Lesson Plans -> English Language Arts -> Mini-lesson Plans
Jeff Anderson, in Mechanically Inclined, suggests crafting mini lessons to help students understand how grammar can help them write more clearly for their audience. As I created this lesson, I built off of his ideas to help students understand pronoun cases and how they relate to previous mini lessons. The goal is for students to explore what makes their writing clearer.
See Handouts for pronoun chart
See Handouts for pronoun chart
See Handouts for graphic organizer
The poetry used in classrooms is often difficult for students to analyze, understand, or connect with. Students have poetry in their own lives, whether it be songs, quotes, written works, or their own thoughts. This lesson attempts to help students see that all poetry, even the stuff they see in the typical classroom, has a meaning. Further, this lesson and handout can bridge to help students begin to analyze and make inferences from the texts they are used to seeing, such as song lyrics or social media posts. The tools of inferencing and analyzing the words of someone else, whether written, spoken, or otherwise imparted, are important for all students to have. These are the basic ways in which we can begin to offset inequity - by analyzing what is actually going on in our society, community, home, and schools. This lesson helps students acquire and refine these tools.
The poetry used in classrooms is often difficult for students to analyze, understand, or connect with. Students have poetry in their own lives, whether it be songs, quotes, written works, or their own thoughts. This lesson attempts to help students see that all poetry, even the stuff they see in the typical classroom, has a meaning. Further, this lesson and handout can bridge to help students begin to analyze and make inferences from the texts they are used to seeing, such as song lyrics or social media posts. The tools of inferencing and analyzing the words of someone else, whether written, spoken, or otherwise imparted, are important for all students to have. These are the basic ways in which we can begin to offset inequity - by analyzing what is actually going on in our society, community, home, and schools. This lesson helps students acquire and refine these tools.
See Handouts for poem skeleton.
Not only is this lesson a review of nouns and adjectives, and how they work together, but it’s also a way to learn about students. Ms. Baker and I used this activity to help students understand some of the vocabulary words of the novel we were reading, as well as to help students learn to describe nouns to make their sentences more catching and interesting. This poem could be easily adapted to different parts of speech, or to different contexts, such as asking students to write from different perspectives or about characters.
Not only is this lesson a review of nouns and adjectives, and how they work together, but it’s also a way to learn about students. Ms. Baker and I used this activity to help students understand some of the vocabulary words of the novel we were reading, as well as to help students learn to describe nouns to make their sentences more catching and interesting. This poem could be easily adapted to different parts of speech, or to different contexts, such as asking students to write from different perspectives or about characters.
This lesson plan uses Catching Fire as an introduction to symbols. Often, students do not feel that the texts they read in an English classroom reflect their lives, interests, or selves. The Hunger Games Trilogy is a more modern text that some students might understand or connect with better. This lesson is built around the second book in the trilogy for that reason. However, the goal of the lesson is for it to be applicable to any text, especially a text in a series, to help students make connections. In this case, the connections Ms. Hlywa and myself attempt to make are between texts - The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. Since symbols are a key part of how characters and readers interact with the trilogy, we wanted to help students begin to think about the ways symbols are used in the text. This way, before even reading, the students feel they know something about the book! It gives them a way to frame their reading and access the text.
For note-taking handout, see here.
For note-taking handout, see here.