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.

Wordless Wednesday: Listen to Reading & Word Work

Wordless Wednesday: Read to Self

Popcorn 5 Senses

This week we wrapped up our 5 senses Science unit with a fun popcorn experience! Every year my students LOVE watching the popcorn maker churn out freshly popped kernels! 

We observed how it sounded while it was working. Once the machine had worked it's magic I gave each student a bowl full and we observed how it looks, smells, feels, and of course tastes! 

Then the students filled in their own observation sheet, drawing the body part associated with the sense, and a describing word. They did great! 

Afterwords, we compiled their answers, and used the most frequently used word for each to fill in our class chart. 

My kids have also been DEVOURING the science books we received from Donorschoose during read to self time. They LOVE them!!

We worked our way up to 8 minutes of Read to Self, and 6 minutes of Work on Writing this week. Next week we'll begin Read to Someone. I'm so happy with how the Daily 5 has been going so far!! 

Our First Few Weeks

We now have 2 1/2 weeks under our belt! The kids are doing awesome and we're starting to settle into a routine! Here's what we've been up to....

Daily 5
Love, Love, love, how this has been going! We've worked our way up to six minutes during read to self and on Monday I will introduce Work on Writing. We learned all about Independence during Read to Self and also how to choose good fit books, with the Two Sister's lesson on shoes. In the beginning my kids were just choosing books out of our community book buckets and then finding a seat around the room. My one rule is that they must choose a new seat each time so that their muscle memory isn't tied to any one spot. They have been practicing the three ways to read a book - read the words, read the pictures, and retell the story. Then our Donors Choose project came in and each kid got their own book box! We filled them with little books we've worked on in class ( from my pack and from Deanna Jump). After our lesson on good fit books the kids went through the book shelf and picked out a book or two that interest them to add to their box. 

Writer's Workshop
Our school uses Lucy Caulkins and we started by talking about writer's and all the things writer's write. Then we made it into an anchor chart to hang up. We read the book "The Best Story" which is an AWESOME book about writing from your heart. That lead to us making our heart maps. The kids drew all the things, people, places they love. This stays in their folder and they can always look back at it if they need inspiration for writing topics. We introduced the writing process and taught that brainstorming ideas like we did on our Heart maps is called Pre-Writing. We gave each child a clip with their name on it and let them stick it on the top of our writing clip chart on "Pre-Writing" as we move through the different stages, the kids will move their clips to stay accountable. I forgot to take pictures of the kids heart maps, but you can see my modeled example here. 

Names
We did several activities to practice our names, including Rainbow names, and graphing the letters in our names. We also made our A my name is Alice portraits. These are all from Deanna Jump's Fun with Names pack. 

Calendar
We've been using Kathleen Pedersen's Calendar pack and I am so in love with it! My projector was stolen over the summer so I am forced to use an old dinosaur overhead projector, but I will still rave about it!! Love how it covers so many math & Social Studies concepts all at once in an efficient way!

Science & Social Studies:
We've been learning about families, and also our five senses. Next week we'll be doing a fun five senses project with popcorn! :)

Math:
We've started numbers 0-5 which fall under Counting and Cardinality on the Common core. I don't have pictures since I don't teach math. (I teach two classes writing and my next door neighbor teaches two classes math)

Common Core:
Our district has officially switched over both Kindergarten and 1st Grade to the new common core standards, as well as a new report card. We were told we now need to have every single standard listed in our grade book with room to document four attempts at mastery. We knew there was no way that was all going to fit into our rinky-dink blue covered grade books they gave us, so my co-team leader and I set about making a grade book that would have space for the whole class, all the standards, and four attempts each. You can check out our Kindergarten pack here:

And our 1st Grade pack here: 

We'll soon be uploading 2nd - 5th grade as well since they'll be switching over in the coming years too. 

We also made a Kindergarten (1st grade on the way!) version that is about twice as long. This one has only one standard per page, and room for five attempts. (4 regular attempts, and an exceeds expectations assignment) You can check that one out HERE.

If your district does common core I would love to hear how you go about recording what is taught when, who master's what, and how it is reflected on your report card!!

