Today’s post is all about mini-lessons. One way to differentiate Writing Workshop for you class is tailored mini-lessons.
If you have Lucy Calkin’s Unit of Studies her books have mini-lessons to take you through each type of writing. She also has a book called If…Then… that also has great mini-lesson ideas that you can use when you notice your students may need practice with certain skills.
If you do not have Lucy Calkin’s Units of Study, you can still differentiate with your mini-lessons. If you remember in my last post, I was talking about getting a writing sample as a pre-test. From this writing sample you will be able to see what your students excel at and what they need to work on as a writer. From the list of things they need to work on, you can create your own mini-lessons.
If I notice my students are struggling with word choice, I will do a mini-lesson where we practice adding descriptive words to a sentence.
If I notice the class struggling with capitalization, I will have them help me edit a piece (with lots of mistakes focused on capitalization). If I notice that we need to work on adding details, I will have a mini-lesson focused on that. For more mini-lesson ideas, check out my blog post about mini-lessons >>>here.
These differentiated mini-lessons can also be done in a small group. From the student writing sample and observation you might have a few kids who need to work on a specific skill. Instead of doing a targeted mini-lesson whole group, you could pull them for a quick small group mini-lesson working on the specific skill they need help with.
On Thursday I will be sharing my next differentiation tip focused on paper and topic choices.
If you missed my past tips from the Differentiation in Writing Workshop series, click below…
Lucy Calkin’s Units of Studies has specific lessons geared towards students coming up with their own goals. There are checklists, mini-lesson ideas, etc. You can do this without Units of Study too. First, come up with a few areas that you have been focusing on. For example, sequencing, adding details, staying focused on a small moment, etc. Create a little checklist with those items on it. Students will then take the checklist and their writing piece and work with a partner. They can read the story to each other and go through the checklist marking areas that they are doing well with and areas they need to work on. From there have each child pick one area that they want to focus on as their current writing goal.
Thank you so much for checking out my Differentiation in Writing Workshop blog series! See below to catch up on past posts.
If you missed my past tips from the Differentiation in Writing Workshop series, click below…
Conferencing is one of the easier times to differentiate Writing Workshop. I have a schedule I use (see below) and call students back on their particular day. They bring the piece they are working on or one we looked at the last time we met and we look over it together. This is a great chance to talk about student specific goals, see what goal the child wants to have, and talk about the positives you see in them as a writer. These opportunities also show me areas where they can grow as writer, which often leads to us creating new goals.
Do you conference with students during writing? If so, share your thoughts on it down in the comments.
Check back tomorrow for the final installment where I share about students creating their own goals to help differentiate Writing Workshop.
If you missed my past tips from the Differentiation in Writing Workshop series, click below…
If you use Lucy Calkin’s Units of Study, she has pre-test ideas in the Writing Pathways book. She calls them On-Demand Performance Assessments. If you don’t have the Units of Study, you can still have your students complete a writing sample/pre-test. At the beginning of the year, I have my students write about themselves on the page below.
From this writing sample, I can learn a lot about each student. For example…
