This year I am implementing Daily 5! I am a bit nervous as I have not had any training on Daily 5. Most of my knowledge comes from reading the book, the Daily 5: Fostering Literacy Independence in the Elementary Grades and one of my good friends who teaches first grade. She uses Daily 5 with her students and LOVES it! I am spending my Labor Day preparing for Day 1 - Three ways to read a book. I will first introduce the students to the three ways to read a book: 1. read and talk about the pictures 2. read the words 3. retell a previously read book. I am still trying to decide which picture book I want to use to model this for the students. As I model for the students, I will be modeling the metacognitive process of thinking aloud about my reading as this is what I want my students to do as they read. After I model each way to read a book, we will discuss the three ways as a class.
On day two, we will review day one and the three different ways to read a book and then I will introduce read to self. We will begin by making an I-chart, "Read to Self, Independence." As a class we will discuss the importance of reading to self and I will add student responses to the I-chart. After we have completed our I-chart, students will model what reading to self should and should not look like. Finally, students will begin practicing reading to self for 5 minutes. We will add more time on each day to help students build their stamina for reading to self.
I also want to introduce my students to their book baskets. I didn't want to spend a lot of money on the baskets so I decided to head to the Dollar Tree Store. My first grade teacher friend found some cute baskets there so my thought was... I would, too! Not the case!!!! :( I traveled to 5 different Dollar Tree Stores before I found some baskets that I could use. They aren't exactly what I was looking for, but I guess they will work. Now, I have to begin working on labels and name tags for the baskets!
Are you using Daily 5 in your classroom? If so, I would love to hear how it is working for you especially if you are using it with the upper grade levels!