Chapters 7, 8, & 9

Being a preservice teacher, I'm finding out more and more about teaching everyday. I've heard the term mini-lesson used lightly throughout my educational career, but I've not really had a 'lesson' on mini-lessons. After learning about them, I find them to be great! I remember the video we watched in class with the small group of students were not grasping the concept of using quotation marks in dialogue. While the class was working on individual work, the teacher took a small group of students aside with her, and presented a mini-lesson on using quotations in dialogue. This was a great example of using a mini lesson, because instead of either working one on one with students or reteaching an entire lesson on using quotation marks to the entire class which is time consuming, a short ten minute lesson can be useful to just tie up a few loose ends and adressing only the student's who are struggling. Also, I really liked the idea of using student writings as an example! What a great idea!!! When I have a conference with a student who is doing well in a specfic craft, I can create an overhead of his or her work and use it as an example to the class after I use the example I create. I believe this would be a great way to not only to boost the morale of that particular student, but maybe by using an example of another student it would be easier for the class to understand since it was created by a student of their level. Next, I feel that observations and conferences is one of the best ways to work and improve a student. I think a great example of using a conference would be when they complete an individual writing and there are a few words that are unclear to the teacher, then they can use the conference to maybe draw on what the student is doing to create these types of spellings or ideas etc..