Daily 5 Book Study Chapter 3

 

I’m a little late to the game on this chapter but better late than never! This past week has been busy with my birthday and 4^th of July.

Melissa Freshwater from Mrs. Freshwater's Class & Jana from Thinking Out Loud are hosting Chapter 3 of our book study. If you choose to participate through your blog please link back to the chapter hostesses. I’m linking up with Mel D at Suesstastical Classroom Inspriations.

Establishing a Meeting Place: 

When you are designing your classroom keep this in mind. Make sure that you find a place where everyone can gather on the carpet for mini-lessons, creating anchor charts, modeling, and meeting when you check in and pick. I use the floor as our meeting area since I have first graders. I have my teaching easel set up there with my rocking chair and it’s a comfortable spot for us to meet and easy for me to have access to everything I need to teach. It is great when asking kids to turn to a partner and they don’t have any distractions like they do when sitting in their desks. These are not my meeting areas I can't find a picture anywhere but you get the idea.

Good Fit Books:

 Choosing good fit books is something that you will have to model and teach all year long. Most of the students pick up on how to choose book that are good for them but other students take awhile and require more modeling. This is also something I will teach when meeting one-on-one with students or I’ll choose a group who is struggling picking books and go over what they should be picking. Students should be reading books that are on their independent reading level (99% accuracy or better when reading) or their guided reading level that is (95% or better when reading). I suggest that only students who are really into reading and want to challenge themselves read on their guided reading level and frequently check in with you to make sure they understand.

This leads right into the awesome acronym that the 2 Sister of the Daily 5 set up I PICK.

I-I choose a book

P-Purpose-Why do I want to read this?

I-Interest-Does this interest me?

C-Comprehension-Do I understand what I’m reading?

K-Know-Do I know most of the words?

I take the lessons out of the Daily 5 books to teach about good fit books and I PICK. I model books that are too hard, too easy, and just right. We also make an anchor explaining about this and then hang it up all year in our library so students will be reminded when picking books. You can find a ton of these charts all over blog land, TPT, and even if you just google it.

Book Boxes:

Each student gets their own book box to hold books that are good fit, that they picked, and are interested it. On the first day of school I teach the good fit book and I PICK lesson and have them start choosing books in small groups with me. It’s nice because I can kind of see their level of reading when they book up a book and start to read the first page or aren’t able to read the first page. I start them off with only 4 books so they aren’t overwhelmed and so they get used to picking books on their own. I stress re-reading books for fluency and fun because a lot of kids will want to switch out their books everyday. Gradually my kids start choosing their own books in their book boxes and I frequently check to make sure they are good fit books and if not review about good fit books.

The students book boxes are the ones on the left that are empty at the beginning of the year. The notebooks were their readers notebooks/poetry notebooks.

This is what full book boxes look like! Wonderful books and great readers await!

Anchor Charts: 

Anchor charts are pretty essential when teaching how to do Daily 5. They are constant reminders of how to do each rotation. I usually do mine with the kids then go back and make them pretty and hang them in the general area of my room where the kids do that rotation. You can make your own or you can find some on TPT and blog land. 

Checking In: 

I ring my chimes to signal my students need to clean up and check in with me. I used thumbs up or down with them to see how they feel they did and give reminders if I saw something not going correctly. I also give them a lot of praise if everything went smoothly or if I noticed someone going above and beyond.

Modeling: 

When you are teaching each mini-lesson make sure that you do the modeling part because this is the part that the kids love the most! In each lesson a student will model the correct way to do each rotation, another will model the incorrect way, and then you end with modeling the correct way again. The students simply love doing this! They love getting the attention of everyone looking at them and getting praise for what they are doing correctly. When modeling incorrectly the students get silly but they really remember what they are not supposed to do during Daily 5 time. This is a crucial part to getting the correct Daily 5 behavior you want during this time.

As also if you have any questions feel free to ask or e-mail me! Hope you’re enjoying your week!