The Daily 5: Chapters 5 & 6: Whenever you start Daily 5, you start by teaching your students HOW to read to themselves. Without the ability to read to themselves with stamina, the system does not work as strongly.
“Teaching children how to read on their own for extended periods of time each day creates the self-winding learner that we want in the center of our comprehensive literacy program.” (p.66)
Plus, if all else fails on a day when nothing works right when something extreme happens that you have to take care of your students will know how to be actively engaged in a book for a period of time.
The Daily 5: Chapters 5 & 6: Starting Read to Self
Start read-to-self very small and work your way up. We usually can go three minutes the first time, but by the second week, we are usually BACK down to three minutes. Why? You stop if it is not being done perfectly.
If we start Read to Self in August, we are “ready” to do Daily 5 in October once they have at least 15 minutes of read-to-self stamina built up regularly. It just takes that long. And if we start to struggle with our Read to self-time, we model it, practice it and start working to build the stamina again.
Book Boxes
I love the suggestion the book made to have students fill their book boxes with their parents at the meet-the-teacher time. I give my students their first book with their parents at meet the teacher, so it is similar.
Sadly, very few of my students come before school starts, so this isn’t an option for me. Upper grades… do this!
I also don’t always get to start Read to Self on day 1, but I do start it by Day 3. Day 1 is survival… feed them and get them home the right way. I do not have my students enter the room and start reading. We actually have to talk it up big time and make it seem like a HUGE EXCITING SPECTACULAR deal that each student GETS to read to themselves.
Three Ways to Talk
The more I talk it up, the more determined they are to read to themselves. In the world of K, talking about the three ways to read a book is a big deal. I usually do this with the Brown Bear book because my kids CAN read this book all three ways! I use this simple back with a word wall and reader to help support their reading of Brown Bear.
Next, we talk about how they can pick their own good books to read. I insist on having my classroom library set up and since I already show they were to place their books when we do classroom read-alouds, they are thrilled to get to choose their own books.
I Pick Freebie Chart
Here is a freebie chart I made for you guys to grab.
Here is how you can grab it.
The Daily 5 book goes into a lot of GOOD details on teaching students to pick a good fit book, so def check it out. The Daily 5 book goes into a lot of GOOD details on teaching students to pick a good fit book, so def check it out.
They suggest letting students shop for books once a week, but honestly… we do it whenever they are ready. If your students can handle an open library, let them. It is less for you to manage. Since we work on Reading to Self for only a few minutes a day, we still have time to work towards independence by Working on Writing and Word Work.
I use these Daily 5 elements in my small groups daily so I will be more than ready to start a choice board when we build our stamina. One of the newer elements of this book is the foundation lessons to teach under the choice.
So for Working on Writing, they give you three lessons you need to teach asap for that choice. PERFECTION. These “foundation lesson” ideas can make sure to remind us of the smaller steps that lead us to the top floor… learning. They are on pages 81, 84, and 85. I know I will be referring to them and adding these critical elements into my lesson plans to set my classroom up for success.
This chapter is all about those foundation lessons. I love this because it is a guide to make sure you get it right. And it is a chapter I will have to refer back to each and every year to make sure I do each step. There isn’t much for me to add except to tell you to use this chapter!
I did make a freebie a few years ago and I updated it for these chapters specifically. I make and use these Daily 5 Bookmarks for my students.
One side is a reminder of the Read to Self rules. No, at first they can’t read the words, but the picture is a great module. Plus this matches my set of rules so they can and do quickly track the text and ‘read’ it.
These bookmarks all match my Starting Literacy Workstation which is a HUGE time and headache saver.
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