Do you Daily 5?

Now I know a lot of teachers are jumping on the Daily 5 bandwagon and I'm here to say, if you haven't yet, what is the hold up?  Amy Lemons from Step Into 2nd Grade with Mrs. Lemons was discussing this on her Facebook page the other day and it inspired me to do this blog post.  

Let me start with the source:

When I first started, I had only read this.  It has everything you need to get started.

Next, I read this:

Until I read this I was a little like a fish out of water when it came to conferences and planning what to do with my small groups.

I very much recommend both of these books.  I'm not one to purchase books - I prefer borrowing - but these are worth the money.

To sum up the whole kit and caboodle, The Daily 5 is a way to format the way your day looks.  You do mini-lessons followed by your students doing one of these 5 choices: read to self, read to someone, work on writing, word work, or listen to reading.    

This format, how you give children choice and build stamina and interest in becoming a better reader or writer, is amazing.  I totally believe in it and I feel like it's the best thing that has ever happened to my ELA teaching.  Here are a few pictures of my kids hard at work.

Read to Self (I let my kids sit wherever during their choice.)

Read to Someone

Word Work with Play-Do

(They can either write in it.)

(Or they can create the letters.  We focus on Fry Words.  A lot of my 2nd graders are practicing 3rd grade Fry words on account of mastering 2nd grade words.)

 Writing in shaving cream - they LOVE this.  I actually had to restrict it to one person doing it at a time because it's all anyone ever wanted to do.

Listening to Reading - Tumblebooks (which my building subscribes to) is my best friend when it comes to listening to reading.

No work on writing pictures for some reason.  

But isn't it so cute?  And not only are they so cute at work, but they are truly into it!  

This is a picture from an earlier post on how my classroom looks.

This is how I set up my Daily 5 anchor charts and Cafe Menu.  If you do the Cafe and are looking for a menu, check out my freebie menu at my TPT store.

Do you do the Daily 5?

Stars and Stairs

In the last post I shared this reflection page from Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning by Jan Chappuis.    

I thought I’d share a little bit about stars and stairs.  It’s a really simple idea (from Jan Chappuis) but I think it seems like it has the potential to be really effective.  That’s why I introduced it to my students to this concept Monday. (I went on an Assessment Training Institute recently.  Can you tell?)

This is the anchor chart I made while I explained stars and stairs to my kids. 

Today I used this while I graded assessments.  For example, one of my students got a star for knowing why we need rules but stairs for understanding majority rules.   I just drew both the star and the stairs and wrote the notes next to them.

Do you have any fun tricks for encouraging learning?

Visualizing and Fables

This quarter we're focusing on both visualizing and fables (among many other things, as English Language Arts so often goes).  So today I introduced both of these and made a cute anchor chart for each.  I don't have a lot to share, but I did take pictures of both anchor charts and decided to share because I'm just a little bit proud of the writing.  I saw this style on someone else's chart that I can't remember, so sorry that I can't give proper credit.  Anyway, without further ado, here they are:

The spacing isn't perfect on the visualizing and the wording isn't exactly top notch on the fables one as the kids helped me create that one, but oh, well.  :)