Making Daily 5 work for me

I’m not sure if the Daily 5 book study is still going or not… I haven’t seen any posts recently. But Chapter 7 is all about trouble shooting and it really made me think about how/if I could make this work in my classroom. I came to the conclusion that I CAN make it work, but with some adjustments. Here are my problems with doing Daily 5 the way it is presented in the book:

1. The Book says to do 5 30-minute rotations. . . That’s an hour and a half! I only have an hour for rotations.

2. The book says to pull kids while they are working on other parts of Daily 5. I have four groups that I need to see for 15 minutes each, no exceptions.

3. The book says the kids can have free reign over deciding what to do when, and where to do it. I know, from 6 years in the same neighborhood, that these kids can’t handle that. Some choice yes, but they need structure.

4.  My students are expected to use the computers. Our district actually monitors student usage of the computers to make sure they are getting a good amount of time on them.

So here’s how I’m going to make it work for me, because I do really like the components of Daily 5 and I think it really simplifies things down from having so many centers all over the room. I will continue to do four rotations during my hour block. You can see by my board from last year here how I do that – One rotation is always reading group with me and the others were centers around the room.

I am going to simply combine my other centers into the daily 5 like this:

So each day my students will meet with me, rotate to either read to self/read to someone, rotate to either word work/writing center, and rotate to either listen to reading/computers. For read to self and read to someone I will let them choose where to work. However, computers will always be at the computers, word work at the word work center, work on writing at the writing center, listen to reading at the listening center. This way they still get to choose where to sit during one of their rotations, but I don’t have to deal with the entire class choosing (and fighting over) where to sit. The literacy games I have made in my various units will provide lots of choice at the word work center.

So on any given day my work board might look like this:

 Let me explain it a little... the kids are in four groups based on level. Red, yellow, green and blue. Each letter within the group stands for a kid. Normally the index cards have their name and picture. A and B are always partners, C and D are always partners. So Kid A in the red group will go with his partner B to reading group with me, then read to self, then listen to reading, then word work. He'll do this for two days, then I'll swap them so that he goes where C and D went - first to me, then to read to someone, then to computer, then to work on writing. 

I’ll keep you updated on how it goes once we get it started in a few weeks.

In other news, I’ve added alphabet posters for all my themes, and added an adorable cowboy western theme.

How about you? Are you using Daily 5? Will you make any changes?

The Daily 5: Chapter 6

In my class I  introduce two new sight words a week, and I keep track of the ones that they know with a quiz every 8 weeks that I record in my grade book. I send a list of the words they miss home to their parents so they can get extra practice on those. Students who need more of a challenge are given more words. Once the week is over, I move the words from our front board to our word wall, so the students can reference them throughout the year.

Some things I have that would work for word work are magnet letters, playdough, sand trays, stamps, center games, plus lots of phonics games from my themed units. I would love to get some playdough letter stampers from Lakeshore Learning for this center – maybe my next donors choose project.

I am thinking I will get a multi drawer organizer for my word work choices, and keep it at my word work table. The kids can either do their work at the word work table, or at any other table.

I also have a writing center, which is housed with a variety of different writing papers, pencils, crayons, erasers, sight word lists, seasonal word lists, and a poster giving them lots of ideas of things they could write about. My students like to write letters, lists, stories, poems, etc. here.

I’m on the lookout for some great writing center activities, so if you have one let me know! 

The Daily 5: Chapter 5

Listen to Reading

How will you instill the importance (or urgency as the sisters call it) of 'listening to reading' in your students and especially those students who have had little 'lap time' or reading done for them in their own homes?
We can of course let students know that they will be listening to fluent readers, and that this is how they should aspire to read as well. By listening they are gaining practice in that area. However, I agree with the sisters, listening to reading almost always keeps students engaged on their own!

What devices or strategies are you going to use to conduct listen to reading?' Will you use a community recording device with one cd and several earphones, individual cd players, tape recorders, ipod-type devices or computers?

I have several cd players that I keep in a communal area, along with all my books that have accompanying cds. I stick the cds inside the books with adhesive cd pockets so the pairs are always together. I currently have a donorschoose project in which I hope to get an actual listening center, so we’ll see.

