The Daily 5

is really a management system for reading workshop. There are 5 "rotations: that replace centers and are literacy ONLY focused. Literacy blocks are broken into smaller blocks with a group mini lesson followed by a 20-30 minute work time. During the work time the kids choose one of the daily 5 rotations (read to self, read with someone, work on writing, listen to reading, working with words) while the teacher meets with small groups (guided reading or strategy) or holds individual conferences. The book outlines how to help the kids build stamina for each rotation and manage the organization of it all.

The authors (referred to as "The Sisters) have a couple of follow up books in the making. The most impressive to me is about their CAFE menu which is a way to guide instruction using standards. The kids take ownership for setting goals which are posted on a board in the classroom.

I use many of the techniques but not all and adapt as fits for me. I was lucky to attend two workshops last year at our state reading conference. The sisters are quite personable and responded to my emails each time I posed a question.

Some classroom true to the ideas have shown dramatic process.

They have a helpful web site. Check it out.

I would strongly encourage you to go there and look around. I had HUGE success with the Daily 5 in my classroom this year!
The kids loved it-
Their reading improved drastically
The management is a cinch!
Kym:)

http://www.thedailycafe.com/public/department38.cfm

I did the daily 5 for the first time this year...this is what worked for us:
I did have all daily 5 as available options each day and gave each child a "tracking report" every Monday. I would remind them at our first meeting/mini lesson that if they "went to writing and read to someone" yesterday---they should pick somewhere they had not gone to yet to start with today. I was adamant that I would keep the "choice" component and not go to scheduling ---it worked beautifully. Nearly all of my kids could do this completely independently. 2 needed support!

I usually had 3-4 "sessions" per day---- I fit in all 5 at the beginning of the year because the stamina is not built up yet.

I also have to tell you that I absolutely LOVED the Daily 5- I am sure that I will use it again next year. I got lots of compliments the focus and meaningful work going on in my room!!!!
:s)

I also did Daily 5 in my room this year...BUT I did not ever do the writing portion during the Daily 5 time. We do Lucy Calkins in our school and my writing was always separate from my reading (which is what I called my Daily 5 block.)
I did manage to get 3 sessions in each day, 4 is difficult, not many people have that much time each day. Each session was about 30 minutes long.
I did not let my kids choose their session - I set up a rotation on my board and then rotated the 4 parts, read to self, read to someone, word work, and work on listening.
I also did receive MANY compliments on my classroom routine from other teachers and my administrator. It really works well, but you have to take the time at the beginning of the year and MODEL, MODEL, MODEL, just like the book says. Even if the kids seem bored with it, do it anyway ~ it will set the tone for the remainder of the year!
We are in our last 2 weeks of school and my kids are still doing the Daily 5. They love it...and so do I!!
Good luck next year!

10 minute sections? this is how the daily 5 is set up...I did it last year! Worked beautifully in 2nd grade and making my mini lessons 10 min only I learned to "get to the point" teach using that explicit language. It works!
:D

... and I really do like it. I think you could get the same results with centers, if that's what you use. The biggest difference for me was the amount of modeling and "building stamina" that you do in the beginning. This was really key in the success I found. However ...

Next year, I am changing it up. I am still using the components of the D5, but more to meet my needs.

I am going to meet with readers in guided reading groups and reading conferences, and while I am doing that, the children will choose from Read to Self, Partner Read, and Listen to Reading centers.

I am going to have a separate Writing Workshop time and so am doing away with the Work on Writing center. I haven't figured out what to do with Word Work center, but may also add that in as a choice during reading groups, along with the other three centers I mentioned.

I love giving the children the choice of what they want to do. In previous years, I had a work board like described by Fountas and Pinnell. The choice thing has worked well for me this year, and I will continue with that next year.

Hope this helps! Amy

the way that I incorporated them was that I took the time to do my whole mini lesson then the kids did 3-4 choices instead of all five. I set up an accountability system so that they didn't just choose to do listening to reading EVERYDAY and never do word work. So my LA block looked like this:

Whole group phonics exercise
Whole group RW minilesson
Teacher and TA pull small groups while students rotate through 3-4 choices.


This year I plan to have the students make their choices when they first walk in using a pocket chart. Then I plan to set a timer for 15-20 minutes during the rotation time so that when it goes off the kids know to clean up and rotate to their next choice. I just hate to have stop working with my small group if we aren't done yet but I also hate going way over time with one rotation and short changing another.

It shows you step by step how to start each part of the daily 5. I started with "read to self" and made the anchor charts with the kids - we did role playing and went through how to do each part wrong....at first when I read in the book that you should use a child who probably would do it wrong- I thought "no way! I am not giving that child the power to disrupt my class...." but I did it that way and had the same kid show how to do it correctly- in doing that I have proven to that child and the entire class that even a child who may routinely make poor choices can be successful with the daily 5. I started ( as the book suggests) with a very, very small amount of time- if they stopped being successful after 1 minute then I called them to the carpet and talked about what worked and what didn't. We then went onto something else - It was about 3 weeks before my class could do the whole daily 5 - we could have each section last about 10 minutes at first--- we can go for 30 minutes NO PROBLEM now. I get compliments from everyone who comes into my classroom because my kids are so on track and engaged in reading! I love it!

