The Daily Five
Fostering Literacy Independence in Second Grade (Virtual Tour)
Stage of Literacy Development:
Stage 1: Beginning LiteracyStage 2: Consolidation / Fluency
Ages:
6-8
Grade Range:
2ndFood Groups:
Primary: Reading Fluency & Expression, Reading Comprehension Strategies
Secondary: Text Structures & Genres
Transcript
The Daily 5 is a book written by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser, the sisters, and it's a series of literacy centers that you can use in your classroom to allow the students formative practice of various skills that they've learned, or various reading strategies or writing strategies. So in my classroom we've slightly modified the five centers. For example, one of them is Read to Someone, we don't call it Read to Someone in our classroom, we call it EEKK, which stands for elbow to elbow, knee to knee, and it suggests a way of sitting for the students so that they can sit together, look at a text together and reflect upon the text together. While they're doing EEKK they use one of two things, they can use the checkmark for check for understanding, so that while they're talking about a text they take turns and ask each other to explain what one of them has just read. Or, if we're working on fluency and expression, they can choose the I read, you read card where their partner is listening specifically for the expression they've used while they're reading or the fluency, do they sound like they're talking when they read. And at that point they can give feedback to each other and continue their reading with that feedback in mind and make improvements. Also in Daily 5 there is the Read to Self. And when you're doing Read to Self there's a real chance that there's going to be behavior that is not exactly on task, and sometimes the student has chosen a book that isn't at their level and they're not really reading, but there's no way for the teacher to really monitor that, unless they have a specific goal while they're reading to themselves, a specific task. So what we do in our classroom is we focus on the reading strategy that we're working on that specific month. So, for example, if we were focusing on inferring, the student, while they're reading their text, they would use a sticky note, and they would make notes to themselves on the sticky note and place the sticky note inside the text and it's a way for me to simply look over, and I can see that they're engaged with their text and that they're responding and using the strategy the way they should. They can do that with any reading strategy that we're working on, and all they have to do it refer to the blue cloud so that they know what was I supposed to do? Oh right, I'm going to focus on inferring, and that's what they're using their stick notes for. One of the Daily 5 centers is called Word Work, in our classroom we call it Word Building. And at this center we have magnetic letters that the students can use on these metal burner covers that you can buy very inexpensively, and you can have a certain number of the metal burner covers in the center so they know when every student has one of the covers no more people at that center, so it's a way of also managing that center. The students can, depending on the level that they're at, they may use the magnetic letters to create high frequency words. They also might create words from a specific text that you've been using in your classroom at the time, so you can put in the center a set of words that are right directly from the text. And the great thing is some of this might be new vocabulary for them as well, so they're not only learning the spelling of the words, but they're learning how to put them in sentences and the meaning of the words as well. So in the bucket you may have a series of word family books that the students can read together and create the specific words that they note in the book as well. So it really is dependent on the level that the student is at and they can work with any other level student because you're all doing your own activity at the same center. Another center at Daily 5 is Writing in my Journal. A lot of students are hesitant to go to this center early on in the year, but once you get a flow going in the year and you've addressed some of the reading forms the students will be feeling a little more confident in writing independently in their journal. You might start off at the beginning of the year with a recount of my weekend and since you've focused on that in the classroom the students are feeling a little more comfortable with this formative practice of writing in their journal. Some students might be ready just to write a sentence in their journal, which is great, and then depending on their level it's just an additional amount of practice for them.
Related References
The Daily Five: http://www.the2sisters.com/the_daily_5.html
Activity Objective
The goal of The Daily Five: Fostering Literacy Independence in Second and Third Grade (Virtual Tour) is to use a method developed by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser to build students' reading and writing skills, help students expand their vocabulary and promote the enjoyment of books and appreciation for the usefulness of reading and writing.
Quick Tips
Additional Comments:
- The Daily Five, an instructional framework for reading and writing. The Daily Five is a method developed by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser and provides students with a series of independent and guided literacy tasks.
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Question Chart: Improving Reading Comprehension through Questioning
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Feedback Board: Providing Specific Information to Improve Performance (Virtual Tour)
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Make a Judgment: Using Four Corners to Further Comprehension (Virtual Tour)
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