The videos, activities, and readings in this workshop illustrate several strategies for helping students read like writers. Now apply what you have learned to develop a mini-lesson to help your students notice specific writing techniques and develop their writing skills as they read.

Create a Craft Mini-Lesson

Based on what you've learned from the videos and activities, use one or more pieces of literature to design a writing craft mini-lesson that relates to your students' current writing work. The lesson could be genre-specific (using space in poetry or adding descriptive detail to personal narratives), or it could reflect a more general need among your students (learning how to write dialogue or where to make paragraph breaks). Be sure to include the following:

• materials needed, including the literature itself
• your plan for sharing the literature with students (handouts, overhead, read-aloud, etc.)
• the writing technique your students are learning
• specific passages that illustrate that technique
• the structure of your lesson, including how your students will apply what they have learned in their own writing

After you teach the lesson, answer the following questions:

• How did your students respond to the literary example(s)?
• What evidence did you see that they understood the craft lesson?
• How would you change the lesson if you were to teach it again?