Daily Five Organization

I'm on a roll now with the organization posts so here goes another one. I implemented CAFE and Daily Five mid-year last year and then made some major changes to it for this school year. I had a very hard time sticking to the sample schedules provided in the books.

I tried. I really did, but I found myself slowly moving away from word work lessons, then word work practice, etc. and back to a larger block of teaching time where I covered all of my skills along with guided practice and provided my independent practice of those same skills while I pulled my reading groups. I struggled with making that change to my schedule because I felt like I was compromising the integrity of the Daily Five but I finally gave in to what felt better to me and seemed to work better for my kiddos and just ran my Daily Five activities like centers. Even though I still called it Daily Five, my kids were really only getting to approximately three activity rotations. I didn't feel as though this was too big of a deal as long as they were learning and being productive. Any thoughts, comments, suggestions or stories welcome here of course.

When I taught first grade, I felt the need to support my kids with center rotation charts. However in third grade I knew I could trust my class to make the right choices during Daily Five, be productive and improve on their literacy skills. For this reason, I did away with center rotation charts. As the first trimester progressed, I noticed the same few kids sticking with the same activities everyday. It was hard to monitor them while pulling groups and be certain they were getting a well rounded practice of skills. So in lieu of the traditional rotation chart I made giant bookmarks! I made one for each student in my class. As you can see below, the bookmarks have all of the Daily Five rotations listed in various orders. I have my class pick out one bookmark, start at the top and work their way down to ensure they hit up all of the activities I have. They can turn in their bookmark to the big bucket for a new one with a different order when they have completed all five for the week. This happens at different times for different kids throughout the week. The bookmark system has proven to be successful in managing not only how many kids are trying to work on a specific activity, but it also helped ensure kids would in fact reach all of the activities each week, some more often than others depending on how quickly they work. The bookmarks make it easy to make "on the fly" accommodations by simply writing on them with vis-a-vis marker or attaching a clip to help students keep their place and know just where to start the next day.

* I apologize for the glare but I can't seem to take a photo of a laminated object with out it *

I started the year off having my kids record their choices on this chart. Under each activity title, I listed some of the choices that kids could pick. They were the same ones that we added to our anchor charts when I introduced each activity. As the year progressed and I changed the timing and format, the sheet changed as well. I shrunk it to half a page, added a reminder to check the board for must do's (typically something left from morning work or a specific vocabulary assignment) and finally reduced the amount of recording kids had to do. Instead of listing what strategy they used while reading or what topic they wrote about, I had them check it off. Some kids really needed this structure while others were able to phase it out once they established a solid routine. Here is the original version.



After all of that rambling... it turns out I don't love Daily Five. I know, I know....gasp! I DO love the theory of it, but I am definitely more of a Debbie Diller Workstations fan. I feel like when all is said and done, I followed the Workstations format to a tee! So... alas I will be making changes for next year as well. I would love to hear from you so drop me a line about what systems work for you.

Note-see my Shelfari bookshelf at the bottom, right side of my blog to take a look at the books I mentioned in this post.