Okay friends, I will admit that my summer blogging is not off to a great start. A week of summer has gone by and I haven't blogged one bit! I actually have plenty of things to talk about, but I just can't get myself to start blogging!
But I have (hopefully) found a solution to this! I've decided to join the book study on
Daily 5 (affiliate link) hosted by
Primary Inspired! It just started today!
Today's focus is on Chapter 1: That Was Then, This is Now: How the Daily 5 and CAFE Have Evolved.
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| Daily 5 Groups |
Let me start off by saying that I'm a big fan of Daily Five. I have used it for two years, at two different schools, and in different ways both times. I have read both the first and second editions of Daily Five. However, I still don't follow Daily Five the way it's structured in the books. Believe me, when I first read the first edition and saw the schedule (5 rotations in one day and mini lessons between each?!?!), I knew it would be IMPOSSIBLE to implement in my classroom. It was such a relief, when I read the second edition, to see that it was okay to stray away from 5 rotations in one day.
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| Read to Self |
Truth? I have only done two rotations in one day. My entire Daily 5 block has ranged from 30 minutes to an hour (15 minutes to 25 minute rotations), depending on how long I have my aide for. I have found Daily 5 to be really useful for targeted small group instruction time. It is still a bit hard for me to think of it as a full structure for my entire Language Arts block. I also haven't read the CAFE book (which I really should get), so the concept of the focus lessons between rotations is still foreign to me.
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| Word Work |
But this summer might be the perfect time to try to figure that portion out! I'm going to be teaching at a bilingual Mandarin immersion school next year. My school follows a 50-50 model which means the students receive half of their instruction in English and the other half in Mandarin. I am teaching the English only portion while my partner teaches the Mandarin portion. We switch classes halfway through the day so that the students receive instruction in both languages every day. Since I will only have each class for half the day, and some part of that half day will be for teaching math, I feel like my Language Arts block is going to be very limited compared to my past experiences. With such a limited block of time, fully following the Daily 5 structure with focus lessons in between rotations might actually work to my benefit. Now I just have to figure out how to get that part in! Hopefully reading through this book one more time will help me figure it out!
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| Listen to Reading materials |
Join in on the book study if you're reading the book over the summer too! Can't wait to see what others have to say! :)
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