Week of 6/27
Chapter 3:  The 10 Steps to Teaching and Learning Independence
Chapter 4:  What Do You Need to Begin the Daily 5?

Week of 7/5
Chapter 5:  Launching Read to Self
Chapter 6:  Foundation Lessons

Week 7/11
Chapter 7:  When to Launch the Next Daily 5
Chapter 9:  Returning to Our Core Beliefs

Week of 7/18 (optional)
Chapter 8:  The Math Daily 3

1. Check the Chapter Reading Schedule post and be sure to have the chapter(s) read by the date given. 

2. Read through the questions on the "Daily 5 Book Study" PDF before and after you read a chapter to help frame your reading and thinking.

3. After completing an assignment, way-in on the chapter by creating your own post. Be sure to title your post with the correct chapter so it can easily be referenced by others. Feel free to ask questions, make comments, post ideas, etc. Don't forget to add your name so we can chat back and forth!

See you all here beginning Monday, June 20th! :)

1. Your Daily 5 and/or CAFE board should be somewhere where children can ACCESS it. Your students should be able to interact with the board by placing their own stickie note with their name on their focus area and really see the strategies written out by themselves and their classmates. It should be a focal point in the room and a board of strategies that are referred to over and over again during your teaching, both whole-group and small-group, and when one-on-one conferring as well. 

2. Book Bins - I have seen so many great ideas for Book Bins over the years, from IKEA cardboard magazine boxes the children can decorate and take home at the end of the year (available on Amazon, too) to the ULTRA durable book bins from Really Good Stuff that come in EVERY color under the sun! They are not cheap by any means, but I promise you they are a one-time buy and so worth it. Dollar Tree is another great resource and you can often find good size bins there for a great price. 

Inside the book bins you should have (in addition to 5-8 books), a pencil case of some sort to hold a pencil, highlighter, stickie notes, and crayons or colored pencils (the slider cases are great and you can scoop them up for 25 cents each at Walmart sometimes!), a writing notebook or journal, and a personal word wall or word collector. 

3. Classroom Layout - There were so many great photos of classrooms with creative seating arrangements in the book. Think of ways you can make your room full of cozy niches for reading! Carpet squares, throw pillows (IKEA has some great pillow cases and inserts for great prices), bean bags, laundry baskets to sit in...these are the little things that kids love to grab, get comfy with, and lose themselves in a book!

There have been so many great articles by Edutopia lately on alternative/creative classroom arrangements and seating. I would love to see us jump on that band wagon at some point, especially since not all kiddos work well sitting at a typical chair and typical desk. I'm a little bit in love with the standing desks that are becoming popular. I have always allowed my students to stand if they need to while they work at their desk and every year there are a handful that truly needed that flexibility on my part to be successful.

4. Classroom Library - The more books the better! I am collecting used books and hope to find a spot for a free library of sorts where you can take books to build your library! 

Also know that our public library is a great resource for teachers! You can check out up to 50 books at a time. If you have a theme or topic, you can also contact them and they will set you up with a bag of 20-25 books on that topic. They truly love teachers!

5. I-Charts - I-charts should be visible and left up all year long. These are anchors for the students' learning and while I know wall real estate is hard to come by in our rooms, one teacher "hung" his I-charts, almost like flags if you will, in a row at the back of the classroom. It was a brilliant use of this row of empty "air space" directly in front of his cabinets.

If you need any help setting up any part of your room for Daily 5 and CAFE, please let me know! I am your point person on this and have lots of organizational tips and tricks!

Something that I want to be sure to reiterate is just how important it is to launch Read to Self (and the other Daily 5 literacy tasks) with specific, direct, focused instruction. You are teaching your kiddos the expected behaviors that will carry through each of the other four Daily 5 tasks and the Math Daily 3 tasks as well. So folks, do it well now, do it thoroughly, be diligent, go slowly, and it will pay off in the end! The sisters say they “Move slowly at first in order to move fast later on.” That statement couldn’t be more true. Launching Read to Self is probably the easiest of the Daily 5 to launch, but it will take you longest to launch, if you do it correctly. :)

Chapter 5 and 6 actually both talk a lot about the foundation lessons for each of the Daily 5 tasks. When you explicitly teach children desired behaviors and give them the chance to model, practice, and refine those behaviors, your Daily 5 rounds are going to go so much more smoothly and your students will truly learn how to be independent (and not come up to you every other minute while you are conferring!).

Chapter 6 does a great job of emphasizing the importance of these foundation lessons, which is something that was not a focus in the first edition of the book. I have found that with each grade level/age group, there are foundations lessons that you might come up with that are not included in the official list of lessons. We know our students best and some lessons might also need to be modified to work with our individual classrooms/philosophies/management. Make each of the Daily 5 tasks work for you! 

Kindergarten:  7-8 minutes

Primary:  10-12 minutes

Intermediate/Upper:  12-14 minutes

That is not to say that your Daily 5 rounds will only be as long as the above guidelines at all! It simply means your kiddos are ready for the next Daily 5 choice and the more choice you introduce, the longer their stamina will be until you eventually reach rounds of 20 minutes in K, 20-30 minutes in primary, and 30-40 minutes in intermediate/upper grades. Some teachers worry that their stamina drops from time to time when they are still working on launching on Read to Self. I have found that sometimes this simply means they are getting bored with only ONE choice. Once you introduce another Daily 5 choice/task, like Work on Writing, stamina magically goes back up because now they have another option. Look at that! Choice IMPROVES stamina!

