So how is the daily 5 going?

To all my friends who participated in the Daily 5 book study this summer how are things going? I am LOVING it in my classroom! Those sisters sure know what they are talking about! In the beginning I was a little skeptical. I felt there was way too much modeling (but honestly, can there ever be too much?) and the practice times were so short to start out with - I felt like we were getting nowhere fast. But slowly, we started to build up our stamina. And now that it's October my students are IN-DE-PEN-DENT! I LOVE it! They know just what to do and how to do it right because we really took our time and built up our stamina while exhibiting only the right behaviors. I will never again question all the modeling and short practices in the beginning :)

As I mentioned this summer, I have to modify a bit to make the Daily 5 work for me. I only have an hour for my small group reading block and the Daily 5 requires a lot more than that. So here's what we do - we still do all 5 components (read to self, read to someone, word work, work on writing, listen to reading) but we also do computer and meet with teacher, and we do them all as rotations. I know children are supposed to pick what they do when in the original model, but with me needing certain kids at specific times for reading groups, it just doesn't work. Plus with not having more than an hour, not everyone would get to do everything every day and I would be stressing about making sure they do different things the next day and not just the same few things over and over again. So here's how my kids rotate: 

1. One of their rotations is always to the teacher table for reading groups with similar-skilled students. Here is a picture of my intervention kids working on identifying their letters:

2. A second center is either Read to Self or Read to Someone. (they are assigned which to go to and it changes each week) My kids who are starting to test up into the Fountas and Pinnelle levels have started learning how to pull from our leveled baskets to get good fit books. 

3. A third rotation is either Computers or Listen to reading. (they are assigned which to go to and it changes each week) We also occasionally use the leap pads if a group is too big to fit at the computers, since I only have two student computers in my room. The students are "listening to reading" no matter which of the three they are doing.

4. And the fourth rotation is to Work on Writing or Word Work. ( again, they are assigned and it switches every week) Right now during work on writing they are working in their writing notebooks that they keep in their book boxes. Starting next week, they will have a choice to work in their notebook or doing some of the activities from DeeDee Will's October writing pack - writing stories, letters, lists or labeling pictures. Students also have choices during word work. So far I have introduced beads, stamps, whiteboards, and magnetic letters. I positioned my word work table right under my word wall so that the students have all their words right there to work on. Next week I will be introducing playdough, rainbow writing, and sight word games. 

Hopefully this gives you an idea as to how the Daily 5 rotations work in my room and you can see how the kids still have lots of choices, even though they don't pick when they go to each area.