The Daily 5

I have a few more summer school ideas to post, but for the past few days, I've been feeling a little under the weather and not wanting to do much. So yesterday afternoon, while sitting in my recliner watching the Olympics, I remembered my principal gave me a book to read at my leisure since I asked for some info on this topic. I grabbed the book out of my school bag and read the whole thing between the afternoon and evening (with some Olympic watching and nap breaks, of course). The book was The Daily 5: Fostering Literacy Independence in the Elementary Grades by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser, "The Sisters."

The Daily 5 can be purchased from Amazon here.

The reason I asked for information on this "Daily 5" was because I had an interview, about a month ago, and I felt I totally knocked it out of the park. I was sure I would be teaching either kindergarten or first grade this fall in my first classroom. The interview team seemed to really like me, and I really liked them. It was more of a conversation with our like ideas and not an interrogation. In your gut, you just know. Well, anyway, there was one question they had that involved a topic that I had never heard of before. They asked about the Daily 5 and I started talking about the 5 pillars of literacy, not knowing they were two different things. Well, I had to admit that I hadn't heard of it, and I made a point to go right home and look it up online. I looked it up and had a general idea of what it was, and I had planned on going to get a book on it as well. Well, as I waited for the call to invite me back for a second interview, I was researching it and gathering ideas from Pinterest (of course!). Well, I got a call, but it wasn't the call I was waiting to hear. If you're familiar with the Bachelor or Bachelorette on ABC (one of my guilty pleasures-shh! Don't tell!), I would relate the conversation on the phone to an all to familiar scene from the Bachelor/ette: the viewer thinking, "Is she going to get the rose? Yes? No? Back to yes? Now no? Huh? What is going on?!" only I was the one up for a rose that I never would get. Wouldn't you know it, the linchpin was THE DAILY 5! Ugh! I was at a disadvantage from the start since I had never been at a school that used it, and it wasn't invented yet when I was still in college. The sad part was that I went home and did my homework for what feels like *nothing.*

Well, fast forward a few weeks to a conversation I had with our principal in her office one day after summer school. I saw this particular book on her desk and asked her about it. She said that I was more than welcome to borrow it and she was thinking of having a book club on it this next year since she thinks this is the direction where literacy is headed. Well! I guess my initial researching wasn't for nothing since now I have a head start on what is soon to be common place in the elementary classroom! (Note: Even though I taught summer school, during the school year, I'm currently an aide trying to network and work my way up. I really, really, really want my first teaching job!)

Now, for the book. I thought it was a very interesting read and many things in it gave me "Ah-ha!" moments. I think a lot of tools in my box would mesh really well with streamlining this into my (future) classroom. I love the idea of actually practicing reading, writing, listening, and spelling, since the only way to get better at something is to practice! I also like that it is not only a literacy structure, but also a classroom management tool. Students in the book seemed more invested in it since they got to choose their activity, had personal responsibility at their station (to do what they were supposed to - and if not, peers would let them know!), and were always working on something that they had a personal connection to since it was their book at their level, or their story, or their words. In a sense, they "own" it, and want to do their best work. Since they are (somewhat) creating their own centers or workstations, it saves that time and energy to be focused elsewhere in planning or creating. Really, besides notebooks and some tactile things for Word Work, all you need is an extensive leveled library. Well, CHECK! I have a HUGE library in which every book is labeled with my name, categorized into different genres or by author (depending on what it is), and leveled with AR levels (which I could always convert to F/P if I needed to). Some day, I envision my library to look like Mrs. Wallbank's here. Scroll down and you'll see it. I also like her book bins and binders for each student. These could be used for Daily 5! The Daily 5 classroom seemed like a utopia, and I'd be willing to try it! The Sisters even give an extensive day-by-day lesson plan/launching the Daily 5 chart in the appendix of the book.

The one thing the book didn't touch on was what was included in the mini lessons between each of the 5 components. I would assume these would involve teaching a reading strategy or conducting a writer's workshop, or maybe even focusing on a skill that many students seem to be having trouble with.

I find that many teachers are incorporating The Daily 5 and the CAFE system (also by the Sisters). I only knew of one school that used CAFE, and right now I think the push is for The Daily 5. I can only imagine that CAFE is the next to implement, so I guess I'll be going out to get that book tomorrow! By looking at both systems at the Sister's site, I think, if used properly, they would really beef up the literacy element of the school day!

PacMan >, <, =, and Sequencing

During our math time, we also wanted to touch on greater than, less than, equal to, and sequencing numbers. Before getting to those, we needed to revisit place value to build upon that concept. We had numbers 0-9 written on construction paper cards and 'ones,' 'tens,' 'hundreds,' (a paper comma) 'thousands,' and so on, written on different color construction paper cards. We had the kids place the place value cards in the right order on the floor and we would either call out a number and they would have to figure out which number went where or we would put a number out and they would have to read it to us. Once we had that down fairly well, we were able to move on to other skills based on place value.

