Teaching point, then the work

ELA Lesson Plan Template

Reading and writing workshop runs on a short mini-lesson and a long work time, and the plan should look like that. This sheet gives the mini-lesson its four moves, the work time its conferring plan, and the share its moment; the teaching point is written as the sentence you will say. Guided reading is the small-group half of the block, and its plan is here too.

Mini-lesson to share

2 ELA lesson plan templates

Portrait reading and writing workshop plan with a teaching-point box, a six-row sequence table from connection to share, and mentor text, conferring and assessment boxes

Word Google Docs

ELA Workshop Lesson Plan — Word & Google Docs

The mini-lesson architecture as rows — connection, teach, active engagement, link, independent work and share — with the teaching point sentence, mentor text, conferring plan and what you will look for.

Download Word Open in Google Docs

PDF

ELA Workshop Lesson Plan — fillable PDF

One page, portrait. Type into the fields or print it blank and handwrite.

Download fillable PDF

Portrait guided reading plan with introduction and teaching point boxes, a six-row per-student table for observations and next steps, and after-reading, word work and writing boxes

Word Google Docs

Guided Reading Lesson Plan — Word & Google Docs

Group, level and text up top; text introduction and teaching point; a line per reader for running-record notes and a next step; discussion, word work and writing about reading beneath.

Download Word Open in Google Docs

PDF

Guided Reading Lesson Plan — fillable PDF

One page, portrait. Type into the fields or print it blank and handwrite.

Download fillable PDF

Specifications: US Letter, 8.5 × 11 inches. Word files are editable .docx that open in Word 2007 through Microsoft 365, including Word for Mac; the Google Docs link makes a copy in your own Drive; the PDF has real form fields and prints as plain hairline boxes when blank. Free to use in as many classes as you like, no account, no watermark.

Why it is laid out this way

About the ela templates

The workshop mini-lesson has an architecture — connection, teach, active engagement, link — and a time limit most teachers blow through. Putting the four moves in rows with a minutes column is the discipline: ten to twelve minutes, then the room goes to work and the teacher goes to confer. The conferring box asks who you will meet and what for, because a conferring plan written down is the difference between conferring and circulating.

The teaching-point box is labelled with the sentence stem on purpose. Today I want to teach you that readers… is a constraint that forces the lesson to be about one transferable thing rather than a book or a worksheet, and a plan whose teaching point will not fit the stem usually has two lessons in it. The assessment box asks what you will look for in students' work, which in workshop is the notebook or the draft rather than a quiz.

Questions teachers ask

ELA lesson plans, answered

Can I use this if my school does not run workshop?

Yes, as a mini-lesson plan for any short direct-instruction segment followed by independent work — a grammar point, a reading strategy, a writing craft move. The rows are the same thing a gradual-release lesson does, in the vocabulary ELA teachers use.

Where do standards and vocabulary go?

The standard has its own box beside the teaching point; vocabulary shares a box with the mentor text, since in workshop the words come from the text you are teaching from. For an explicit vocabulary lesson the daily plan with its own vocabulary line may fit better.

What about secondary English?

The same structure scales; high school workshop classrooms run the identical four moves with longer independent work. For a literature discussion or a seminar day, the social studies inquiry plan's sources table is often a better fit than the mini-lesson.