Kindergarten Daily 5 Book Study - Chapter 2

Hey Everyone! If you haven’t joined the Daily 5 book study, it’s not too late. This week Caitlyn, from Kindergarten Smiles, posted about chapter two. Each Thursday the host for the next chapter will post questions for you before reading and also allow for you to ask questions in the comments. The following Wednesday, that blogger will post answers to that week’s questions and a reflection of that chapter. You will have an opportunity to link up each week too so the learning will continue to spread online. This is very exciting! So, let’s get to chapter two’s questions.

1. Do you trust your students? How do you build this trust? Are you able to trust them and allow them to be independent throughout all aspects of your day? Are you going to be able to stay out of their way?

For the most part, I trust my students. There are always a few who seem to need redirecting though. I’m hoping that through this study I can learn to have my students be more independent and self-monitoring, and then trust will feel more natural. I know that it will take a lot of work and a lot of modeling and practicing. Hopefully we can get to a point where I can trust that if someone gets on task, their peers will be able to point them back in the right direction by reminding them what they are supposed to be doing or by referring them back to anchor charts.

2. How much choice do you give your students throughout the day? Do you go over your daily schedule with your students or is it just 'posted' in the room?

Not much. We’ve been doing centers, so while I have a reading group at my table, my kids go to other assigned centers. I think choice will be good for the students and get them motivated, but I know it will need to be done in a very controlled way. I haven’t decided completely if I will switch completely to daily 5 yet (I want to complete the book study before I decide) but if I don’t and stick with centers I’m going to work on providing more choice within the centers.

3. How are you going to create that sense of community where students will hold each other accountable?

I think it’s really important to build community at the beginning of the year and to include students in the decision making right away. Working together to come up with class rules, routines and procedures helps students to take ownership for “their class” I’m really hoping that the students will step up to the plate too keep accountable themselves and their classmates.

4. Student ownership in learning? How do you instill this in every child?

Making sure the kids know “why” they are doing something is so important! The more you share with them the why, the more they will view it as important. When you keep that from them (or forget or run out of time) then only YOU know why it’s important. They don’t. I always start out at the beginning of the year making sure my students know the why behind everything we do, but as the year goes on I start to slack… this year I want to stay on top of it, all year!

5. Stamina! How are you going to build stamina with reading? independent work? Will you use a timer? Will you set goals?

I’ll definitely use a timer, and set goals! Our first day I will time the students to see how long they can go. Afterwards we will discuss and set a goal for next time. The next day we will try to meet that goal. As time goes on, our goals will grow and eventually we’ll be working towards our full amount of time. I want to make sure my kids understand the word stamina this year too. It’s a word I’ve never used before in the classroom, but it’s so important that kids have it and that they learn to let it grow!

Next week we are heading back over to Tammy's blog to discuss Chapter 3! I am excited to move on to the different areas of Daily 5 and how to implement them!