Crafting Writers Chapters 7-9 Response

I really loved chapter seven "Teaching Craft Lessons." I think the minilessons section is so important. I had so many teachers give me writing assignments, or any assignments, back with red ink circles and corrections all over them. None of my teachers ever talked to me about them, or why I had gotten something wrong. As a student I did not go back over my papers, I saw all the red and the grade and then that was that, I was done looking at it. The teacher had wasted their time correcting all of my mistakes, because I never looked at them again, or tried to figure out why I had gotten them wrong.

I love the idea that instead of marking all over students' papers, teachers focus on one or two things that need to be improved and then do "mini-lessons" and "try-its." Giving students individual attention and helping them through a specific problem in their writing could be very encouraging and very helpful for the student. By doing mini-lessons with individual or small groups of students you do not have to teach the whole class something some of them have already mastered, yet the students who need help get it.

My only reservation is that teachers can have so many students in class and if they all need individual mini-lessons how do you have time in the day and get anything else done?