Daily 5

Today we made some changes to our Literacy Block. We will now use the Daily 5 format to structure our literacy time. Daily 5 provides a structure in our classroom that will allow students to build independence and reading and writing stamina. I will teach a brief, whole group mini-lesson (reading, spelling or phonics) which will be followed by one daily 5 activity. After approximately 20 minutes, I will call students back together for another brief lesson, and yet another daily 5 activity. This pattern will continue as time allows on any given day. Typically, students will participate in 3 daily 5 centers and 3 mini-literacy lessons daily.

The daily 5 activities are:  Read to Self, Read to Someone, Listen to Reading, Work on Writing and Word Work. While students are working on these individual, meaningful literacy activities I will be borrowing small groups of students for guided reading lessons. Through these lessons students will work on a variety of skills that support fluent reading including, phonics, word building, strategies for solving unknown words, comprehension strategies, and more.

This week students will spend time practicing independence at each center, and by next week we should be fully up and running with our Daily 5 literacy block. Once this is up and running, it becomes one of my favorite parts of the day. I hope your child comes to feel the same!

Here are two of the three activities we practiced with today:

Read to Someone

Sit EEKK

Get started right away

Choose a SMART spot

Stay in your own space

Read the whole time

*See/Saw Read OR Whole Book/Whole Book

Work on Writing

Get started right away

Choose a SMART spot

Stay in your own space

Write the whole time