The Architecture of Effective Minilessons



The Architecture of Effective Minilessons

We have found that the most effective minilessons tend to follow a similar structure. That is, while the content of the minilesson changes from day to day, the architecture of minilessons remains the same.

Connect

• Our minilessons begin with a connection. Usually we, as teachers, tell students about what we’ll be teaching them, and we talk about how this lesson will fit into the work they’ve been doing and how it will fit into their lives as writers and readers.

Teach

• Next we teach students something we hope they’ll use often as they write. We usually do this by demonstrating a strategy or retelling a vignette or re-enacting something we’ve seen others do. Sometimes a child or even the class as a whole helps us do the teaching part of the minilesson. A child might demonstrate something she’s done, or the whole class might chip in to gather a short list of what they notice or know.

Active Engagement

• Then we give all children the opportunity to try what we’ve taught, or to imagine themselves trying it. This active involvement phase often involves children practicing the strategy on a whole-class text, and it often involves them talking with a partner.

Link

• We link the minilesson to the ongoing work of today’s workshop. Sometimes the subject of the minilesson will only be pertinent for some writers. “How many of you will do this today?” we might ask. Other times, we will want to be sure every writer incorporates the new strategy into his or her work that day. “Get started doing that right here on the rug,” we might say. “Once you are started, you can get up silently and go to your writing nook.” In these or other ways, we make it likely that at least some children transfer the minilesson to today’s independent work, and that it becomes part of their ongoing repertoire.

Share

• At the end of the workshop (after writing time) we gather students in a share session in which often we follow-up on the minilesson. Sometimes the share session functions almost as a separate and smaller minilesson.

Minilesson Teaching Point:

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Connection:

• Begin by recalling previous teaching. For example, “Yesterday you learned…”

• “Last night I was reading over (or thinking over) your work…”

• Often you call the previous work in to your students’ minds by retelling one representative detail (“Remember how…”)

• At this point, the teacher could name a problem students seem to be having to address with the students. For example, “But some of you are having trouble, so…”

• Finally, make the teaching point clear. For example, “Today I’m going to teach you how writers…because….”

Teach:

• Often you will tell a tiny story of when you or another writer/reader needed this strategy:

“Often when I’m trying to find an idea for writing, I…” or “Often when I start a book, I…”

• Set children up to know what you’ll demonstrate, how they are to watch, what they’ll be asked to do later. “Let me show you how…I want you to pay attention to…”

• Demonstrate (Do so very, very briefly and in a way which highlights the one thing you want people to notice)

• Recap the demonstration, restating the teaching point named above. “Did you notice how I…”

Active Engagement:

• Set up the work the students will be doing, “So let’s try this.” At the start of the year, your active engagements will be minimal (“Think of what you might do …” “In your mind, try to list two things I have taught you.” Eventually these will usually involve turning to a long-term partner and doing some quick work together. To keep this brief you may need to set this up (“Partner 1, tell Partner 2…”) Maybe:

o Turn and tell your partner

o Stop and jot

• The teacher listens to and observes students as they work for 2 minutes.

• The teacher may repeat one thing he or she said or heard.

• Option: Teacher shares 1 or 2 examples of student work

o ”Writers, I want you to hear what Sarah was just thinking…”

o “Readers, stop for a moment and listen to what James just said…”

Link:

• Put teaching in context. “So when you are writing and you…remember that you can…”

• Restate teaching

OR

• Assignment: “So today all of you are going to…then you will move onto your own writing work, but whenever you are writing you can…”

Share:

• One option is to recap the work students did as follow up on the minilesson. “Today some of you were working on…I want to show you the way Tony…”

• Highlight a new or especially significant aspect of that work, “Did you notice how…”

• Link to future, “So, today and everyday, when you are reading/writing you can…” or “So tonight when you go home…”

• A second option is to set up partnership share in which students search for, share, assess, and plan their work. “Would partner 1 show partner 2 a place in your book where you begin to form a theory about your character? Would you talk about whether that theory holds true in other sections of your text?”

