Imagine that in your second life, you decide to learn how to walk a tightrope. Your mentor coaches you by saying, "balance." If that was the extent of their teaching, I'd advise you to run for the hills! Balancing is a skill. But there are plenty of strategies that go into learning how to balance. Balance by holding your arms straight out. Balance by keeping your chin up. Balance by tightening your core.
Teaching reading and writing are the same. Every teaching point in a minilesson needs to have both a skill and a strategy. A skill is something that you teach children because they need it to become proficient readers, and a strategy is a way to achieve it. One skill might have many different strategies, but we only teach one at a time.
Even though we may call determining importance a strategy when we are talking to children, it's really a big umbrella skill. There are many different ways that a reader can determine importance. They can determine importance by reading the headings and subheadings. They can determine importance by thinking of their purpose for reading. They can determine importance by noticing character change. This is how we stretch a skill over several weeks. We have our skill and then we break it down daily into different strategies. It's time to stop with the: Good readers determine importance. Gosh, if I were a student, I would have no idea where to begin with that statement!
In order for children to best latch on to a skill, we must state it clearly with a strategy that will help them get there.
Like this: Today I'm going to teach you to read a tricky word (skill) by getting your mouth ready to read (strategy). OR...
Today I'm going to teach you to make a mental image (skill) by using all five of your senses (strategy).
What's more- at TC (Columbia's Teacher's College) they advocate that for the ultimate skill "stickiness", we should repeat that teaching point 6 TIMES in one short mini!
Remember that a minilesson has these 4 parts:
Connection
Teach
Active Engagement
Link
Here's how the teaching point fits in 6 times:
1. The connection ends with: "Today I'm going to teach you that one way to (skill) is by (strategy)."
2. At the beginning of the teach: "Watch me as I (skill) by (strategy)."
3. At the end of the teach: "Did you notice how I (skill) by (strategy)?"
4. At the beginning of the active engagement: "Now it's your turn to try to (skill) by (strategy)."
5. After the active engagement: "I noticed that so many of you ...."
6. The link would go something like: "So anytime you're reading and you ___, you can (strategy).
Those 6 repeated teaching points are accompanied by "catch phrases." If we can attempt to phrase them in the same way every time, they act like a switch for the child. When you flip it, they know what to expect each time. They know: When I hear the words "Today I'm going to teach you..." they'd better listen up because the big idea is coming. They know that their teacher is about to teach them something and then she is not going to let them off the hook; they are going to have to try it after her. So they listen, because that's what happens every day at the minilesson.
We all know that predictable routines leave more space for deep thinking. This is why workshop is structured as it is. Why not bring some of that predictability into the minilesson?
For more on the parts of a minilesson, be sure to check out The Architecture of a Minilesson.
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| My students were so used to hearing the language of a minilesson, that for one celebration they taught each other by writing their own teaching points. (I wasn't picky - I let them leave the skill out:-) |
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