For a little over a year now I have been reading about Daily 5 in the blogosphere and wondering if it would work in my classroom. Wellll.. I figured this summer would be the perfect time to read the book and get ready to implement it into my classroom!
After reading through the book (in one day!) I cannot wait to start my Daily 5 journey. I told one of my teammates about it and she just bought the book too!
This year will be my third year teaching so of course, there are so many things I learn and tweak every day, every week, and every year to better fine tune my craft. My literacy block has been a weak point in my self-reflection and my goal this year is to run my literacy groups smoothly while my other students are engaged in meaningful literacy activities.
The past two years I have tried using centers. They have worked… for the most part.. but I feel like I can do better. The other thing about centers is that I was doing sooooo much work everyday to get each center ready for the day or week. My centers the past two years have been the following:
– Read to Self
– Read to Self
– Buddy read
– Word Wall activities
– Spelling
– Writing prompts
– Math games
I already had most of the Daily 5 choices, but now I can do these with more structure. I am currently on the lookout for some sort of listening center (Donorchoose?!?) and I am excited to hear how everyone else already implements or plans to implement Daily 5 next year.
I think it will take a lot of self-control on my part to implement it correctly and take the time to model, model, model, model, model and MODEL each part of Daily 5, but I think it will be so worth it!
Link up with Lory to let me know what you’re doing with Daily 5!
Susan
It is very worth it. One of the things that I love about Daily 5 is that there is little to none teacher prep like there is with centers. The other thing is that the kids are doing real reading and real writing instead of stuff about reading and writing. (You might find a listening center on ebay.)
❀ Tammy
Forever in First
(Oops – "…little to no teacher prep" is what I meant. 🙂
I use my regular CD player with headphones for my listening center. I got a "splitter" (brand name: Belkin) at Walmart. I plug that into the CD player and then it has 5 places for 5 headphones to be plugged in. It was inexpensive and worked great. It is green and white and looks a little like an octopus (with 5 arms instead of 8 :)…) Hope this helps. Liz in South Dakota
ahh! i need a listening center, too! 🙁
that splinter idea from elizabeth sounds very interesting!
Our school provides the CD/tape player, with splitter and headphones, and for 2 years now I have been hiding the splitter and headphones. My kiddos were spending more time fussing with the tangled cords and fighting over which headphones to use, and not listening.
Instead, I now teach the kiddos to lay on their bellies with their heads near the CD player (easier to share books this way, too). That way the volume doesn't need to be too loud, and the kids don't have visual distractions because they are close to the CD player.
Hope this helps, and possibly saves you some $$$!
With digital technology the way it is… You should look into ipods or shuffles for a listening center. The kids destroy the CDs so I already have to spend the time creating copies. I plan on posting my next one for technology. I say create the DC project… it's worth a try!
Thanks for linking up!
Cheryl
Primary Graffiti
I got an iPod through DonorsChoose to use as a listening center when I was doing centers last year. I would put books on the iPod and students would listen through headphones. A friend of mine did Daily 5 last year. For Listen to Reading, she uses her computers and the website TumbleBooks.com or other sites that have books online. I'll be using my computers for Listen to Reading as well. She said it worked great!
Caitlyn
thanks so much for linking up and sharing your thoughts. I'm anxious to hear the comments with we discuss listen to reading also. I have individual cassette recorders (walkman style) from years ago for my older books on tape.. I was interested in looking into the books on computer also. I've google the phrase and I think we might be surprised what is out there 😉 that would be nice to implement without a large cost for us.
thanks again!!
Lory
Such good ideas for listening centers!! This is exactly why I wanted to be a part of this book study!!
Thanks everyone – my summer brain is back to work!
Susan
T.G.I.F. (Thank God it's First Grade!)
I only have one book per CD so I bought cd players at Walmart for 9.97 on line. They work nice too:)
Last summer when I decided to do the D5, I sent an email/Facebook request to all my friends to see if they had CD players that they no longer used. I didn't have to pay for any of them. I got nine CD players for my D5 time. Then I took all my tapes that I had for my books and put them onto CD's. I put four books on each CD. It worked fabulously in my room. Each CD and headphones were in a shower cabby that they took off the wall and went to their reading spot with thier bag of books. The only advice that I could give is make sure you have a LOT of batteries because they run out pretty fast.
I have a wireless listening center which I LOVE!!! Kids can sit pretty much anywhere in the classroom to listen. No tangled cords! If you have a student who can't handle sitting with kids to listen, he/she can sit at their desk but still enjoy the story. They are pricey but so worth it!
I'm your newest follower too. I'd love it if you checked out my blog too. 🙂
Marissa
WILD About First Grade!