Teachers College Reading and Writing Project

Minilesson Teaching Point: ________________________________________________

□ assignment □ add to repertoire

Connection:

• Begin by recalling the previous teaching. For example, “Yesterday we were working on …”

• Next, bring the class together to focus on their ongoing work. For example, “Last night I was reading over your work…” or, “Remember how…”

• At this point, the teacher could create a problem to address with the students. For example, “But some of you are having trouble, so …”

• Finally, make the teaching point clear, “Today, I am going to teach you how writers … because …”

Teach:

• Put teaching in context. “Sometimes when I’m reading /writing…”

• Set up the demonstration. “Let me show you how…I want you to pay attention to how I …”

• Demonstrate

• Recap the demonstration. “Did you notice how I…”

Active Involvement:

• Set up the work the students will be doing. “Now you are going to try it…We are going to look at …” (Often students need clarification of their roles in partnerships at this time.)

• Students engage in work and teacher listens to students. Some possible structures:

o Listen, turn, and talk

o Read, turn, and talk

o Think, turn, and talk

o Listen, stop, and jot

o Read, stop, and jot

o Think, stop, and jot

• Option: Teacher shares one or 2 successful examples of student work.

Link:

• Put teaching in context. “So when you are writing and you …, remember that you can…”

• Restate teaching

Or

• Assignment: “So today all of you are going to … then you will move onto your own writing work.”

Share:

• Recap the work of the students. “Today some of you were working on…I want to show you the way Kathleen…”

• Share an example of student work

• Recap the example, asking “Did you notice how…”

• Put the teaching in context. “So, today and everyday, when you are reading/writing you can…”

Minilesson Teaching Point:

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Connection:

Yesterday we were working on…

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Today I want to teach you…

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Teaching:

When I read…

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Watch me as I show you how I… (set up demonstration)

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Demonstration

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Did you notice how I…

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Active Involvement:

Now it is your turn to try it. You (and your partner) are going to…

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Students try it.

I noticed… ________________________________________________________________________

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Link:

Today and everyday I want you to…

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Suggestions for Particular Sections of Minilessons:

Teaching

1. We demonstrate the tiniest steps for how we use (or might use) a strategy. Usually this involves either writing or writing-in-the-air and always it involves thinking aloud as we proceed.

Variations:

• we re-tell and re-enact how someone else (a child, an author) used or probably used this strategy

• the text can vary; it can be our own writing, a child’s writing, or published work.

2. We show a brief not-very-good version and a brief very-strong version. These should be the same save for the one feature you’re highlighting, which should be different. We talk about the differences.

3. We reduce the idea to its simplest form, and teach it in that context. Then we show how the idea translates into more complex situations.

4. We show good work. We point out what makes it good or ask our students to point this out. We see if they can find other instances of this same good quality.

Active Involvement

1. Ask students to try whatever you’ve taught them with a text you give to them. It may be a hypothetical text, ready-made for the occasion (“an exercise text”) or you may ask them, “Can you help so-and-so to do this with his (her) writing.” Children generally provide this help by writing-in-the-air to a partner.

2. Ask students to find the place in their own texts where they might do this work and perhaps also to say aloud what they might do.

3. Ask students to talk about what they just learned.

• “Tell your partner what you saw me doing.”

• “List across your fingers four things you’ve learned.”

4. Ask students to imagine doing whatever it is. Help them to envision themselves getting started…doing the next step…then the next step.

Tips on Minilessons:

• The first phase of a minilesson, the connection is the place to reiterate the key point from yesterday in a way that contextualizes today’s work. But you need to avoid restating the obvious. You don’t need to say, “We’ve been studying poetry.” If, so far, you’ve learned five ways to revise poems. You certainly don’t need to repeat all five of these ways. Get tot eh point, “Yesterday we added one final revision strategy to our list – we said poets do such and such. Today I want to warn you that these revisions don’t always improve a poem…”

• Often your minilesson will lead you to create charts which become a permanent reminder of your instruction. Be careful to not fool yourself into thinking, however, that writing something on a chart suffices as a way to make your teaching memorable. Writing on the chart can be a way to record your teaching but it can’t substitute for teaching. A rule of thumb is to be sure your minilesson would be rich without writing on the chart, and be sure you spend no more than 5% of your minilesson time doing this writing. A chart that lists five strategies will usually record more than a week (not one day) of minilessons.

