Using Mini-Lessons to Revamp Reading Instruction

Hi all! It's Courtney from Swimming into Second. I'm dropping by today to tell you about how I've revamped my reading instruction this school year.

This year, my district got a new reading series. I'm sure you know how that goes but I felt like I was drowning in materials last year. I'm happiest teaching with picture books and coming up with my own lessons. So at the end of last year, I decided that I needed to make a change to save my sanity. 

Around this time last year, I decided to ditch the reading series (for the most part) and do my own thing. I found a book that I love in my classroom library. 

If you've never read "Arnie the Doughnut" by Laurie Keller, you really need to check it out. She also has a new series of chapter books featuring Arnie that my students love.

So I pulled out this book and I thought, "What can I do with it?" I came up with a lesson on character traits.

Before reading the book, I cut out some doughnut circles from some brown construction paper. As I read, I stopped after every few pages and had my students come up with character traits to describe Arnie. Then, they wrote these down on the doughnuts and we taped them to our anchor chart.

After the whole group lesson, I gave my students a brown circle for their doughnut and had them glue it in their reading journal. Then, they wrote character traits for Arnie around the doughnut and decorated their doughnut to look like Arnie.

I love how these turned out. So cute and my kiddos loved this lesson!

I made this lesson with some added printables into a freebie for you. Click on the image to download.

If you like this, I've also made some mini-lesson packs out of the resources I have for Reading Street. If you've bought my Reading Street pack, you already have these but I wanted to make these available for those who don't use Reading Street.

Have a great weekend!