 We had talked about having used the alligator and PacMan in the past, and it hit me. We could do all of the above with PacMan and his little ghosts! I grabbed the construction paper and started cutting. I made two PacMan cutouts - one with his mouth cut out, and one plain yellow circle with an equal sign on it. I also made a stack of ghosts in different colors. On each ghost I wrote all kinds of numbers, many of which contained the same digits in different orders (place values).

We were pretty pleased with the way each of these activities turned out. When we used fun manipulatives, we always had 100% participation! I would definitely use all of our math ideas in a classroom setting. They were easy to make, and would be easy to maintain if laminated.

Money Chants & Touch Points

When asking each grade level teacher what math topics need the most work, their answers are always the same: time, money, and basic facts. We tried to hit these pretty hard every day during our summer session. For the facts, we used our Giraffe Math, and for time, we used our over-sized clock.

Earlier in the summer I found numerous money memory helpers on Pinterest - imagine that! We used these every day and included copies in the kids' O.W.L. Binders at the end of the session so they could refer back to or practice them.

For touch point money, each blue dot is worth 5, and the line is worth one. To count the picture above, we would touch each touch point and count (the quarter makes a 'Z' when you count), "5, 10, 15, 20, 25, (the dime is top then bottom) 30, 35, (center of nickel) 40, (slide your finger across the line on the penny) 41. 41 Cents." I had big coins that I found at Dollar Tree and put blue sticky circles (like the kind you would use at a garage sale) on each of the points. We would hand out random coins to students and have them come to the front of the group and touch the points as the group counted. When we handed out skill checks half-way through and at the end of our session, we found that many of the kids did use these to count their change, and they counted accurately! Yay!

For the chants/poems, we used this one from Blogger, Dragonflies in First every day. They're cute and color coded. I love that combination! We enlarged them, cut them out, and put them on a binder ring. We would rehearse it about 5 times a day and we would pick one of our students to be the leader to hold it and flip the cards.

Another copy of the chant/poem combined with the touch points is available from Erica Bohrer's First Grade. These versions are really high quality cute polka-dot posters. She also has individual mini cards that we printed and had the kids cut out and put on binder rings for their own flash cards.

Finally, Amy from The Land of Second Grade has some really fun money activities posted. Check them out!

Time for Fun!

For our summer session, we not only wanted to focus on reading, but we also wanted to beef up our math skills. I have the philosophy that most of our math is taught as if we were looking into the pet store windows watching all the puppies play. Kind of boring and uninvolved, right? Well, I wanted us to go inside the pet store and get directly involved, or play with the puppies. This is tons more fun, and some kids remember more when they can get physically involved in their learning. We had to get pretty creative, but we were lucky and basically had run of the building so we could use the wide spaces of the gym and the cafeteria whenever we wanted. I'm sure we could have made it work in the classroom too, but it was nice to have extra space (and the perfect circle in the center of the gym floor!).

Mrs. K came up with the idea, which I thought was fantastic - what better way to get the kids involved in their own learning than put them in charge of it! We gave them the supplies (numbers, hands, A.M./P.M. signs, and sun/moon signs), and they had to put all of it in the correct places.

The first day, we just had the hours, minutes, and hands. We had a little trouble putting the numbers in the right spots. It looked more like a Salvador Dali painting. So we asked if it was right, and the kids had to work together to fix it. Putting their minds together, they got it down! Then, Mrs. K or I would ask them a time and they had to move the hands to the right time.

The next day, we added A.M. and P.M. signs with pictures of a sun and a moon. Some times, time gets a little tricky since many kids associate A.M. with sun and P.M. with night-time/darkness. Again working together, and figuring it out on their own proved very beneficial.

During the last week, we added the tiny minute circles and started asking quarter-til, half-past, and quarter-after questions and drilled the connection between the key words: til=9, half=6, and after=3.

I would definitely do this again. The hands were made out of bulletin board paper (with a brad holding them together), the hours and minutes were construction paper, and the little minutes were construction paper circles cut with the Ellison cutter. We made sure to match colors as close as we could to our Judy clocks (red hands = red hour numbers, blue hands = blue minute numbers). We also worked hard to associate our 5 multiplication fact family with the clock.

Reading Strategies

These strategy signs came from a gal named Wendy. Visit her blog here. These signs include 6 colorful strategy signs and the cover page (above). If you do get them from her Teachers Pay Teachers Shop, make sure to leave her an A+ and a comment! We used these every day. Each week, we focused on a different strategy and that strategy sign was always posted in the front of the room. We also had them in our individual guided reading groups. The kids used them constantly! At the end of our session, we put copies in each of their binders for not only future reference, but to also use as dividers. The kids put all of their completed work and unused graphic organizers related to each strategy in the proper section. This will hopefully give them a leg up next year and they can look back to their binders for reference. Thanks, Wendy!

