During this past week I began re-reading the book written by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser titled The Daily Five: Fostering Literacy Independence in the Elementary Grades. My first reading was five years ago and I decided to refresh my memory a little on some of the characteristics of using The Daily Five in the classroom.
Reading the introduction reminded me of why I like the Daily Five concept:
“We wanted to change the atmosphere in our classrooms and our own roles, from trying to “manage” students, rushing around the room putting out fires, to creating routines and procedures that fostered independent literacy behaviours that were ingrained to the point of being habits. Our goal was for all students to have internalized these expectations and shared experiences in a way that allowed for every child to become engrossed in their reading and writing.” (p9, Stenhouse Publishers, 2006)
I have fostered independence in my classroom and this year I aim to fine-tune my students’ independence. Hopefully a re-reading of this book will help me do so.
What are you reading this week? Feel free to share a few sentences from the book in the comments.
© Colline Kook-Chun, 2016
(This post is linked to Miz B’s Teaser Tuesdays at Books and a Beat)
This sounds like a great plan for the classroom.
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It does work well. And when the children are working independently, I able able to work with individual children or small groups.
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Glad it works for you. It’s an interesting concept. Was it hard to implement?
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The trick is teaching the children to work independently. Plenty of repetition and reviewing lead to the children enjoying the choice they have and behaving appropriately.
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A good read for all instructors.
My TT from Friend Of The Devil
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It certainly is 🙂
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I’m a fellow 7th grade ELA teacher who’s doing her best to foster literacy in a 45-minute class period. Your ideas and insights for how to do this well have been game-changers for me. Thank you for always sharing. Looking forward to reading your books!
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Thank you so much 🙂
If you are on Instagram, you can follow me (collinekc) as I post almost daily what I am doing in my classroom. On my blog, I only post snippets from time to time.
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