Andrea Nelson

CT 4133
Writing Mini lesson

Context:
Writing Workshop 1st Grade

Students are currently in an informational writing unit where they are learning to write
lab report. In this mini lesson, I focused on how to use comparisons to write detailed
observation sections within their lab reports.

Teaching Point: Readers make comparison between one or more objects to add detail to
descriptions of scientific observations.

(Times are Teacher does

projected
times, not
actual)
Connection Teacher asks two students to bring their water bottles to the front of the room. Teacher
(3 min) asks students to turn and talk How are these two water bottles the same and how are
they different.

Students note that they are both water bottles, they both have animals on them. Students
note that one water bottle is bigger than the other and that they are different colors.

Teach (3 Wow! You all really described how the water bottles are the same and different. Today, I
min) am going to teach you that to make their writing more detailed, good information writers
compare the two things from their experiment.

Just like you all just did with the water bottles, by telling me that one water bottle is clear
and the other is purple, you helped me learn more about both water bottles. When we talk
about things being different we can say things like (teacher to project sentence starters)
One thing is _____ and the other is _______. We can talk about how things are the same
by saying things like Both things are ________.
 Active Lets practice again, but this time I want to put on our scientists hat. Lets try comparing
Engagemen two things that we observed in an experiment last week: honey and molasses.
t (4 min)
Turn and tell your partner: how are these two things the same?

Students said things like they are both liquids. They are both viscous (a science
vocabulary word they had learned in a different lesson)

Now, turn and tell your partner, how are they different?

Students pointed out that the colors are different (one is yellow and one is brown) and
that they are in different shaped jars (one is round and one is bumpy).

Link (1 Wow writers! You are becoming experts at making comparisons.

minute)
Today, I want you to make comparisons between the two mixtures you observed in your
most recent experiment. In your observation section, make sure to say how they two
mixtures are the same and how they are different.

Reflection:

The purpose of this lesson was to provide students with a tool to add detailed
descriptions to their information writing (in this unit, specifically to their lab reports).
When I taught this lesson, students had completed two previous lab reports and were
working on their third. The experiment they were writing about was about seeing how
different solids and liquids mix together. In the previous experiments, they had become
accustom to using a data sheet to record notes about what they observed and using this
data to write their observations. Students have also been introduced to the idea of using
specific vocabulary to help describe what they see and have been practicing describing
the properties of the things they observed using things such as color, shape and size in
their observations.
The mini-lessons in the first bend of this unit in our class has served two
purposes. The first, like all mini lessons, is to teach an element of writing craft to
children. The second purpose is to guide students towards gaining familiarity with this
new genre: science writing. Because this lesson was their third observation they would be
writing, I wanted to focus most explicitly on craft as I had seen from their previous
writing that many students understood the basic structure of this portion of the lab report
and were ready to hone craft skills to improve their writing.
 This lesson felt much more mini than some of other my mini lessons and I think
I did a nice job keeping it short. Students have done lessons in comparison in reading and
I knew that many of them had the basic framework to complete this type of work.
However, in retrospect, I wish I had engaged more explicitly with a mentor text instead of
just providing sentence starters so that students would have been able to see how and why
making comparisons helps to paint a picture for the reader in a more authentic context. In
other mini lessons, I had used mentor lab reports with students and because this is a new
genre for them and I believe this would have been useful.
Corgill (2008) highlights the importance of this type of work for engaging
inquiring young minds. As Corgill points out, one thing that is essential for non-fiction
writers is to write with voice and personality. In my incorporation of significant student
voice in my mini lesson, I was attempting to foster the development of that type of
descriptive voice in my students. However, while student voice was certainly present
during my mini-lesson, I noticed as I conferenced with students after the fact that some
struggled with the structure of the comparison and needed a good amount of teacher
support. In the future, I would like to more explicitly highlight the specific craft move I
want students to try to encourage independence when writing. To help with this in the
future, I might consider being more explicit and connecting to a mentor and perhaps even
physically highlighting the parts of the text I want students to focus on. I think it may
have also been useful for students to vocalize making comparisons using the specific
sentence structure provided by the sentence starters. It is challenging to me to strike a
balance between encouraging unique voices from student and giving them explicit
structures to emulate. I think I must become comfortable with the idea that students need
mentors to emulate and that developing their voice will come with time and exposure to
these types of mentors.