Skip to main content

How I Made Daily 5 Centers Successful in my Classroom

Are you running Daily 5 centers in your classroom? Is it running smoothly? Are you experiencing some hiccups? This is a post to share my experience of Daily 5 and what I learned from implementing it into my classroom.

If you want to start running Daily 5 centers in your classroom, I recommend you buy The Daily 5: Fostering Literacy in the Elementary Grade book. After reading it, you can do more research on Daily 5 online. The book lays out all you need to know in order to run Daily 5 in your class.

As a new teacher, learning Daily 5 centers and implementing it in my class was a huge struggle! It never seemed to run smooth, and a lot of the time I felt like my kids were off task.  It took me three years to successfully implement Daily 5 in my class. For some, that may seem a bit crazy, others may totally relate to the struggle (#thestruggleisreal) . Instead of giving up on Daily 5, I took time to reflect. I asked myself, "What patterns of behavior did you see in your students? What did they struggle to understand? How did I teach the introductory lessons?" I also took time to reread the Daily 5 book...AND WOW did that help.

The first time I read the book I was a first year teacher. Upon rereading it, and having classroom experience under my belt, things that I glossed over as a newbie, now stood out to me. Vocabulary and management strategies in the book made a lot more sense now that I had a classroom to connect them to! Isn't that something? We teach our students about prior knowledge and making connections to the text they are reading; application to real world experiences. Well, sometimes us teachers need that too! We also have to build the knowledge and experiences in our own classroom. It's how we learn and become better.

After rereading and reflection here are some lessons and areas that needed improvement:

  • Teaching Stamina
  • Teaching ways to read a book
  • Teaching them how to pick a good book
  • Spending time building stamina 
If you are thinking about running Daily 5 centers in your classroom, don't skip the stamina! Each year, I glossed over it. This year, I spent a solid lesson on it. I got my students excited about it, we made challenges, and we spent the time building our stamina.  The students loved it, they were invested, because I made it important. It has made a huge difference in the success of my Daily 5.
Our classroom "Staminasaurus" 
Don't skip or gloss over any of the lessons that give them a foundation for read to self. While teaching your students ways to read a book, or how to pick a good fit book make sure you  model it for them. The simple saying we learned during our college days, "I do, we do, they do." Show them your expectations, don't just talk about it.

This may seem pretty simple and obvious, but as teachers we get worried about our instructional minutes! After all, every minute counts, we can't get it back. During those first days of Daily 5 when you are practicing stamina over...and over...and over...and over again, you will start to worry,"Am I wasting time? I should be assessing my students. I should be starting my reading groups." Don't let that little voice win. These core lessons are so important to the rest of your year. Stay in the discomfort, know what you are doing is important, and valuable to the rest of your year. If you spend time on the stamina and teaching them these core lessons you will have the time to teach your small groups, guided reading groups, or intervention time with one-on-one students. 

Taking time to reflect on our teaching is a great way to grow. Don't be afraid to go back and reteach lessons your students may need to be successful! I hope these small takeaways helped you. If you have anymore questions about Daily 5 in my classroom, don't hesitate to email me. God bless you and happy teaching! 

Mrs.Albert
- Jesu Ufem Tobie -

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Visual Steps for Mass

I work at a Catholic School. I know, you're wondering why that's relevant!? 💁Well, not only are we a Catholic School, but we are the ONLY Catholic School in the state of Georgia that has a certified special needs program.  It has been quite the journey! Our small class sizes and ability to give each student one-on-one time to meet their academic needs has truly benefited so many of our students. Children with Autism do extremely well in our school's program.  With that said, I noticed that some of our students with special needs were anxious at Mass. Most of them are not Catholic, so they have no perception of the time. They aren’t familiar enough with the steps to recognize what will happen next. I decided to make this  handy visual for students and teachers to use to help navigate through the Mass. It's very simple and easy to use! All you need is a laminator, laminating paper, and velcro! When you get to Mass, make sure all pictures are taken off. Th
Post a Comment
Read more

Sacrament Task Cards

I LOVE task cards! They are a great way to review material. I love hiding them around my classroom for students to find. Student engagement ✔ I use task cards for math all the time, so I thought, why not start using them for religion too?! And that's exactly what I did! I created my first set of religion task cards for you all! These task cards are all about the sacraments. If you have already taught your students about the Seven Sacraments, these cards would be a great way to review and/or refresh them on the content. If you need a resource to teach the sacraments, I have one! In fact these task cards pair perfectly with my Sacrament Flip Book. Click the link to get more information on it. Sacrament Flip Book Back to my sacrament task cards! I have 3 versions of the task cards. There is volume 1, volume 2, and then of course I bundled them together so you could get both sets a small discount! Volume 1 Volume 1 includes 1-3 question on each sacrament, except Matrimo
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Left the Classroom Part 2

Last week we left off with me sharing why I left the brick and mortar classroom. If you missed that post you can find a link for it here. This week, I will share with you how this change has positively impacted my health, and my VIPKid experience thus far. To start, the thing first I noticed after leaving was an immediate calmness that came over my body. I realized that I had been living at a high level of stress for quite some time, but I had just become so habituated to it that my body accepted it as normal. We all know that's no way to treat your body. Nor should it be accepted, if one has the means to change it. I found that I was no longer easily agitated, unusually stressed about grocery shopping (or other day to day chores), and the weekend didn't seem so small anymore. For the first month, I soaked up the solitude. I kept to my normal routine of waking up, working out, and prayers. I saved prayers for last, because for the first time in a long time my morning pra
Post a Comment
Read more