Daily 5 {Second Edition} FREEBIE and Book Study Ch 5-6 : Blue Skies with Jennifer White

I enjoyed Chapter 5, my favorite part is about creating independent readers and writers, with a gradual release of responsibility. The key for independence with Daily 5 is multiple short practice sessions, with repetition and discussion throughout the first weeks of school.

My least favorite part was when they shared (which would be difficult for me) the idea of having mostly bare walls, for ongoing charts and learning…a tough one for me.

First step, “3 Ways to Read a Book.”

My son is the kid who is convinced he CANNOT read. He actually CAN “read” decodable text (slowly) and will finish it and turn around and say, “You know I can’t read!” It is SO frustrating trying to convince him to just calm down and do what he CAN do…which is read. I think the idea that there are different ways to “read” a book is going to help him calm his frustration level and just learn to enjoy reading in whatever capacity he can right now.

I created these bookmarks (and posters) for the beginning of the year to remind kids how they can choose to read a book. Click {here} to get your copy!

The chapter is really well mapped out as to how to present the launching of Read to Self and integrating the foundation lessons. The foundation lessons are short bursts of instruction that PRETEACH desired behaviors for Daily 5. It’s preventative! I love it, that’s kind of my specialty! lol

The authors emphasize those very important brain and body breaks.

The next step is picking “good fit” books, ones that can be read with 99 percent accuracy. Our goal is to empower kids to select good-fit books themselves, not us picking for them (guilty, as charged). This is important so that kids can make good choices no matter where they are, not just at school. Interest level is HUGE, along with their reason for reading….not just a book they are able to read. You could give my son, Jack a book with a pink frilly cover and it doesn’t matter how able he is at reading it, he’s just not going to give it his best.

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Another good point was that to remember how important it is to give kids a chance to choose books at least once a week, possibly for an entire round of Daily 5. Think about us….don’t we spend a good amount of time choosing a book? I know I do!

Work on Writing is the next step….I love modeling my writing, as a class. Gradually I let them assist me more and more, until they are practically writing it themselves. They use the same strategies in my writing station as we do in class. Modeling is vital!

Chapter 6 is an in depth look at the various foundation lessons. What I took from the chapter is that we need to be flexible. Don’t try to build Rome in a day. It is a process. I will be adding matching I-Charts for the other areas in the coming weeks that match the one I did in Week 1 {here}