A have a couple thoughts on Work on Writing as your second Daily 5 task/choice. I was shocked people, I mean SHOCKED when I after I launched Work on Writing in 2nd grade and my class went CRAZY over having a choice of what to do! They LOVED Work on Writing and writing had always been something that they didn't like so much. While there were times during Work on Writing where they worked on a writing prompt or task that they had been working on for our district writing program, the freedom to choose whether or not to work on district writing task OR their own topic, genre, style, etc. made Work on Writing a favorite from its introduction. They loved their interactive writing journal especially where I would write little comments about their writing from time to time...and my comments were never critiques or even feedback, but merely things like, "Oh wow! I can't wait to read what happens when Marissa finds the lost necklace!" They loved choosing different paper, making little journals for themselves, and using a variety of writing tools. When I introduced choice, their stamina went through the roof and it wasn't long before we were ready to launch the next Daily 5 task/choice.

The last thing I wanted to emphasize is the importance of the students checking in and you, the teacher, recording someway, somewhere, the choices they make during each round of Daily 5. Being able to "see" patterns in their choices can be very telling information and the only way to see those patterns is to keep a record of it. I did NOT do this at first in 2nd grade and it wasn't until I started keeping track of their choices that I saw some things that needed to be addressed. There are many ways to record their choices, too. Some teachers do so on a quick spreadsheet, others have the students record it on a Smart Notebook file and then record it on a spreadsheet later, other teachers have the students keep track on their own personal spreadsheet that is turned in each week, and CC Pensieve also offers a place to record these choices as well! Whatever you do, do NOT skip this step. It is super important...trust me! When you see the "trends" in both choices and what students are avoiding, it is only then that you can gently nudge them in a different direction OR use some time during a 1:1 conferring session to inquire and see what might be going on.

Chapter 9
I know we went a little out of order, but we are saving Chapter 8 for the final chapter because it goes into detail about Math Daily 3. If you are just getting your feet wet with Daily 5, you might not be ready for Math Daily 3! OR...on the other hand...once you implement Daily 5, Math Daily 3 really makes a whole lotta' sense!

In Chapter 9, the first section on the four levels of support for your "barometer children" is a great read and I highly recommend bookmarking that for future reference since we all have those children who need more support to be successful with Daily 5. You may not need it immediately...or even at all! But there is usually a student...or two...or three...that will need extra support to be successful during the Daily 5 tasks. What I like and appreciate, it that each level of support really requires you to be mindful of your own practice as a teacher. Once again, we are reminded that when our classroom is a place where trust and choice are welcome, student engagement, motivation, and success are really able to take flight. 

In this chapter there are also sections with sample guest teacher plans, how to get new students up to speed with Daily 5, and introducing parents to the Daily 5. Also, be sure to take a look at all of the appendices...there are several good resources there for you!

The biggest question from everyone is how do we make it time for everything we are require to do and how do you take a math curriculum AND make Math Daily 3 work?

Well, if you are a teacher in the NSD and you are in grades TK-5, Bridges and Math Daily 3 are like a match made in heaven! It was a huge bonus at the summer trainings to have a presenter who was a big supporter of Daily 5 and Math Daily 3. My side-bar discussions with her were fabulous and she affirmed that the way Bridges is set up really lends itself beautifully to the structure of Math Daily 3. 

Now, there is a HUGE misconception from outsiders that Math Daily 3 is "math centers" and there is just no way to do everything we have to do as teachers AND still have time in our day to do "math centers." Math Daily 3 is certainly NOT centers, but rather provides some much needed structure to your math block, especially when you don't have a curriculum like Bridges (which is already structured so well that Math Daily 3 may not even be necessary...you see, Bridges is kinda' already like Math Daily 3). It also offers the added benefit of teacher time with small groups and individual students (which Bridges makes time for).

I asked the Sisters myself in the online seminar the very same question and they affirmed my original answer. The chapter talks about this as well...you really need to look at each math lesson with a discerning eye because not all are written and structure in a way that is brain compatible. Either the entire lesson or even smaller parts of the lesson as a whole, run far too long. We need to look at each lesson, eliminate what is not necessary, what is redundant, and break things into smaller chunks of brain compatible instruction. The "I Do, We Do, You Do" format for the 3 focus lessons is ideal and gives teachers the chance to do some explicit instruction of a new concept, some guided practice with the new concept, and then some individual practice with concept. You can easily frame this entire block then with a quick 2-3 minute math fluency/warm up beforehand and a short wrap-up/debrief with student math talk or a number talk afterwards. 

We can make this work, I promise you! So whether you have Bridges or another curriculum, or maybe even no curriculum at all, Math Daily 3 can work for you! I am happy to help you sift through materials and see how the structure of Math Daily 3 can be implemented. Just let me know, drop me a line, and I'll be there!