Language-Focused+Mini-Lesson+Ideas

This wiki page features our ideas for teaching a language-focused minilesson for a microteaching session this semester. Be sure to consider the collaborative and peer language-focused activities we complete in class as examples.

**Directions:** Add you name below along with your initial 3 ideas for a microteaching focus (for example, //punctuating dialogue//). Your microteaching will be comprised of a minilesson focused on teaching some aspect of language (rather than focusing on some other aspect of ELA).

**__IMPORTANT__:** Keep in mind that your mini-lesson idea and focus should represent a language exploration and awareness, contextualized approach (ref. Andrews, Weaver, Killgallon, Noden, etc.) rather than repeat the status quo of the ineffective ways in which language has been taught in the past! No decontextualized grammar lessons! Push for complexity of ideas and exploration and awareness!

Sources for your minilesson might include any of the resources we've explored (or will explore) in class together, including: Andrews LEA Approach, sentence-composing strategies resources, Killgallon, Weaver, the Narrowing the Focus Packet, as well as any of the posts on //Language Today.//


 * //ADDENDUM:// ** As we discussed in class 6, if you have already prepared and taught a minilesson on some aspect of language or grammar, you may choose another focus for your minilesson. You may not repeat the minilesson you taught in the Teaching Composition course.

//Add your name and initial ideas below...//

//Matt Sellek//: A mini-lesson based on finding new variations on stale metaphors or statements using a group rewrite activity, a mini-lesson based on the proper use of often misused punctuation (the semicolon, the colon, the dash) using grammar comics, a mini-lesson on character introduction using scenes from film or television

Jenn Duncan: Mini-lesson ideas: 1) reading strategies 2) Informational text reading 3) Hyphens or Dashes? 4) Sentence Combining

Bethany: "Abandoning" books, how to critique a poem, prepositions.

Zakk: Easily confused verbs, subjective vs. objective case pronouns, and a lesson on how word choice can change the tone/meaning of a sentence using examples from the current classroom texts.

Meredith: My possible topics for mini-lessons are most commonly misused homonyms, how to form a contraction and how to choose a synonym.

Lauren: My initial ideas for a grammar-focused mini-lesson: 1. Origins of various marks: in what cultures they originated and how they changed over time 2. Writing numbers within texts 3. The difference between //grammar// and //usage//