Daily 5

Look what I made! I am so proud of this:

First, I can't take credit for the cute rainbow Daily 5 graphic at the top of the page... I did a screen clipping from a download from Teachers Pay Teachers. But I put together everything else.

The version we actually use in class looks a lot cooler... I have my students' names typed on the side along with a star showing which color spelling group they're in. Above each day of the week are the names of the students I meet with individually that day (that way both they and I remember). Those little clip art pictures at the bottom right corner of each category are reproducible, meaning a student can click and drag a copy to their name to show which round they want to do.

We tried it for the first time today. Everybody seems to be a fan! I like being able to see at a glance who's doing which round. I can keep an eye on which rounds people are skipping, or which ones they repeat a lot. Students can pick their rounds before school starts (as long as I remember to have the flipchart up on the screen. And if they want to switch rounds around during Daily 5, they can easily do that too.

Now, we just need to figure out how to make Word Work go better... everyone was off the walls today for word work. They all wanted to do their sorts on the board, but when it wasn't their turn, they lolled around on the exercise balls doing nothing! I had to repeatedly redirect them. So that's on the agenda to talk about tomorrow: how to do word work more efficiently. I think we need a whiteboard checklist...