 What expectations will you have for your students during 'listen to reading' and how will you keep them on task and independent instead of needing your assistance when they can't manage 'devices?'
First, when teaching procedures I will make sure to hit upon the subject of what to do if you get stuck. Top of the list will be to ask a “tech expert” these will be the kids who really get the hang of the technology right away and are capable of quietly helping anyone having a hard time. You always have a few. Otherwise, they will be expected to quietly pick a book and cd player and take it to their work area. I will show them how to carefully take the cd out of the pocket, put it in the cd player and turn it on. Likewise, they will need to be shown how to turn it off and put it away.

Do you have enough 'listening to reading' type materials? If not, what ideas do you have for securing these materials?  Where will you store them? How will your students retrieve these items? Where will they be used (will there be a designated spot in your class for listen or reading or will it be their choice)?

Yes, I have quite a few book/cd pairs thanks to scholastic book orders. I almost always buy their books on cd collection each month. I’m also requesting quite a few from donorschoose. I recommend both places! I think for those who don’t have many, it could be worthwhile to organize some kind of trade once a month or semester with other teachers in your grade, so everyone always has some! I will keep both the cds and players stored next to my two Adirondack chairs as students love to sit there when listening to reading.

The sisters do not really talk about this in their book, but how do you feel about listening response sheets?  Will listening to reading be just for 'listening' or will there be follow-up work required of your students?  If there is reading response sheets, what will they look like?
Personally, I like response sheets. I use ones from Deanna Jump. I think it really depends though on how long your blocks of time are. Because I only have an hour and because I have to see all four reading groups my chunks are only 15 minutes. Depending on the length of the story there isn’t always time for the kids to do quality work on a response sheet. Perhaps, a response sheet could be one of the options in “work on writing.” I haven’t gotten to that part of the book yet so I don’t know if it would fit in, but then children could really have the time they need to process what they listened to and craft a well thought out response.

 I would be remiss to not add this so . . . how can this station be differentiated to meet the various learning profiles, interests and/or readiness of your students? 

It will be very important to include different level books. Some chapter books even have accompanying cds. The same goes for having books that cover all different genres, themes and topics for your students to pick from.

Read to Someone

Why should students be reading to someone? 

Reading to someone allows children to hear someone else reading fluently, to help each other with reading strategies and to “be the teacher” and it’s just plain fun! J

 How can your students EEKK?

Sitting Elbow to Elbow, Knee to Knee can be done many different ways. I mistakenly used to think that this meant both of your elbows and knees are touching both of theirs. I never understood how sitting that way was conducive to sharing a book. Now I understand that it is just one of your elbows and knees to one of theirs so you are side by side. Students can sit EEKK sitting down on the floor, laying down on their tummies or backs, sitting at a table, etc.

How can your students read to someone and how will you need to model these ways with your students?

Students will be able to take turns reading to one another in several ways. First, one student can read their book, then the other student can read theirs taking turns. Second, they can read the same book and alternate reading pages, or both read the same page one at a time to mimic fluency. Third, they can read two different books, taking turns reading one page from their book at a time. The child who is not reading is the one who does the comprehension checks.

What is the one thing you have done with partner reading that ensures the success of your students?

I’ve never truly implemented this, so I’ll be eager to read what others write as their tips!

The Daily 5: Chapter 4

Yikes! I have gotten myself so far behind. I apologize that yesterdays post went up 3!! Times, I was having serious blogger issues and I hope that doesn’t happen again today. My plan is to post about The Daily 5 today, In pictures and in Words tomorrow, and then I will share this week’s bucket list project along with next week's freebie on Monday because they go together!

So here we go….. The Daily 5: Chapter 4

1)  How far into the school year do you think kinders need to be to be able to begin the process of Read to Self?  What is realistic?  When do you plan to begin implementation?
I think that if I follow the introduction lessons the way they are presented in the book, there is no reason we can’t start right away! That first introduction lesson followed by three minutes of read to self practice should be do-able the first or second week of school.
 