As far as tweaking it-
I have 4 drawers with activities for each of the daily 5's (the fifth is listening and I keep that with the cd player)
I put an activity that monitors their practice that week and keeps them accountable. It may be a "cause and effect" web for independent reading (whatever strategy we're working on) It may be a journal calendar for writing to give them ideas if they get stuck....
I do this every week to keep my lower achievers on track.

Does that help?
I love talking about daily 5 - It's my favorite subject!
I tried to go to Columbus- It is filled up

2nd grade and I absolutely LOVE it! I think it has given my kids ownership over their literacy AND they are genuinely excited EVERY day over having choice in their own learning! I don't have time for all 5 of the sections every day- Let's face it- school happens- SO, I give my kids a tracking report at the beginning of each week. They are responsible for checking off as they go- I remind them every day to check and see how many times they have been to each section....remember if you've been to writing 3 times and only 1 time to read with a buddy - go ahead and start there today. Many of my kids were doing that on their own by second quarter. When I have a sub I don't have them do the daily 5 because I am basically being lazy and don't want to explain it all to them. Honest eh?
My kids are so disappointed when we have to "skip" because of an assembly of sub....
At the end of the day we write family journals about what we learned that day and favorite part of the day- I would be wealthy if I had a nickel for every time someone said the best part of their day was Daily 5 because it is fun.
One of my teammates tried daily 5 but does not allow her kids to do read with a buddy because it is too loud and doesn't allow them to choose where they'll go because it is too much chaos.....She ended up not doing it because the kids hated it. I felt that the reason they probably hated it was because the premise of the program is ownership and has an emphasis on learning with others. I think it was control they didn't like.. I would encourage you to read it and follow it as true to form as you can and then as you get more comfortable with it tweak it to work best for your class......I think you'll find great success this way!
I am a big proponent of children learning to "do for themselves" I am this way with my own 7 children. Sometimes they hate it! I think that my job as a mom is to teach my kids to be independent. I have the same philosophy as a teacher. I want my kids to know that I will present them with material and give them lots of opportunities but the responsibility to learn is all theirs!

I hope this helps.
I absolutely think this program works!

Kym:s)

love the daily 5! We have 3-4 blocks a day but I keep all 5 things open....I also do writer's workshop and use Units of Study (which is why I don't have 5 blocks available) My kids are totally engrossed for the full 25 minutes. It's amazing. I have gotten comments from so many teachers that have come into my room to do observations and stuff. They always comment about how focused the kids are.

Kym

Here is what my schedule looks like:

10:15-10:30 Meet with a reading group while students do their first choice of the Daily 5 (they make their choices in the morning when they come in-I've converted a 100 chart to my Daily 5 chart).

10:30-10:35 I ring the chimes in this 5 minutes and everyone puts their things away (book bin or word work materials) and we meet on the carpet. I then dismiss them to their second choice.

10:35-10:50 Meet with a reading group while students do their second Daily 5 choice.

10:50-10:55 I ring the chime again and we meet on the carpet.

10:55-11:10 Meet with a reading group while students do their third Daily 5 choice.

11:10-11:15 I ring the chime again and we meet on the carpet.

11:15-11:30 Meet with my last reading group while the students do their fourth Daily 5 choice.

-I've managed to get ESL and Title Services to fit this schedule, so they take their groups during the 15 min., and they bring their groups back just as we are meeting on the carpet.

-I know a teacher who doesn't have her students meet on the carpet in between each choice. She rings the chime, and her students do to their next choice on their own. I can't seem to figure out how this works, because I like to make sure I have an even number of students who chose Read to Someone, and I want to make sure that there aren't too many students who picked Listen to Reading or Word Work. For this teacher, she just lets her kids "figure it out". For me, that doesn't work. I would probably have students who argue about who is doing what.

-Next year I'm HOPING that I can do some lessons in between choices. It doesn't work this year with Title and ESL :( I would like to do my 15 min. spelling lesson in between a rotation and my shared reading lesson in between another rotation-that's what The Sisters do. They don't do their Daily 5 rotations back to back.

-In place of centers I do the Daily 5. My students have 4 choices a day (unless they meet with me for guided reading, have ESL, or have Title). I've just introduced Work on Writing, so starting about the middle of this coming week they will have all five choices.

-I usually make sure each student does Read to Self or Read to Someone everyday as I think those are the two most important choices.

-Instead of doing Read to Self before centers/small reading groups, could that be a choice during center time when you are meeting with groups?

-I pretty much followed the book as it's written, but I did tweak it here and there. I felt some of their lessons (especially when introducing a new Daily 5 choice) covered too much in one lesson, so I broke them down into more lessons.

