A Daily Five Diary Part 1: Implementing Daily 5 in a Departmentalized Upper Elementary Classroom

Over the summer I finally read The Daily 5 by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser. Due to the masters classes I'd been taking over the past few years, I kept putting it off, but now that I've read it I am fully in! All five parts that make up the daily regiment -- Read to Self, Read to Someone, Listen to Reading, Work on Writing, and Word Work -- are research-based and contribute to a balanced literacy program. A total win-win, right?

So, here are my obstacles I'm trying to overcome as I implement Daily 5 in my fourth grade classroom:

Freebie!...And How to Assess Spelling Sentences With a Rubric

I don't know about you, but assessing and grading writing used to be a struggle for me. I tried several methods, but none of them seemed very fair, including the methods of some of my colleagues. However, once I tried assessing with a rubric, I knew I'd found the best