Daily 5

You've probably heard me mention the daily 5 more than once.  Let me give you some background on what the daily 5 entails.  Daily 5 is simply a way to set up literacy stations in the classroom.  It consists of daily literacy activities that the students are involved in:  Read to Self, Read to Someone, Work with Words, Work on Computers, and Listen to Reading.  These five stations are the rotation of our literacy work station or daily 5.  Depending on the day, the students will also work in a guided reading group with Mrs. Dusenberg or myself.  During read to self, students are doing just that....reading to themselves.  It takes a long time to build our reading stamina so that the entire class is reading for the whole time.  During this time, I meet individually with the students.  I listen to them read, coach them, and give them reading goals to work towards.  I love this time of the day because I get to see all the strategies your child employs while reading.  During read to someone, students are doing just that....reading to someone.  We've talked a lot about partner reading in our class and what that should look like and sound like.  Students have different partners daily.  During this time, students get to share the books they've been working on with someone in class.  They get to coach them as well.  If a child can teach/coach another child with a word that gives them an even better understanding of the strategy.  During work with words students are using their spelling patterns to learn to spell.  All spelling lists are differentiated according to the primary spelling inventory the students took at the beginning of the year.  They work on their words for 2 weeks, are assessed, and then given a new list of words to work on.  During work on computers, students are working on the computers we have in the classroom.  They might be reading on Raz-Kids, playing a reading game on the Promethean board, building words on Starfall, etc.  There are so many reading programs and games out there and I try to utilize what fits the needs of my students at that particular time.  Listen to reading is when a group of students listen to books on CD players that I have in my classroom.  Later in the year, it will be when students record and listen to themselves read on the iPods.  All of these literacy stations are going on while the teachers in the room are pulling small differentiated reading groups back to work on reading skills that are at their just-right levels.  I hope this gives you a better understanding the literacy stations in our classroom.  Below are some pictures of the stations in our room.