Ask any other questions if you need to! I love the Daily 5!

I teach third and I spent the first 2-3 weeks getting my class in a routine. I am so thrilled with how things are going. I now have a rotation of a variation of the Daily 5. I call mine the Daily 3: Read to Self, Partner Read, and Journal Writing. They are doing great. Now I am starting my small group work and conferencing. i already feel like I have such a handle on who has trouble with comprehension, fluency, accuracy, etc. What I need now is some ideas for how to help those with fluency , comprehension, accuracy issues. Any suggestions!

I love the Daily 5 and will try to answer some questions (as best as I can!).

I do the Daily 5 everyday. It worked really well in my classroom. My students make their choices when they come in in the morning (3 choices a day-unless they were title or ESL-2 choices). They must do read to self or read to someone as a choice. I used the 100s pocket chart. Each student had a pocket for their name, and then 3 pockets after their name for their choices. I liked that it was visual. If they were meeting with me in a group, I had a color card in one of their choices (to show their reading group which were colors). Then they knew not to make a choice for that rotation.

mlbfirst-I think you could definitely do the Daily 5. You would have to have the same expectations for each group since students can rotate in and out based on their reading levels. Also you may want to revisit your I-charts and Daily 5 expectations more frequently-whenever needed and when groups change (every grading period).

cvt-You could do the Daily 5 during your guided reading time. The scripted "must dos" for word work could become your word work portion of the Daily 5. You would just call it "word work" instead of must dos". You could also add other word work activities. You wouldn't have to include writing. Many teachers do "the Daily 4" and keep writing separate. I started work on writing after Christmas break.

LHuff-Last year was my first year with The Daily 5. I didn't start until after a few weeks either. This year I will start on DAY ONE! I will not waste one day getting started. I broke the lessons up into smaller lessons than the Sisters teach in the book. They put 2-3 lessons into one day, where as I may only do one. For this reason I will start on day one!

Deer01-Here are my word work activities. I change them up through the year, and I don't have them all out when we first start the WW portion of the Daily 5.
magnetic letters
wikki stix
chalk on colored paper
stencils
painting with tempra paints, water colors
writing on white paper with white crayon and painting watercolor over the white crayon
read the room for blends, number of letters, digraphs, etc
stamps
word family stamps (our spelling is word families/chunks)
finding word family words in books and writing them down
another kind of magnetic letters
putting words in ABC order using a transparency
white boards
draw a picture of each word (the meaning)

I love Jessica Meacham's website! Her pictures of each of the Daily 5 components are great! These are what I use to mark word work and listen to reading bins. I also use them in the 100s pocket chart for my students' choices.

It's so important to lay the groundwork like they describe in the book.
That way, the students are able to develop the sense of urgency and the responsibility that they need to make the Daily Five work. The discussion about the "good fit" books is really good. The kids love getting involved in that. Another important thing is to let the kids model the correct/incorrect ways to read to self and read with a partner. The book suggests letting a child with difficult behaviors be the one to model trhe wrong behavior first, and then have the same child model the correct behavior.
I did the Daily Five for the second half of this year. I wasn't able to do all the preparation that the book suggests. But I felt like it went well because we did a lot of modeling of proper behaviors for centers at the beginning of the year. Many of the behaviors they learned for centers carried over to the Daily Five.

I don't follow the D5 format, because I prefer to do reading workshop and writing workshop (I only have 100 minutes for literacy, including reading, writing, grammar/spelling, word study, etc).

But I do borrow a lot from the D5 approach when teaching my children to read independently and read with a partner. I love the D5 approach to teaching stamina! It goes like this:

create an I-chart
correct model
incorrect model
correct model
short practice session (stop after a few minutes OR as soon as the first student gets off-task, whichever comes first)
check-in
short practice session
check-in and shareI started with independent reading on our very first day of school (this was for grade 2). Here's my plan for the first day of reading workshop:

Launching Read to Self (from Daily Five, p. 111)

You guys have the best job in the world! (see Growing Readers)
Think-pair-share: why is it important to read?
What should children be doing during reading time – create I-chart (as per D5)
Invite a child to show a correct model what we should see when someone is reading
Incorrect model, followed by correct model
Building stamina – 4 minute practice
Check-in: what worked? What didn’t?
Model again
Building stamina – 4 minute practice
Check-in: what worked? What didn’t? (praise and appreciate)
Closure: you will have the chance to read every day in this classroomOver the next week, I kept increasing the practice sessions. D5 has you stopping the class the instant that someone is off-task, so that no one can practice incorrect reading behaviours. Starting the second week, I stopped doing the mid-way check-in and just kept extending the independent reading time. We made a graph showing how long we read independently. The children were VERY motivated by the graph and they were independent much more quickly than my students have been in the past.

On the first day of week 2, I introduced read to a partner, using the same procedure.