Literature Based Mini Lessons

Using favorite picturebooks for her mini-lessons models, teacher Susan Lunsford shares 15 easy-to-do writing lessons. Mini-lessons include: Where do story ideas come from? Great First Lines, Exploring Settings, Painting Pictures with Words, Writing a Complete Story, and Great Endings. Her teacher-student dialogues make it all easy to replicate in your own classroom. Each mini-lessons includes follow-up strategies and activities and picturebook suggestions. Writing conference and management tips too! For use with Grades 1-3.

Use the magic of picture books to teach kids essential word skills. This guide features 15 engaging, reproducible lessons to help students become more fluent readers. Illustrations.

Harvey Daniels' Literature Circles introduced tens of thousands of teachers to the power of student-led book discussions. Nancy Steineke's Reading and Writing Together showed how a teacher can nurture friendship and collaboration among young readers. Now, Daniels and Steineke team up to focus on one crucial element of the Literature Circle model; the short, teacher-directed lessons that begin, guide and follow-up every successful book club meeting. Mini-lessons are the secret to book clubs that click. Each of these forty-five short, focused, and practical lessons includes Nancy and Harvey's actual classroom language and is formatted to help busy teachers with point-by-point answers to the questions they most frequently ask. How can I: steer my students toward deeper comprehension? get kids interested in each others' ideas? make sure kids choose just-right books? help students schedule their reading and meeting time? deal with kids who don't do the reading? get kids to pay more attention to literary style and structure? help special education and ELL students to participate actively in book clubs? get kids to expand their repertoire of reading strategies? make sure groups are on-task when I'm not looking over their shoulder? introduce writing tools (including role sheets) that support student discussion'. help shy or dominating members get the right amount of "airtime?" give grades for book clubs without ruining the fun? use scientific research to justify the classroom time I spend on literature circles? Each mini-lesson spells out everything from the time and materials needed to word-by-word instructions for students. The authors even warn "what could go wrong," helping teachers to avoid predictable management problems. With abundant student examples, reproducible forms, photographs of kids in action, and recommended reading lists, Mini-lessons for Literature Circles helps you deepen student book discussions, create lifelong readers, and build a respectful classroom community.

"Quick and easy literature-based lessons and activities that help students write super stories."--Cover.

"Engages students in inquiry that leads to the discovery and understanding of a general principle they can apply to their own independent reading" --

Teacher Susan Lunsford shares her best book-based lessons in every subject area. Launch a measurement lesson with Amy Hest’s The Purple Coat, discuss spelling strategies with Marc Brown’s Arthur’s Teacher Trouble , explore multiplication with Tomie dePaola’s The Art Lesson, and much more! Your students will love the connection to their favorite books—and you’ll love meeting standards while fostering a love of literature. For use with Grades 1-3.

Vocabulary-building exercises for grades 4 through 8.