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Mini-Lessons for Reading, Compiled by Ms. Jasztal-

Introducing the Year/Partnerships-

  • Introducing your expectations and routines
  • Making a Most Valuable Reader Trading Card
  • Reading Interest Survey in Choosing Partnerships
  • Book Swap Recording Sheet
  • Your Own Character Traits Sheet
  • Introducing Reading Terminology
  • Reading Partnerships|Beth Newingham
  • How is schema important when you read a fictional story or non-fiction selection?
  • Keeping a record of your reading
  • Different genres of literature

    Fiction-

    Stamina- Argghh! You have a plethora of books in your classroom library and you have discovered ten students have quit books in the past few days. They just seem to be flipping through books. Why are they quitting these books? Is there anything you can do to develop their stamina...? Here are some possible lessons.

  • Choosing a just-right book- What is the five-finger test? What helps you to choose a book? What are some ways in which you can preview a book?
  • Previewing a book- Look at the cover, read the back cover, read the dedication at the front of the book, read the first few pages to see if you are developing interest, come up with a purpose for reading
  • How to come up with realistic goals for finishing a book within a certain amount of time- Take the number of pages in the book and divide the pages by 7 days, for example. ie. See how many days it would take to read a book if you read 20 pages a day.
  • Using Sticky Notes- When you read, use sticky notes to ask yourself questions after reading a number of pages in your book. Ask yourself to make a prediction at a certain point. Or rather ask yourself if your initial predictions were correct. Perhaps see if you feel about a character the same as you did at the beginning of the book. What was a point in your reading that had rich description? What you can write yourself on a sticky note can go on and on.

    Characters-

  • What is a protagonist and antagonist?
  • Discovering how authors "reveal" characters' emotions through the descriptive language they use
  • Comparing characters at the beginning and end of a story/novel
  • Comparing the motives of the protagonist and antagonist
  • Analyzing the dialogues of protagonists and antagonists
  • Throughout different parts of the story, coming up with one or two words to describe characters' journies

    Skills-

  • Prosody, Inflection and Expression
  • Identifying themes when reading short stories
  • Different tones in which authors write
  • Reading a book and visualing yourself in the situation
  • Chronological order/time order words/transitions
  • Why do authors choose to dedicate their books to specific people? (Sometimes they have reasons, like "For my brother Jesse, for being brave.")
  • Why do authors write in different dialects? (ex. "y'all")
  • Looking at different books that are written in different formats, like journals or choose-your-own-adventure books
  • How do authors bring you to another time period through descriptions?
  • Inferring
  • How to work with others in literature circles
  • Understanding the author's purpose- to inform, persuade or entertain
  • Two types of inquiry (Fountas and Pinnell, p. 166)
  • Anticipation Guides
  • Fix-it strategies for comprehension
  • Cause-and-effect
  • Ways to discuss setting
  • Ways to discuss plot
  • Why authors choose specific titles for their books
  • Exposing students to different types of poetry (rhythms and patterns)
  • Similes
  • Metaphors
  • Alliteration
  • Assonance
  • Onomatopoeia
  • Foreshadowing
  • Fractured fairy tales
  • Flashbacks
  • Personification
  • Idioms

    Words-

  • Greek root words (ie. graph, chron, cyclos, phobos, phone)
  • Latin root words (ie. aud, dict, spec, man, ped)
  • Prefixes
  • Suffixes
  • Transition words
  • Context clues strategies

    Reading Response Journals-

  • What can you write about in your reading response journals?
  • What makes a rsponse in your notebook useful?
  • Modeling reader's notebook responses
  • Asking the reader of your journal questions
  • Identifying/writing your own Thick and Thin Questions
  • Unique ways of writing a journal entry- drawing text features to accompany your entries

    Connections-

  • Text-to-text connections
  • Text-to-self connections
  • Text-to-world connections
  • Making connections between fiction and non-fiction selections (ie. books about history)

    Creative Responses to Literature-

  • Advertising books through "book commercials"
  • Putting together a podcast

    Non-Fiction/Reference-

  • Ms. Jasztal's Reading Skill Cards- Developing your schema, SQR, Being a Vocabularian, Types of Text Features, Plot and Cause and Effect
  • Features of Non-Fiction Texts
  • Focusing on schema and text features before reading a non-fiction article or selection (great reference is TIME for Kids magazine, Scholastic Storyworks/Super Science, Weekly Reader, A Boy's Life, National Geographic for Kids or any other magazine.
  • SQR(RR)- Survey, Question, Read (Recite, Review)
  • QAR- Question/Answer Relationships- PDF Reference Chart, Grades 3-5 Lesson Plan from Read.Write.Think
  • Main Idea Pyramid
  • Selective Underlining
  • Using a thesaurus
  • What is plagiarism?
  • Using notecards to take notes from a non-fiction selection
  • Reading charts or graphs

    Links-

  • Books to Support Reading Workshop Lessons
  • List of Mini-Lessons from Learner.org

    This website is designed, created, and maintained by V. Jasztal. All rights reserved, copyright 2009-beyond. No part of this website may be copied without written consent.