What is a mini-lesson?

A mini-lesson focuses on a specific teaching point and lasts from five to twenty minutes. You can teach a mini-lesson with a whole group, a small group, or with individual students. Mini lessons are ideal for quick lessons that lead to active participation.

Steps to complete a mini lesson

Before you plan your mini-lesson, you need to determine your teaching point. A teaching point is a specific objective. What will the apprentice do? A teaching point might look like this: The writer will select a topic to write a nonfiction magazine article. Once he has a teaching point, he can start planning his lesson.

Step One: Model

The first step in teaching a mini-lesson is to model what you want your students to do. If your point of teaching is to have your students select a writing topic, then you should model the selection of a topic. You could show students a list of magazine article writing ideas that were generated the night before. Maybe you have ten ideas on the list. Write the list on graph paper or post it on a projection device. Think aloud about your thinking as you consider your issues. What topic do you know more about? What topic is the most interesting? What topic could you spend time writing on without getting bored? What topic has enough meat to fill the article space? These are the types of questions you would ask yourself (out loud) for this particular teaching point. His goal is to show his students how he eliminates topics and selects the best topic to write about. You can complete this step in less than five minutes.

Step Two: Active Engagement

The next step in teaching a mini-lesson is to actively involve your students. Active engagement can range from turning to a partner and talking to hands-on experience. The keyword is “active”. Students participate in practice (trial and error) while the teacher supervises and helps their students. In the case of our writing teaching point, students could work in pairs to help each other talk about their writing ideas to choose the best idea. At the end of the session, students should be ready to write. This step can take five to ten minutes.

Step Three: Share the Learning Experience

Before leaving the mini-lesson behind and releasing students to responsibility, gather your class (or meet with your small group or individuals) to share the learning experience. In the case of selecting topics, students could share their writing prompts with the rest of the class and tell how they decided on their topic. In this case, it’s not the topic that they think about, but rather the process they were involved in when choosing the topic. Spend no more than five minutes on step three. You have to make your students work now! It’s time to write (or read).

Mini-lessons are a great tool to keep your students engaged and moving. Children are connected to television, video games and the Internet to the point that they quickly lose interest. Shorter, more engaging lessons keep your students engaged and your teaching fresh.