 

In addition to Wendy's signs, I made a Predict/Infer reference sheet. Our kids were having so much trouble remembering which was which! So, in our open discussion, I related predicting to a fortune teller or a psychic. I asked kids what they thought of when they heard "fortune teller" or "psychic" (basically what is their schema of these words). They offered words like "crystal ball" and "tell the future." Perfect. That's exactly what predict means, even though we don't have crystal balls! Then I went on to infer. We discussed how infer means to make smart guesses based on clues, and who better to make smart guesses based on clues than a detective! Their words, not mine. I like it better when they think of these words because after all, they're more likely to remember it if they think on their own. So we used the correlation "Predict = Fortune Teller/Psychic" and "Infer = Detective"

  

My Pinterest Page

 
Finally, we wanted to give our kids as many resources as we could, so we couldn't leave out graphic organizers! We chose some from resource books that we had and we found others on the internet. Let me tell you, if you haven't experienced *Pinterest yet, you are missing out! Pinterest is an online pin board where the best of the best ideas are shared. You make an account and "Pin" your favorite ideas on to your separate boards. I searched for "Graphic Organizers" and I found some awesome ones! After all, since so many Pinners are looking at them, only the best go viral. I would highly recommend only going on Pinterest if you have a solid uninterrupted few hours (at least!). Don't start looking for ideas at 11:45 P.M. as you will be up until 2:00 A.M. before you realize what time it is! Anyway, as I was saying, I found many of my favorite graphic organizers on Pinterest. I'm not going to overload them here, but you can visit my Pinterest page and look under my "School" board. I should probably reorganize since that board is getting rather big, but for now, you can find them there! They are also linked to their original owners, which is nice as I always like to know where my things came from.

 

*If you need a Pinterest invite to get on the site, leave your email and I'll send you one. You can also request one directly from the site, but it may take a few days for them to get you one.

Seeing Stars

More of my fabric letters. Time consuming, but durable!

Seeing Stars word lists

Sight word fluency progress!

Mrs. K came up with the Seeing Stars fluency check. We were already doing some poetry to work on our fluency, but not all of the kids were thriving. To give them an extra push, she got out her Seeing Stars words (levels 100-1000), and devised a plan similar to the Giraffe Math.

If you're not familiar with Seeing Stars, it's a program to help beginning readers decode and use imagery and symbols to associate to sounds. For our purposes, we just used the word lists.

There are 10 lists with 100 words each (hence, Level 100 = 100 words mastered, Level 200 = 200 words mastered, etc.). Each page has four columns of 25 words each. At the beginning of each level, each student would get a level star. Then, when they master each column, they get a sticker. Once they have four stickers on their level star, they go up to the next level and repeat the process. We would call students individually while we were on the playground or when we needed fillers. We also set some time aside for fluency practice.

This was also very successful as students would ask to take lists home to practice, and beg to read their lists to us! I think seeing their progress was a huge motivator for even those who are reluctant to read. Some of our students finished level 1000, but unfortunately I didn't get a picture of our Super Stars because the walls had to be washed, so we took them down.

Giraffe Math

Poster with fabric letters that I made.

Our baby giraffes

Our baby giraffes

 

The Giraffe Math came from the files in my noodle. I remember my first grade teacher using the growing giraffe idea for encouraging reading. Every time we read a book, we had to give her a summary and then she would reward us with a neck piece. On the neck piece, we would write the title and author, and then attach it to our giraffe in the hallway. I remember it being a definite motivator to get us reading as first graders, so I took the idea and tweaked it to use for our summer session.

Our students are going in to 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades, and fellow teachers cited knowing facts as a wide-spread weakness for our students. Knowing this, I found fact family sheets for all facts in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and printed them off. I found all fact sheets HERE, except subtraction, which I made myself. I just checked the website, and they just added the subtraction sheets! This site is nice since they have different sheets for the same fact family. This would cut down on any temptation of looking at a neighbor's paper!

Every morning when we would meet our kids outside, we would have their packets ready with clipboards and pencils. They knew to take their packet and find a place to work. The kids could do as many sheets and fact families as they wanted. They would turn them in and we would check them and return them for corrections if needed. When they returned a perfect paper, we would give them a neck piece with the matching fact family written on it. They could then go to the hall to attach it to their giraffe.

This proved to be very successful as many students asked and lined up for fact sheets to take home and finish. The peer motivation worked perfectly as the younger students looked up to our older ones who were in a friendly competition to grow their giraffes. It was also fun to see the progress and the carry-over of their faster facts in our math session.

Look how tall we grew!