Daily 5 Update

According to our class Days In School Chart we are in 33 days! I finally feel like the mounds of work are dwindling and I am able to leave the classroom at a decent hour.  Luckily there has been no surf, so I have devoted more time into my class.  I know that sounds horrible, but if there are any sort of waves near me I leave school as quickly as possible  to be in them!!

I wanted to share with you how my Daily 5 rotations have been going this year.  I started out slow by taking it step by step just like The Sisters advise.  We started with Read To Self and really worked on that.  The book bags have been a great help and I love that they don't break or fall apart when the kids drop them.

We worked on choosing our Just Right Books and I displayed this cute poster in our reading center, along with our rotation chart for exchanging books.

The kids love the book bags and it is amazing to me how quickly they progressed and are reading to themselves.  They don't wander around the room, go get drinks or head to the bathroom. They sit there and read. Often they get so excited about what they are reading they want to share with a friend, which leads to our next area Buddy Reading.

The Sisters call this Read To Someone, but that sounds a bit boring  so I changed it.  This class loves Buddy Reading.  We worked on this as a whole group for awhile and they really have it down.

To make it easier during our Daily 5 time I set up these buckets with lots of book pairs from the library.

The buddies grab a bucket and find a quiet spot in the room to read.

(I got those cute little Daily 5 labels from a link on Pinterest)

Word Work is another favorite choice.  I have given lots of options for this area and I ask that they work by themselves to make sure they are on task and doing the work.  They can ask for help from a friend if they need it, but it is amazing how engaged they are, especially when they make their own choices!

Work on Writing is one area that has taken some time.  I started Writer's Workshop this year and it has been very successful, but it did take time to get the kids to make choices about what they wanted to write.  When they have their own choice, they suddenly draw a blank. So I gave them some options during this time. They can finish something they have already started, they can write in one of our Message Books, or they can choose a Topics To Write About card.

I saw this on Lori's blog Teaching With Love and Laughter and I just had to have it!!  Click here to go to her great post on this!!  My kids love choosing a card, taking it to their seat and writing about it.  What I love is that they can physically take this little card (the size of a business card) to their seat and look at it to keep them on task.  So simple, yet very effective!!

The most popular area is Listen To Reading. This fills up quickly because the kids get to go on the computers.

Right now they are going to either Starfall or Silly Books.  I haven't really focused on setting up more sites for them to go to.  Our school also uses Kid Biz which focuses on non-fiction articles which they listen to and answer questions about.  This is very difficult for many of my students right now, because they need lots of practice with non-fiction.  It is perfect though for those new CCSS. 

But the problem is this is my noisiest center!!  They are all over there talking and laughing and it disrupts the rest of the class.

Well I am excited to tell you that my Donor's Choose project for individual CD players just got funded!!  Hurray! Now I can have students choose a player and go sit somewhere on their own to listen to stories. 

My biggest problem with my Daily 5 has been giving the students their choice of where to go.

I love this clip chart. I made it simple to see the pictures and they clip right on it to have a spot.  Well this took FOREVER for them to get. They all clipped on Listen To Reading even though there was no spot. They stood there staring at it for 10 minutes before making a choice.  I almost decided to just make a chart as to who would go where! I just couldn't take the fact that so many were just standing around for almost the whole time.  Well after lots and lots of practice they have learned to  make a choice and get started.  I just pop on my teacher hat (a big straw beach hat) and get started with my group. The kids know that when my hat is on, they cannot disturb me!  The kids who were standing around discovered that they had wasted their time and didn't get to do an activity. They were bummed, but the next time they chose a lot faster.

 We also had to really work on how to fill out their chart to know where they were supposed to go.

Many of them had no concept of what to do with this.  So we had to go step by step and write our name, the date and talk about it over and over again. I had to physically show many of them exactly how to fill it out. Once they finish all 5 areas then they can go where they would like to. Some are still confused with it, but it's coming along.

All in all I am happy with the way my literacy block is going.  I think all the students are highly engaged and really like all of the activities.  I had an EA walk in one morning and I didn't even see her come in. She dropped of some papers onto my desk and told me about it later.  She said she looked over and I had my big beach hat on and was working with my group, while all the of the other kids were hard at work.  She said "Wow, I would love to be in your class, it looks so fun!!" That made my day:))

Now if I could just get my math time to be as engaging!!