Daily 5 ~ Chapter 6

Working on Writing & Word Work

Well, in about 2 hours, my husband and I will be empty nesters for a week. My daughter left this morning around 3:00am to go on a Missions Trip with our Church Youth Group. They are traveling to Illinois and should be there very soon.  My son is leaving in about 2 hours to go to Church Camp for the week. I don't know what I am going to do with myself for 7 days!!!  I usually do pretty good for 2 days and then after that I am so lonely without the noise around the house. I am going to have so much time on my hands. I guess it is about time to get into my classroom and start getting things ready for the new school year.  I should be excited about all the free time but on the other hand it is so different not having the kids around. I'm sure some of you understand where I am coming from. :)

Anyway, let's get to our post for today!

Working on Writing

Well, I will be honest ~ Last year I did not put Working on Writing into my Reading Block with the Daily 5.  In our schedule, we had a 30 minute block of time for writing and I decided that I was going to keep it that way (Even though 30 minutes is not enough time to work on writing).  I was not very happy with my writing last year so this year while I was rereading The Daily 5, I made a decision that I am placing working on writing into my Dailies for this next year.  My 30 minute writing time is now going to be another Focus Lesson and Daily 5 round.  My only concern is on page 80 with the introduction to the new chapter, they talk about having another time to write called writer's workshop. I'm not sure that in my schedule I will be able to put a writer's workshop in.  SOOOO needly to say, I am a little nervous about doing writing during the D5 and I will just have to try it and see how it works for me.

While I was reading the chapter, I did like the Focus Lessons that they discussed especially underlining words you do not know. Since I work with low SES and ESOL students, some of them have a hard time with the spelling aspect. This strategy will be great for them because then I can meet with them after my Focus Groups and I won't have any interruptions while I am teaching.

Word Work

My students loved to do Word Work. The students had their phonics lists for the week (either the regular list or challenge list) and 5 sight words.  (Each student also had different sight words)  They would practice these words by either doing a  color quilt, word sorts, practicing using a whiteboard, or use magnetic letters.  I did try Wikki Stix and I just didn't have enough so I put those away until I could get some more and of course I totally forgot about buying more.  We also used letter templates where the students would trace out their phonics words. We played many sight word games and also phonics word games for reading practice. I am hoping to get some new ideas from other blogs about word work and adding some new items for this school year.

Well, we are almost done with the Daily 5 Book Study. I have so enjoyed reading other teachers ideas. It has been very uplifting. Thanks for all the help that teachers have been giving me.  It is truly a blessing that we can communicate this way without even knowing each other and feel comfortable doing it. 

When I was reflecting after Chapter 6, I got to thinking about the order of how I was going to introduce the Dailies into my Reading Block. After some discussion with my teammates, we decided that this order would work for us:

Read to Self & Working on Writing

(Our Read to Self is at a different time than our Dailies so we will do both of these together. One in the morning and the other in the afternoon.)

Read to Someone

Listen to Reading

Word Work

Computers

(I add computers because we do the Lexia program)

How are you organizing your Dailies for this year? Do you have a different order than we do?   Looking forward to reading about some great ideas.

Until Next Time,

        Happy Blogging