Last week I wrote about sketching out a genre unit. Today, we’ll look at the nitty gritty of planning a genre unit. Here are my goals when creating a genre unit:
- Build on the foundation of the last genre unit during mini lessons (spiral review).
- Immerse students in the genre by delivering daily read alouds.
- Give students ways to apply new learning to their independent reading (guided practice).
Guided by these goals, my planning revolves around mini lessons, read alouds and guided practice.
I want my genre units to be useful year after year, so I plan MORE lessons than any one teacher is likely to need. Having a library of lessons means you can choose the ones that best fit this year’s students. I described my progression of mini lessons in the last post, but here’s another look:
I usually plan about 20 lessons with this breakdown:
- First 1/3 of lessons help students become better readers in general.
- Second 1/3 help students become better readers of fiction or nonfiction.
- Last 1/3 help students read this particular genre with proficiency.
As far as the actual lesson plan, it’s pretty standard. I include an objective, short script, anchor chart, background information, a reading prompt, and guided practice.
Ideally, you’d conduct a daily read aloud during reading workshop. I know not all teachers have enough time for this, but I try to prepare enough read alouds for the whole unit. With fiction, this means about 15-20 read alouds. For nonfiction it’s usually less, because the texts are longer and you’d want to read them across several days.
Again, I try to plan read alouds that include MORE information than you need, so you can choose the parts that fit your student’s needs:
I use this template to create versatile read alouds that can be used year after year.
When it comes to guided practice my ultimate goal is to help students apply the mini lesson skill to actual reading. The most difficult part of this (for me) is to avoid going overboard. “Looking busy” isn’t the same as “learning,” and I don’t want guided practice to edge out actual reading.
I design reference sheets, graphic organizers, and hybrids of the two for students to fill out while they read independently. I don’t want them to spend more time completing the form than reading, so I try to keep it simple and straightforward:
My FAVORITE method of application is assigning a daily reading focus. This is a prompt that asks students to apply the mini-lesson topic to their own reading. You can read more about it here.
Designing a genre unit takes a while, but if I do it well, the unit will be useful year after year. If you’d like to preview or purchase some ready-made genre units (which include lessons, read alouds, and guided practice) you can download this free catalogue, or preview them on TpT:
