine your dialogue tags. Have-a-go Ask students to take out their draft and a highlighter and highlight one piece of current dialogue in their writing. Next, ask them to turn and talk with a partner to discuss what they like about this piece of dialogue and how they could strengthen it. Application Have students highlight all of the dialogue they have already included and go through and revise it. Also have them add dialogue where it currently does not exist. Explain to students that today they are revising for this specific purpose alone. Share Have several students share one piece of dialogue they added or revised with the whole class. Extension Have students look into their independent reading books for ideas on how to further strengthen their dialogue by examining what published authors do and its effectiveness. Works Cited Fountas, I. C., & Pinnell, G. S. (2001). Guiding Readers and Writers: Teaching Comprehension, Genre, and Content literacy. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Fountas, I. C., & Pinnell, G. S. (2006). Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency: Thinking, Talking and Writing about Reading, K-8. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Want further information on the different pieces of a Balanced Literacy teaching framework? *For information on Interactive Read Alouds from my blog, click HERE. *For information on Interactive Edits from my blog, click HERE. *For information on Interactive Vocabulary from my blog, click HERE. *For products in my TpT store featuring a Spelling and Word Work focus, click HERE. *For products in my TpT store featuring a Reading Workshop focus, click HERE. *For products in my TpT store featuring a Guided Reading focus, click HERE. *For products in my TpT store featuring a Literature Circles focus, click HERE. *For products in my TpT store featuring a Writing Workshop focus, click HERE. Thank you to the following for the graphics and fonts used in this product: Copyright © 2014 Kasey Kiehl All rights reserved by author. Permission to copy for single classroom use only. Electronic distribution limited to single classroom use only. 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