Get Out of the Way: Minilessons that Mean Something

Get Outof the Way: Minilessons that Mean Something Gill Hunter EKU Writing Project 4 June 2015

Think of an average class, or class period, or activity in your classroom. Write to outline it, from beginning to end. Share with someone near you.

In your outline: What percentage of that time are you in front of the class talking? What percentage of that time are students actively working? Calculate with someone near you.

Five Minilesson Mentors CrisTovani, So What Do They Really Know? Carl Anderson, How’s It Going? Mark Overmeyer, What Student Writing Teaches Us Katie Wood Ray, Wondrous Words (Focus Lessons) Penny Kittle, Write Beside Them

The Purpose of the Minilesson in Writing • (from Penny Kittle) • Explore craft, by • Looking at published work (mentor texts) • Looking at work under construction • the teacher’s • the students’ • Write Beside Them, p.73

The Purpose of the Minilesson, continued • (from Kittle, from Ray) • Teach Students to Read Like a Writer: • What do you notice about how this text was written? • Note (underline, highlight, talk about) repeating phrases or repeating ideas or images. Note technique, details, etc. • Notice how examples that support ideas are written. Note evidence to support a position. Note writers’ reasoning. • Where does the writer show not tell? How does the writer analyze? • Why do you think the piece started the way it did? How would you define the lead? Where do you think the idea came from? • What do you think the writer left out of this piece – or cut in revision? • What do you notice that you might try in your own writing?

The Minilesson’s Foundation:Rehearse, Reread, Revise (from Kittle) Rehearse: “the beginning nudge to write… the moment when you think about a topic and make a connection that feels like it could be something” (78).... “Writing can be such hard work, but rehearsal is much more likely to be play and likely to be in my head, not on the page” (79) Reread: “How do you listen to your own writing?” … “I wanted to reread just to hear the story and move on to my next piece, but I couldn’t get past my first sentence… I played reader and was lost” (80) Revise: “providing vision and a few strategies – tools – that might work in the piece they’re crafting and might not…lessons are showing a way, not testing students on their ability to use each tool I provide…. I don’t provide ‘answers’ in class, I provide possibilities” (81)

The Parts of a Minilesson (from Carl Anderson) Connection – tell students what you will teach them and why Teach students about a kind of writing work – give information or help them gather information about that work Have students have-a-go – they give the work a brief try Link the lesson to students’ independent work

Connection: let students know how our teaching is connected to their needs as writers, learners, thinkers • Explain why we’re giving the minilesson – show them that the minilesson was designed with their specific learning needs in mind • Tell them what we will teach them, directly, to focus their attention for the instruction that will follow

Teach: • Give information • Explore • Show examples • Demonstrate • Fishbowl • Help students gather information • From their experiences as writers • From texts

Have-a-go: nudge students to break through their resistance to trying new things in their writing • Have them say something to neighboring students (rehearse) • Have them look at their writing and make plans (reread) • Have them participate in a writing exercise • Try the strategy for a couple minutes, a couple lines • Stop the class and ask what it was like to try it out, to have-a-go

Link: ask which students in the class will commit to using was taught during the minilesson in that class/writing workshop period • - Not every student needs to learn what is taught in every minilesson • - It’s important that students own their process – they need to make and realize their own plans • Ways to link: • Ask for a show of hands • Promise to make students famous • Suggest ways for students to incorporate instruction in their plans

The two pillars (rising from a solid Minilesson foundation): KEEP MINILESSONS MINI - 5-10 minutes is optimal, occasionally 15 minutes if it includes (pointed) discussion or students do a writing exercise RETURN TO THE MINILESSON AT THE END OF CLASS - have students share their writing or – better! – describe their process at the end of class - while students work find students who are incorporating that day’s minilesson content and ask them to share at the end - honor students who take risk by trying something new – celebrate risk! Give them space to share!

Minilesson Content Sources: A Teacher’s Writing (Kittle does this a lot) Mentor Texts (Anderson and Ray do this a lot) Student Work (Overmeyer and Tovani do this a lot)

Minilesson from my own Writing I wrote this paragraph to begin a piece for the EKUWP Directors Blog. I have always envied my wife’s story of Wendell Berry finally recognizing her struggles and energy in his Composition for Teachers course at the University of Kentucky and delicately putting his arm around her shoulder and telling her kindly, “write what you know, Ms. Closterman, write what you know.” There may not have been as much of the grandfather in Berry then as there is now, but in her pensive retelling he plays the sage role really well. It seemed to be good advice, and I have earnestly wished I had someone who carefully counseled me when I was at an age when my developing desire to write the great American novel competed with fewer demands than it does now. It’s incredibly wise to write what you know, right? Then I read Stephen King’s On Writing. He says to get rid of adverbs and to get rid of passive voice. This paragraph needs help. Let’s work on adverbs first: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/adverbs.htm Can you find adverbs you don’t need in a piece you’re working on?

