What reading mini-lesson tools should you be using to plan your instruction? Do you have everything you need to plan mini-lessons? Keep reading to find out the essential tools for planning and implementing more effective reading mini-lessons!
In this post, I’ll share my favorite tools and resources that help me plan my reading mini-lessons. You may also want to check out the following posts in the reading mini-lesson series:
Reading Mini-lesson Tools
The resources I use for my reading mini-lessons fall into 2 categories: planning tools and teaching tools. Find out the resources that are essential for my reading mini-lessons.
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Tools for Planning Mini-lessons
Aside from curriculum documents, these resources are all optional. You can plan an effective reading mini-lesson without using these tools. They are just ones I’ve personally found to be extremely helpful with planning my mini-lessons.
- Curriculum Documents – You’ll want to make sure you’re referring to your required curriculum (state or district) to ensure your lessons explicitly teach the standards.
- Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency by Fountas & Pinnell – This book has a wealth of information to plan all aspects of your reading workshop. They have an entire chapter dedicated to reading mini-lessons with specific strategies to teach and prompts to use.
- The Literacy Continuum by Fountas & Pinnell – Another must own book from the literacy gurus. It provides a comprehensive list of specific reading strategies and behaviors that are expected based on students’ levels.
- Reading Minilesson books by Fountas & Pinnell – Each grade-level book offers 200 reading mini-lessons that are already planned out for you! (This book is quite pricey, so you may to ask if your administrator is willing to purchase it for you!)
- The Ultimate Read-Aloud Resource by Lester Laminack – The concept of “best friend books” in this resource has completely transformed my mini-lessons. By using familiar texts to teach the strategies, my mini-lessons have become so much more efficient.
- The Reading Strategies Book by Jennifer Serravallo – This resource is full of specific strategies that can be explicitly taught during mini-lessons or reading small groups.
Tools for Teaching Mini-lessons
Luckily you don’t need many resources to teach a reading mini-lessson! You’ll only need the few required items below for your lessons.
- Best Friend Books – Select 5-10 familiar texts that you can revisit throughout the year to teach various skills. Since students already know the story, they can focus on the strategy rather than comprehending the story. Be sure to include a combination of fiction and nonfiction texts.
- Sticky notes – These are essential to mark your stopping points in the mentor texts. You can also write down the specific prompts you want to use to help your lesson be more focused and effective.
- Lesson plan – Make sure you have a clear plan for your lesson with one specific focus. Plan out all of the details, including the stopping points and specific prompts, to stay on topic rather. (Fill out the form below to download a FREE lesson plan template!)
- Anchor Charts – You should be co-constructing anchor charts with students during the lesson. Students can later refer back to these charts to remind them of what strategies they should use during independent reading. Do not use premade anchor charts as they lack meaning for students.
Other Tools for Mini-lessons
I’ve included all of the mini-lesson tools and resources that have been essential for me. As you can tell, there are not very many tools actually required to teach a reading mini-lesson. All you really need is a clear plan, mentor text, sticky notes for stopping points, and an anchor chart!
What other must-have tools or resources would you add to this list? Please share in the comments below so we have the most comprehensive list possible!
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