2) How will you make sure that each child views him/herself as a reader (whether they are reading words or not)?
Definitely when we teach the three ways to read a book hopefully the kids will latch on and realize that they already are readers, and that the things they are doing… looking at the words, “reading” the pictures, retelling the story in their own words are all ways to “read” a book and that they are all readers

 3) What are some ideas you have about "Launching Read to Self" in kindergarten?  How will you go about it and what are some ways to make sure it is "kinder friendly"?  
To make it kinder friendly, the lessons need to be short, to the point, and FUN. We need to make sure we keep our kiddos attention and that they are actively engaged and building muscle memory in the correct behaviors. Practicing for short amount of times is so important because it allows all the children to feel successful. I loved how they said it was ok to stop early if you notice a child starting to get off track because they kids can’t tell time to know if the amount of time is really up or not. This way you can focus on the positive and not have to reprimand that child.

4) How will you/do you build the children's belief that this IS important?  What can we do to encourage the ones who do not value it and create disruptions for others?
I find that most kindergartners are already motivated to learn to read. They see us and other adults around them read all the time. Those that aren’t excited are usually the ones that are struggling. By providing simple texts we can help them feel successful and encouraged too. I created a pack of simple sight word readers that should help even my lowest students be successful during this time. They coordinate with a pocket chart set so we can also practice as a whole class, giving them further practice with the words before they are on their own.

 Another thing I love to do is bring in former students of mine from older grades. I tell the students that this is a former student of mine who used to sit just where they are sitting and that they tried their hardest and because a fabulous reader because of all their hard work! Then I let that child read the kids a story so they can see how hard work can really turn them into a proficient reader.

5) How valuable is Checking In and Reviewing with kindergarteners?  How often will you do it?  When will you do it? What are some different ways to "check in"?

I think checking in is very important. However, this will be my only time to pull small groups so I think it will likely be limited to our wrap up after the block is done since I don’t have an assistant who can check in with the children during the block. It will be important in the wrap up to let the kids talk about what went well, and what they need to work on better. Hopefully with so much guided practice and carefully crafted “how-to” lessons they will be talking more about what went right!

6)What are some problems that can occur during this problem (either that you anticipate with your kinders OR that you have experienced)?  How can we be proactive about these issues?
A few problems come to mind off the top of my head which are 1. Students not staying put and doing what they are supposed to. 2. Students not working quietly or bothering their neighbors and 3. Students finishing too quickly. And I actually think that all three of these problems are linked to practice and building stamina. The more we practice for short amount of times and let the children be successful, and then build stamina based upon that, the more the children are getting the correct behaviors ingrained upon them. This goes for just about anything in Kindergarten, but practice is key!! The more you put into it at the beginning, the less managing you will have to do all year long. 

Daily Five Book Study: Chapter 3

1.    Establish a gathering place for brain and body breaks.

I have a large carpet at the front of my room where we gather as a whole class. I don’t have a cute name for it, but since I’m doing a dog theme, maybe I should call it the dog park or something? I’ll have to work on a name.

…

2.    Developing the concept of 'good fit' books.

I loved the shoe lesson presented in this chapter, where they talked about different shoes and whether or not they fit and what purpose they serve. I definitely want to bring in a bag of shoes to teach good fit books. I’ve also seen cute lessons with Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I think anything kids can relate to is going to make the idea concrete to them.  

3.    Create anchor charts with students. 

This I’m pretty good at. We make anchor charts for everything in my room. I do need to get a little more  creative with where to hang stuff as we often start running out of room!

4.    Short, repeated intervals of independent practice and setting up book boxes.

I have these boxes from Lakeshore Learning courtesy of donors choose:

 I think they will work perfect for book boxes. At the beginning of the year I like to let them browse and choose books that interest them, since most can’t read at that point anyways. Once we finish assessments, begin reading groups, and have our good fit lesson I’ll have them start picking good fit books to put in them.

5.    Calm signals and check in procedures.

I definitely need to figure something out for calm signals, I’ve been eyeing the music wands and might have to order one. Right now I just have my bell. My students turn in their work in a large pocket chart made to hold file folders. Each child has a file folder their finished work goes into for me to check.  

6.    Using the correct model/incorrect model approach for demonstrating appropriate behaviors.

Love, love, love this. I always model the right way, but I think having a “challenging” child demonstrate the wrong way and then the right way can really help nip inappropriate behaviors in the bud. It still gives those kids the attention they are seeking, but in a positive way.

Don't forget to link up with Tammy this week!

Next week we will be heading to Mrs. Miner's for Chapter 4!