The Reading Program.

Research:

After attending PD (a daily 5 workshop) as part of our cluster day at the beginning of 2015, I purchased this book as I knew it could be very effective in a year 3/4 class. The Daily 5 program is a shift away from "busy" worksheets to more engaged reading. The basis of the program is on 5 choices that the children work through:

1. Listen to reading.
2. Work on words (spelling program).
3. Work on writing.
4. Buddy reading.
5. Read to self.

The program has been used in American schools very effectively since 2006. The core belief behind the program resonates with where we want to head in  our collaborative learning space at Parkview.

"We wanted to change the atmosphere in our classrooms, and our own roles. Instead of trying to "manage" students, rushing around the room putting out fires, we wanted to create routines and procedures that fostered independent literacy behaviours that were ingrained to the point of habits". Gail Boushey The Daily 5 second edition page 7. 

The goal is to have children reading for pleasure rather than 'time-filler, keep them quiet' activity sheets.

Pinterest was another good source of resources and information and over the year both of us have collated ideas in our respective folders:
Sophie's Pinterest Daily 5 board.

    

Fiona's Pinterest Daily 5 board.

2015

Last year I implemented the program in Term 2. Due to the nature of my class I kept it teacher-directed. I introduced the Daily 5 as set group rotations. I quickly discovered that the children were doing more reading, and it was manageable. I incorporated the Step-Up essential list spelling program into the "word-work" rotation, and made a hands-on spelling station option for the third spelling day (based on Pinterest spelling ideas!). Sophie's Pinterest Spelling board.

2016

In Term 2 Fiona introduced Daily 5 to her class. At this stage we are both running it in a set rotation style with our reading groups. This is partly due to needing to keep management tight with our kids and also to share out our 6 ipAds for the "Listen to reading". Our Level 4 self-managers find the Daily 5 time the easiest part of their timetable to self manage. 

In term 3 we began shared reading together. We take turns each week to run the "Big Book of the week" and "Poem of the week" before moving into our respective spaces for our reading program.

Next steps

Ideally the Daily 5 runs as a self managed program for all of our learners. Our hope is that we can work towards this as our children learn those self-managing skills. This would mean that we would run our teacher guided reading sessions to a schedule, and all children would fill in and follow their own Daily 5 plan around those teaching sessions. 

Work on writing- we both would like to set up a more appealing writing station so that the children can be inspired to write lists, letters, cards, postcards etc. We want to motivate writing for pleasure. We will either share resources or potentially could set up one writing station for Room Twelveen.

Support

Our limited number of ipads and working headphones is a barrier. Having more would open up options for our students to "listen to reading".as well for independent research.