The DAILY 5 ~ Chapter 1

Well, I have decided to be part of the blogging world.  This is my first post and I hope that I am doing it correctly.  I love reading all of your wonderful blogs out there and you all have such great ideas for your classrooms that I thought it was about time that I shared also.  This blog will mainly be for my parents and students when school starts but until then I am excited to be part of Lory's Book Study on the DAILY 5 and CAFE.

I am so excited that I found your blog Lory. I implemented the DAILY 5 and CAFE into my 2nd grade classroom last year. I found out about the two books when I was surfing the internet looking at other teachers websites.  I bought the two books and I completely fell in love with them. I am also a subscriber to Gail and Joan's website. I am such a visual learner and they provided great resources for me to learn by watching videos on how to implement these books into my classroom.  AND their Pensive is out of this world. If you haven't check it out, here is the link The Daily Cafe.

About my experience with Chapter 1 of the DAILY 5....I too had to laugh when I was rereading page 4.  I can so relate to what they said about running around redirecting students to do what they are suppose to be doing. I even felt a little bit of that this year when I implemented the DAILY 5 into my classroom.  I will say, though, that my reading block was ten times better than it ever has been before but I still have some "tweaking" to do.  For example, the headphones would not be working or the students could only hear on one side. (Some students would be okay with one side working and others it just bothered terribly).  The CD players battery life was dead. (Which happens often) The computer would not connect with the Internet or the student lost their password (even though it was attached to the computer last week).  My DAILY 5 choices for my students were:

Read to Someone

Word Work

Computers

Listen To Reading

My Read To Self was at a different time of day because of our districts requirements so all my students would Read To Self at the same time for about 30 minutes. The DAILY 5 that I did not do was Writing and this year I am going to add that to their choices. I'm not really sure why I decided not to place Writing into their choices.  Maybe I felt like it was too much for me to take on for the first year.

My advice to teachers that are going to start implementing this into their classrooms the first days of school is spend the full 20 days building community, defining and practicing behaviors, building your students stamina and assessing the needs of your students. (Fig 1-1 page 7) It is the explicit teaching and practicing of behaviors that set the DAILY 5 apart from other managment systems. I LOVED my reading block because I did take the time at the beginning of the year teaching my students how it was suppose to look and feel and we did it again, and again, and again. I can also say that my students cheered when it was DAILY 5 time.  They loved the structure that it provided for them and they all felt successful.

Thanks for letting me be apart of your Book Study and I hope to gain a greater understand of the DAILY 5 and especially the CAFE through this study.

Until Next Week,
        Happy Blogging