Mini-Lessons

My thoughts this morning are dealing with the mini-lesson I am presenting tomorrow during class. My mini-lesson is on Active/Passive Voice, and I am taking a "Pop Culture" approach. I do not want to completely ruin my wonderful lesson (if anyone reads this before 5 tomorrow :) ), but a little summary is necessary for my thoughts to make sense.

My lesson starts with an explanation of the two voices and a couple of examples of each. As a class, we will do the examples together before moving onto the two activities. One of the activities involves group work, and the second is individual. "The students" will scan popular culture magazines for examples of active/passive voice as a group, and then they will apply the examples found to a paragraph on their own. The students will be able to write sentences in these two voices and indentify them in their own writing.

My main thought is the idea of instructional variety. Not only does my lesson involve topics that the students will be interested in (pop culture), they will also work as a team and on their own all in one lesson. I feel as though the students should never get bored with a lesson, and the instruction should vary frequently in order to keep them intrigued. My mini-lesson switches approaches four times, keeping the students constantly on their toes. Also, as I have stated before in other discussions, applying pop culture to basic examples seems very beneficial to me. If the students are learning without necessarily realizing they are being instructed, the chances of continual comprehension are more likely. Although we cannot always cater to the students' needs each time we teach, I truly feel that if we consider the students' interests often enough, they will appreciate their education more. There are times for structured lessons, and there are times for relaxed sessions; however, my mini-lesson incorporates all the elements, so the structure and relaxation blend together smoothly.

I have presented a similar lesson in an education class, but I had only five other classmates, so I did not get to feel the effectiveness of the lesson very well. Hopefully, after tomorrow night, I will know if my approach works they way I feel it does; don't be afraid to give me input!!!