Name Olivia Murray Grade Level: 4th

Writing Mini-Lesson Template

Mini Lesson Topic Writing for a Purpose

Objective: Students will focus on writing for different purposes.
Writing paper and writing matierials
Materials The book "Same, Same But Different"
White Board and Dry Erase Markers
Smart Board
Connection: In our previous writer workshops, we looked a the different forms of author's purpose that
 Tell them what you we see all the time. We went over persuade, inform, entertain, explain, and describe. In our
taught in the past lessons we looked at different examples of writing for different purposes, but today we
previous lesson. will be writing our own pieces where we get to decide what our purpose for writing is going
 How does this idea to be!
connect?
"Today I'm going to show you all how we can write for different purposes and audiences.
Explicit Instruction: Last class we discussed how we can write to persuade, inform, entertain, explain, and
 Tell them what you describe. Today we're going to look at different samples of writing and then you all are
will teach today. going to be able to create your own piece of writing for your own audience!" "The first
 Show them thing we are going to do is read the story "Same, Same But Different". I'm going to project
examples of how the story onto the Smart Board, so we can remain distances, but everyone can see the
others use the pages!" "I'm going to read the story and you all have to figure out what the author's
technique(s). purpose is for reading the story". I will read the entire story and stop on page 13 to
emphasize quotes like "In my city, the sun hides behind buildings as tall as the sky". I'll also
stop on page 6 to point out the description words that are being used throughout the story.
"Look at page 6. The author told us "That is my treehouse where I play, I live in a red brick
building with my mom, dad, and baby sister." As a class, we'll determine what the author's
purpose was for writing that story and what we can borrrow from the text for our own
writing. Following our read aloud with the focus on author's purpose, I will model my own
writing. I will write on the Smart Board a detailed recipe to bake Chocolate Chip Cookies
with every step on how to make them. As a class, we'll decide what the author's purpose is
and what we can borrow from my writing to put into their writing.
After our whole group practice, students will move into working in pairs. Students will
Guided Practice: select two options of author's purpose (pursuade, inform, enterin, exaplin, or describe).
 Engage them in Once each partner has their two pieces of writing done, they'll share their writing with their
practicing you’re partner. Their partner will then have to figure out what the author's purpose is for both of
your and/or those pieces of writing. Once the pair work is over, have students come back to whole
other(s). group and have a few students share out a few pieces of their writing.

Independent Practice: "Okay everyone, now that we've practiced as a whole group and in pairs, it's now time for
 Remind students you to try by yourself! Remember our book that we read. We saw different ways to make
how the teaching writing more descriptive. Remember the recipie I wrote. We can explain different things to
point can be used in our readers when we give detailed instructions. You are not limited to explain and describe.
independent I want you all to choose whatever piece of author's purpose that you want!" "For
writing. independent practice today, you'll be creating a piece of writing that fits into one of the
 Link mini-lesson and author's purpose categories that we talked about. You can write about anything you want,
writing lives. but it has to have one of the purposes we discussed! I'll be walking around to have writing
conferences with you all to see what everyone's working on. I can't wait to read them all!"
 Groups Wrap Up: "I really enjoyed conferencing with you all and seeing all the amazing writing going on in
 Restate the teaching class today. Thank you all for working hard! Today's purpose was to learn about how we
point. can write for different purposes. When we have a certain message to get across, we can
 Ask: Did you try write in different ways to reach that audience!" "Did anyone try to write with decsription
what was taught? words to work on describing for an audience?" "Did anyone try to write with instructions on
Did it work for you? how to do something to work on explaining for an audience?" "Did it work for you all?"
How will it affect "How will it affect your future writing?"
your future writing?

Self Check:

I modeled writing for the students.

I used a mentor text.

I used excerpts from the mentor texts.

I provided details as to what I was doing for each stage of the lesson.

I provided details as to what the students were doing for each stage of the lesson.