Daily 5 in the Intermediate Classroom... Continued... Finally!

This fall was an absolute whirlwind and here we are, on break and strolling into the winter season (even if it is an unseasonably 71 degrees here in the Virginia mountains).


While on break, it's good to reflect on the successes and areas still in need of success in my Language Arts classroom -- and my modified Daily 5 routines are a definite success that I'd like to share.



[Before I begin, please know that I am not in any way affiliated with the authors or publishers of The Daily 5. I am simply a teacher that has read and is currently using The Daily 5 to improve literacy in my classroom.]

First, I have to be totally up front with you. I'm not doing Daily 5 on a daily basis. In fact, we typically spend three days of the week on it. Due to time constraints, I also found that for now it is best if we only do Read to Self, Read to Someone, Word Work, and Teacher Time within a week's time, so I renamed it "Reader 4.0" to make it our own. In case you're wondering, the 4.0 came into play because we are 4th graders and because there are four activities they do a week.

My students love Reader 4.0 time and I love seeing them working so independently. I confess there were days in the beginning I didn't think we'd ever build our stamina enough for Daily 5 to work. As I've said before, my school is departmentalized within a grade level, so I teach three groups of fourth grade Language Arts class. It was interesting to see that my first block, which is a highly energetic and spirited group, took  F  O  R  E  V  E  R  to build their reading stamina to five minutes. Those of you familiar with the building-stamina process know that you bring them back to the gathering spot once someone gets distracted from their reading, evidenced by looking around the room or away from their book. My other groups were up to 15 minutes or more before Block 1 managed five minutes. Now it is laughable to recall all of the 14-40 second sessions we had.  Block 1 spent weeks, -- WEEKS, I tell you, before we approached two minutes -- more less our three minute goal! Whew! Glad that is behind us! I was beginning to wonder if I should give up when they finally started making progress.

Finally we were on our way. Students moved from Read to Self into the other Daily 5 activities quite smoothly. However, I confess that after Thanksgiving break I thought we'd go back into it smoothly, but our first "Reader 4.0" session was bad! Students were loud, two groups of Read to Someone were giggling and pulling on one another's feet. Oh, it was bad! And I was a little grumpy with them at first. Then I realized that after a week off we needed to review. After the review session everyone fell back into the routines smoothly. Odd, huh?!?! (I guess you know what I will remember to do as soon as we come back from Winter break next week!)

Another thing I'd like to share with you about the success of our modified version of Daily 5 may surprise you and may very well upset some of you. I know the freedom of student choice in Daily 5 was an essential part of its success, according to the Sisters. And for weeks I held onto this, but, as I've previously stated, we have a very small Language Arts block and the time for choice was seriously taking a huge chunk of that time. I even tried telling my students they only had five seconds after I called each student's name to make a choice. Inevitably, most students would select something that wasn't available to them. For example, we only had one classroom iPad, so two students at a time could use this. Even though I would loudly announce, "The iPad is no longer an option" amidst the groans of saddened students, there were still students that asked. No matter what avenue to lessen their choice time that I chose this chunk of time was too much. We even missed a second group of Reader 4.0/ Daily 5 in a day due to this chunk of time on a few occasions.

After digging online to see what other teachers were doing, consulting the Daily 5 FAQs, and brainstorming, I finally decided to create a chart that identified which students were doing which activity. I explained to students before I implemented this that we were actually cutting into our Reader 4.0 time by taking so long to choose. Once my fourth graders heard this, they were onboard with the new chart -- especially once they realized that they would still get to everything they loved so dearly.

I'm very pleased with how Reader 4.0 is working for us now. I'm getting more one on one time with my students and they are still getting the "fun centers" they want, as well as the desperately needed time to practice their reading and word work skills.

I'd love to hear how you manage your Language Arts/Reading time or Daily 5 in your classroom. Let me know what works best for you.

Have a great evening... and a very happy New Year!