I had the great pleasure of working with a great bunch of kids on how to build up their best practice with reading. I used the Daily 5 approach to establishing a nurturing community of readers. I was observed by two teachers and I felt very comfortable with this because I have been using this approach for maybe three years now. I like the foundations of this approach:
- trusting students
- providing choice
- nurturing community
- creating a sense of urgency
- building stamina
- staying out of students’ way once routines are established.
The best part about using the Daily 5 is the students have opportunities to develop excellent independent work habits motivated by their own choices of what to read or write. One of my students said to me today that she loves to write about what ever she likes because she gets to make it up or write a report if she wants to. This is a students who has learning difficulties so her words were very powerful and reinforced why I love developing this type of learning program.
Today we worked on identifying our learning environment and what this will look like and created a visual that we can constantly refer to. We started developing our muscle memory to sit for a short period of time to read with stamina. we practiced this a couple of times and assessed our own abilities to do this. Tomorrow I get to go back and give the students a strategy for choosing the right books for us to read with stamina.
So What Now What 