minilesson

For literacy, I love this school district site: www.wrsd.net/literacy 

On this site, I find scripted mini-lessons for those really important lessons and a year-long calendar of readers workshop minilessons which contains the meat of a teaching objective.  Go to the left-hand side of the page and hover over Elementary Curriculum, then look at both the focus lessons, which are scripted, and the unit trajectories, or curriculum maps. 

As a teacher of English Language Learners, I have found the use of chants or songs that use and define academic vocabulary to be the best means of teaching language and content.  Perhaps because so often, especially among K-3 students, the kids LOVE to sing the songs again and again. 

Last year, I had a favorite writing chant, which I used every day, and now thanks to my bilingual coach I have a great reading chant to share with you all!  (She gave me permission to post it.)  She even typed up a great series of lessons to teach the chant, vocabulary and content.  I'll post these soon too under lesson plans!

A list of comprehension strategies perfect for Readers Workshop mini-lesson focus ideas.

I love the author David Shannon, who's well known for No, David. Yesterday, I read his book Duck on Bike to model writing a WASL (Washington's state assessment) short summary with three main events. As I read I emphasized the inner thinking and thought to myself, "This would be a great mentor text to show inner thinking. There's inner thinking on almost every page!" :-) All the animals have their own opinions about Duck's trick, which they only share in their thoughts.Want to try it?

Part of being a reading teacher, for me, is reading the literature that my students are reading or that might serve as a good read-aloud or mentor text for writer's workshop. Since break came early with a snow storm, I got to my local library to check out some books, as well as extra time to read.

One of the books I checked out was by the great Kate DiCamillo, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. For those who don't know, Edward is a china bunny who through mishaps loses one owner only to move on to another, at least eventually. Through his journey Edward grows to appreciate life and others, most importantly, he learns to love.