Daily 5 ~ Chapter 5

Well, I am back to write about Chapter 5

Read to Someone & Listen to Reading

READ TO SOMEONE

When I read this quote last year, I highlighted it in the book because I wanted to see if it was true. 

"Research shows that taking turns reading increases reading involvement, attention, and collaboration."

 I will have to say ...... that it is sooooo true! I saw so much more involvement, attention and collaboration with my students this last year than in previous years. They actually LISTENED to each other as they read their books and they HELPED each other when needed.  They SHARED with each other and DISCUSSED their books.  I was so pleased with what I saw as I observed this Daily. My students also did a great job with EEKK.

Checking for Understanding was a big + positive + for my class last year. I was not sure how the students would respond but they did great with repeated lessons on this strategy. I plan on making about 9 checkmarks for my students and writing on the checkmark "I just heard you read that ...." so they know how to start their conversation with each other. I will also write "Who?" and "What?"

Figure 5-2 talks about Read to Someone Definitions ~ I did most of these with my students last year but there is one that I will not do.  I will  not do "Reading Different Books" with my students. Since I teach in a low SES school and have many ESOL students, I feel this would make it very confusing for comprehension, like getting the two stories mixed up with each other. I leave this activity out of Read to Someone.  The one other activity that I want to put into the mix is Coaching or Time. I did not do this one last year. I kind of forgot about it once school started. I'm sure you all know how we get. Our minds are on a million things at one time.  I will be making a "Coaching Sheet" for my students, like on page 74. I hope it helps them know what to do.

LISTEN TO READING

It just amazes me still the difference in my students from previous years to this last year with using the Daily 5. I am in LOVE with this approach. In years past, the listening center was a play time. There would be four students reading the same book and basicly watching each other or just listening to the story and not following the words in the book. They would agrue about what book to listen to and other behaviors. (I'm sure each teacher could add a few) Last year, I decided to get CD players for my classroom. Instead of going out and buying them, I sent a request through Facebook to all my friends to see if anyone had them laying around and if they weren't using them, could I have them for my classroom. WOW! Did I get a good response. I got 9 CD players for my classroom. Now, my problem was how to get all my tapes with books onto CD?? Well, it turns out that our church has a great system in the back and I could run the tapes through and put them on the computer and then burn them to a CD.  (This process did take a LONG time because I had to listen to every single book for it to be recorded to the computer.)  So now I had books set aside for all 4 quarters so each quarter the students would have new books to listen too.  I loved it. I did have to show the class a couple of times how to use the CD players but pretty soon they were rolling along with it by themselves. The only thing that was a bother was the batteries. They needed to be changed a lot. Next year I think I am going to have a basket of batteries and when the students need them, they can get them. Last year, I was interrupted a lot because of the battery issue.

Well, I am glad to find a Book Study that I can finish with and hopefully some of my comments have helped.  If you would like to read my other posts about Daily 5, they are on my blog.  Stop by and see if I have any suggestions for you. Thanks for reading.

Until Next Time,

        Happy Blogging