Daily 5 Update

This summer I read the Daily 5 by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser. I immediately took to the book because its underlying principles fit with my educational philosophy. The Daily 5 provides choice and flexibility for students while providing me the opportunity to work with individual students and groups of kids.

I'll admit it is progressing much slower than I'd like, but I do love how I am beginning to see the benefits. The book, if followed precisely, estimates that it takes until the end of October to have all 5 structures (read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, word work, work on writing)in place. Right now I have introduced 3 of the 5, but I'd rather go slow and set things up for success. I'll get to all 5, it will just take a little longer for me.

Daily 5 requires incredible amounts of planning, modelling, teaching, re-teaching, and practice. I've created book bins, leveled books, individual student storage, anchor charts, activities for word work choices, technology that can be directly utilized in the classroom, record sheets, a pensive for teacher . . . and the list goes on and on. Despite all this work, I believe it is teaching my students to make good choices and helping them become focused and able to work independently.

The first concept I introduced to my class was "read to self". Many teachers take silent reading for granted, but in grade one students need to be taught how to read a book. We talk about why we read to ourselves and talk about the jobs they need to be doing, and the jobs that I'll be doing. Each time we practice, we come back to this anchor chart and talk about what we are going to work on, and then will debrief on what went well, and what we need to work on afterwards. The students were able to 'do their jobs' for 18 seconds in the beginning. We are now close to the 10 minute mark.

The kids love to read to someone. We've talk about being good 'eekk' partners (elbow to elbow, knee to knee)! We even demonstrated what fluency looks like in the gym - some students jog at an even pace, while others would run as fast as they can and then walk. We want to become readers that read at a nice steady even pace.

The latest anchor chart we have made together is for "listen to reading". I don't have a 'traditional' listening center in my classroom, in fact, I don't think there is one anywhere in the school. So I've bought some 5 way splitters where students can plug their own headphones into one of the laptops (I have 2 that I use in my classroom) or my iPad. The stories that we use are either free downloads from the app store, or are from websites like Tumblebooks.

I'm fortunate that I am not the only person in my school who is interested in the daily 5 framework for teaching literacy. A number of other teachers have made their own commitment to learn more about this strategy. We will be working together on an inquiry in the very near future!