Running Head: MINI LESSON: WRITING WORKSHOP

TLT 422: Mini Lesson and Writing Workshop

Gaby Montes

Lehigh University
Running Head: MINI LESSON: WRITING WORKSHOP 1

Writing Workshop Location & Classroom Layout

The writing center in my classroom will be low to the ground to ensure that all students

can access the materials at any point and feel welcome to do so. It will be in front of one

designated wall, a wall that is visible from the moment you walk into the classroom and that

students can see from their desks. On the wall will be a sign designating it as the writing center,

as well as anchor charts and helpful resources that students can look to reference as they are

writing. The anchor charts will be at student eye level. There will also be an area where student

writing is showcased and “published.” As per the recommendations in Shubitz and Dorfman’s

(2019) text, in the diagram below there is a u-shaped table for teacher conferences, areas for peer

conferences, comfortable seating options, and a meeting area with a smartboard and easel.
Running Head: MINI LESSON: WRITING WORKSHOP 2

Writing Workshop Materials

❖ Writing utensils
o Pencils, highlighters, pens of different colors, erasers, crayons, colored pencils,
markers, white out
❖ Sticky notes
❖ Three-hole punch
❖ Scissors
❖ Tape
❖ Stapler
❖ Various Types of Paper
o Loose leaf paper (both wide and thin lined), blank computer paper, paper with
picture and lines
❖ Mentor checks
❖ Calendar
❖ Anchor charts at eye level
❖ Student “published” work
❖ Teacher examples
❖ Class checklists for writing
❖ Dictionary
❖ Spotlight focus writing concept of the week
❖ Turn in bins
o One for completed work, one for in progress work
Writing Workshop Schedule

Writing workshop would occur every day in the classroom because the text and research have

discussed the importance of integrating writing into students’ daily routines and cultivating that

love of writing. The length of writing workshop would range from 40 to 60 minutes, dependent

on the focal lesson.

1. Short Mini-Lesson (10 minutes)

a. In this short, ten-minute lesson, the teacher will specifically highlight one writing

strategy. This will occur as a whole-group lesson on the carpet meeting area. The

teacher will start by activating students’ prior knowledge, share the teaching

point, then demonstrate how to do the strategy. Afterward, students will be given
Running Head: MINI LESSON: WRITING WORKSHOP 3

time to actively engage with the strategy and then the teacher will connect the

strategy to what they will be doing during independent writing.

2. Independent Writing Time & Conferring (25 – 45 minutes)

a. This is the bulk of the writing workshop time. Students may work at their desks,

or at other designated writing spots around the classroom. The students practice

the strategy they learned during the mini lesson, as well as other strategies they

have learned. As students write independently, the teacher walks around the

classroom to confer with individual students or hold small group writing

instruction sessions.

3. Share Session (5-10 minutes)

a. After independent writing time, students will reunite on the carpet meeting area

and a few students showcase their work.

4. Anchor Chart creation & Reflection on Lesson (5-10 minutes)

a. The teacher asks questions to help the students reflect on the mini lesson and

writing of the day and the class works together to create an anchor chart to

represent that writing strategy.

Mini Lesson Context

This mini lesson will occur in a first grade classroom and will be based on the PA SAS

first grade writing standard CC.1.4.1.O, include thoughts and feelings to describe experiences

and events. The mentor text for this mini lesson is A Bike Like Sergio's by Maribeth Boelts, as it

showcases to students the different ways they can incorporate the different thoughts and feelings

of characters into their writing. The lesson will be taught using a mixture of the inquiry and

guided practice teaching methods. The topic is “Adding words and statements to show what a
Running Head: MINI LESSON: WRITING WORKSHOP 4

character is thinking or feeling,” so this mini lesson falls into the category of having a

conversation about the writing process, specifically about revision and adding details.

This topic was chosen because the students in the class have been working on narrative

writing, specifically on writing narratives about real or imagined events (standard CC.1.4.1.M).

The lesson in the week prior was about establishing who and what the narrative will be about

(standard CC.1.4.1.N), but I have noticed that my students have been struggling with using the

“whos” in the story to demonstrate the “what.” What I mean by this is that students are not

adding much information about the character in the story’s feelings or thoughts – making it

harder to understand what the story is about. To illustrate, a student in my class was writing a

story about a time her sister was mean to her – though the story itself was written well, the reader

was not able to see how sad the sister was making the main character because there was no

description of that character’s thoughts or feelings in the story. Thus, in the mini lesson and

independent writing, we will focus on revising our stories and adding in character thoughts and

feelings about the things that are happening in the story.

The students in my class struggle to understand that the reader does not know what they

were thinking when they were writing the story and assume the reader knows the character’s

feelings and thoughts, so this mini lesson will help them to learn to add more specific detail

about the character’s feelings and thoughts to make sure the reader knows. The overall objective

of the mini lesson is to get students to start adding more detail to their stories and getting more

specific in their writing because that will make their stories and overall writing stronger. Also, I

want students to understand that they have to write the details they want their readers to know

and include them in the story.

Running Head: MINI LESSON: WRITING WORKSHOP 5

This mini lesson specifically supports the dual language learners in the class by working

with them to become more aware of the importance of the word usage they use both in writing

and speaking to portray their feelings and thoughts. This helps them to build on their BICS

knowledge and enables the teacher to work with them specifically on feeling and thought

vocabulary that they can use in non-academic settings, in addition to in their writing. Further,

this mini lesson specifically supports struggling writers because it teaches them the skill of going

back and re-reading their narrative writing and intentionally adding more detail to it. This helps

them to learn how to revise and edit their own writing, while making them more aware of the

importance of providing specific details in good writing – something that struggling writers often

do not do.

Mini Lesson Outline

Inquiry:
❖ Teacher writes two passages on the board

o one directly from the mentor text

o one that is a less specific version of the quote from the mentor texts

❖ The teacher reads each passage to the students and asks for any differences they notice

between the two, which provides them with more information – and how, etc.

❖ The teacher asks them whether we know exactly how the character is feeling or what they

are thinking in the second passage? Then asks why not.

❖ The teacher asks the class how they could help make the second passage better – what is

it missing that the first passage has?

Guided Practice:
Running Head: MINI LESSON: WRITING WORKSHOP 6

❖ The teacher tells the class that this is the importance about being specific in our writing

and writing specific details about how our character is feeling and what they are thinking.

The teacher tells the class that this is something we can think about during our reading,

but also something that we can add to make our writing better as we are revising it. The

teacher reminds the class that our writing is always a work in progress until we hand it in

because we as writers are constantly revising to make our writing even better!!

❖ The teacher then flips the paper on the easel to reveal a passage that the teacher wrote.

The teacher tells the class that this was a passage she wrote previously but now we must

read it together as a class and revise it. The teacher tells the class that they may need to

add more information about how the character is feeling or what they are thinking.

❖ Then the teacher gives students a minute to talk with their carpet partner and come up

with at least one idea of something they can add. Then volunteers share what the teacher

should add to the passage and where. As they do so, the teacher writes the details in.

❖ Afterwards, the teacher re-reads the new passage and asks the student if the additions

made the teacher’s writing better.

❖ Then the teacher tells students that as they transition into independent writing, she wants

them to specifically focus on adding in more information about what a character in their

story is thinking or how they are feeling.

References

Boelts, M., & Jones, N. (2016). A Bike Like Sergio's. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.

Shubitz, S. & Dorfman, L.R. (2019). Welcome to writing workshop: Engaging today's students

with a model that works. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Stenhouse Publishers.

Running Head: MINI LESSON: WRITING WORKSHOP 7