Minilesson from a Mentor Text After reading the three paragraphs from Stephen King’s On Writing, write for a few minutes to respond to them. Respond first in whatever way feels natural – what are you thinking? what are you interested in? how does it read? Then respond because you read the paragraphs like a writer – what do you notice about the way King wrote? how do you hear his voice? what does he do to get you to respond the way you did at first? what’s his purpose in writing? where must his idea have come from? where does he go with it? what does he do that surprises you? Finally, have-a-go: what could you write in this same way? Tell yourself by making notes or, if an idea comes quickly to mind, dive into it.

Minilessons from Student Work Mark Overmeyer: “Your job when assessing student work is to know what students need to learn the next day. When you discover a pattern in student work, stop and form a minilesson based on that pattern. You don’t even have to read the rest of the stack.”

Minilesson from Student Work Read the following short essay a student of mine recently submitted. Don’t assess; read like an interested reader, and a writer. I want to teach you something – or provide possibilities – about the student’s writing. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is about unrequited love. He’s too afraid to show his love. At the same time he’s full of himself. He’s also afraid of becoming bold. What man isn’t? However, it’s almost as if he’s in love with himself by the amount of time he talks about himself. Love seems to be the main point; however, it can be the cause of a lot of stress when it’s unrequited. For the narrator, it seems that he wants to love her, but either it’s his fear keeping him from saying anything, or maybe it’s his unconscious keeping from saying anything. If he does speak to the person he loves, then he won’t be able to talk about himself anymore. I believe that the narrator is egotistic; my hair this, my hair that. At the same time, the question needs to be asked, is the narrator referring to his body features because he’s afraid his skinny body could be the reason why she doesn’t love him, or could it be something deeper? Could he be the reason why he is not loved? Capture what you notice about this short essay – make notes to respond as an interested reader and writer. What do you see?

Minilesson from Student Work, continued One thing I noticed in this student’s essay is that he ended with a couple rhetorical questions. I’m interested in teaching you to think about the rhetorical question. [A rhetorical question suggests its own answer and is used to make a point.] “Shouldn’t you be ashamed of yourself?” “What is so rare as a day in June?” “How did that idiot ever get elected?” “What’s in a name?” I teach students that essays exist to answer questions, not just pose them. Lots of people teach the rhetorical question as an essay-starter, but we see it used in this student’s essay as a conclusion. I would encourage this writer to maybe think about a rhetorical question as an introduction, but would urge revision – specifically, answering questions – in the conclusion. Have-a-go at this: rewrite this introduction (or one of yours, if an idea hits you) to include a rhetorical question as an introduction. Or, draft a different conclusion (or one of your own), that answers questions instead of “provocatively” posing them.

Minilessons from Entrance Tickets and Exit Slips (from Tovani) “I often give the class a short task that serves as a pre-assessment…. Pre-assessments during the opening help me to know if the minilesson I’ve planned consists of too much or not enough information. …. During the minilesson, I teach a specific skill, strategy, or piece of content based on student learning from the day before. Once the minilesson is finished, students are released to work on something that will show me how well they have understood the learning that was just introduced.” - So What Do They Really Know, p. 112

Minilesson in the Middle: Tovani’s “Catch and Release” Catch: a quick, whole-class ‘timeout’ from work time to model or share a strategy that will help them re-engage in work Planned: to scaffold multiple tasks or texts in a lesson Unplanned: to clarify confusion or misconception, or to share thinking the teacher notices as she confers with students Release: students return to work individually or in groups; teacher confers to learn about students, identify learning needs, note progress, and differentiate instruction

Find your foundation: What about your own writing (struggles, successes, common issues) could you share as a minilesson? What mentor texts come to mind that would serve as rich, useful minilesson content? Why? Where could you look for more? (Hint: answer: everywhere!) What have you noticed about students’ writing that could be addressed in a minilesson? (You might have a bunch of these already in mind.)

Solve your structure: Go back to your outline of your average class. What could you do differently to increase the work students do and shift your role from “sage on the stage” to “guide at the side”? Make specific notes to finish – make specific plans to incorporate from day one next year.

Get Out of the Way: Minilessons that Mean Something