• Sometimes we use too many examples when one or two would suffice.

• Be careful not to let your examples overwhelm your point. If you want to show the value of adding dialogue and you are going to read aloud two drafts, one which has dialogue and one which doesn’t, the drafts shouldn’t be full of a million other commendable qualities that distract from your point.

• If you call on a child in a minilesson, that child’s contribution needs to be as important to the class as your words are. Make sure children turn and look at the speaker. “Eyes on Carl,” you’ll say.

• Whenever possible, it helps to make your minilesson concrete. If you are going to mention three familiar books, it’s great to hold each as you say the book’s title. If you are going to talk about tiny details, use hand gestures to show just how tiny those details are.

• There are predictable places where minilessons get derailed. One of these is at the end of the active involvement, after children have talked to or worked with their partners. Often teachers get seduced into hearing a huge number of children report back what they said to partners. Often teachers get seduced into hearing a huge number of children report back what they said to partners. If you need any children to report back (which shouldn’t be a foregone conclusion), you’d usually benefit from calling on only one or two children and then responding to their comments so that this becomes an extension of your teaching time. The reporting back needs to serve the good of the class, not function only as a private conversation between you and the child you called upon.

• It would be rare to read aloud a brand new text as part of a minilesson. There are a number of reasons why we instead, are apt to reread familiar texts in a minilesson. First, children deserve the chance to encounter a text first as simply an appreciative reader, without being told, “Listen for the action words in this story.” Then, too, once a child knows a text as a reader of it, it makes sense to look at the text and ask, “How did the author make this?” Finally the minilesson is usually about one aspect of a text only – and so it makes sense to zero in on a section of the text only, and this works better if the entire text is on children know very well.

• There are two places in a minilesson where the teacher is launching the kids to do some work. One is at the start of active engagement; the other is in the link. In both these places, the teacher must give directions. This needs to be crystal clear. It helps if the vocabulary of these sections is consistent. In hundreds of minilessons teachers will say, “turn and talk to your partner about…” and soon children do this effortlessly. Don’t vary the wording on this or other directions.

• Remember that the qualities of good writing are often the qualities of good teaching. The injunction to “show not tell” applies to teachers as well as writers. Whenever a teacher has the choice between demonstrating or explaining, the former is preferable. And if you want children to remember an injunction, make it detailed not general.

• It often helps to role-play exaggerated versions of what not to do. For example, I might tell children, “Sometimes my writing friend makes me feel awful. Let me show you,” and I proceed to reenact a listener who yawns, look past the writer to see out the window, acts bored and does every other bad thing imaginable. Children will laugh with delight…but the message hits home.

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-Plan to teach one thing clearly

-Prepare the materials needed (students too)

-Manage the time of the lesson

1 minute

-Activate prior knowledge about previous teaching

-Motivate and prepare students for lesson

-Put your teaching point into the context of the students’ ongoing work

-Establish cognitive clarity over your teaching point.

4-5 minutes

-Put the teaching point into the context of a larger reading or writing act

-Direct, explicit instruction through one of several possible methods. Usually you’ll demonstrate (role-play) the teaching point in a way that provides a model of a competent performer.

3-4 minutes

-Students apply the strategy with your support and rehearse for when they’ll do it on their own later

-Teachers coach a few of the students during this time

-Teachers expect and accept student approximations

-Teachers assess the students during this time in order to determine future conferences, mid-workshop interruptions, share sessions, and minilessons

1 minute

-Provide another exemplar model

-Honor and compliment students’ attempts and work

-Provide feedback to students

-Restate the teaching point, integrating it into students’ ongoing work

-Contextualize the teaching point into the larger picture of what students will be doing

-Transfer the teaching point to independent work

-Perhaps set up some system of accountability (“If you do this…” or “Once you’ve done this…”)

1 minute

-Reinforce and/or clarify the teaching point from the minilesson that began the workshop

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