Daily 5 - Chapter 7

Well school is finally out for the summer.  My husband says it’s time to relax but all I can think about is finally having the time to do all the things I didn’t have time to do during the school year.  Next year will be a different class for me.  They will be more academic and for the first time, I will have a grade one student that is working on the grade one curriculum. 

This will be a challenge for me.  How do I make sure that I can provide a rich grade one curriculum for this child while providing a rich kindergarten program for everyone else?

I’m looking forward to the challenge and I think that The Daily 5 is a perfect way to get in some of the differentiation that I’m going to need to do.

Remember:  If you don’t have the book yet, you can grab it here and catch up.

This week I'm behind again.  I will be doing chapter 7 today and then chapter 8 tomorrow.

Chapter 7 was all about launcing the next Daily 5.  I think that the I-charts are the key to laying the foundation.  If you didn't grab my charts, you can get them for free by clicking on the picture below.

Following the same outline when launching each of the Daily 5 will ease the transition time into each of them.

One of the important parts of this chapter is introducing choice.   The Sisters state how important it is to give children choice and to work on independence.  One of the big focuses in the Kindergarten program in Ontario is self-regulation.  Introducing choice and allowing children to have that responsibility, is a perfect opportunity to work on self-regulation.

This was how we worked our literacy block last year.

The children were divided into 4 ability groups and because we had two teachers, we were able to provide two teacher directed sessions.  The children had a choice of what center they went too but we never did any teaching around what to do, how to take care of material etc.  We just dove in and got started.

As a result, the materials were always in the wrong boxes, or missing.  They were a mess.  There was no process for who was responsible for adding more response sheets so they were often missing too.

Next year I’m hoping to refine this process and follow the Sisters 10 steps for independence.  The children will still have choice but it will focus on the Daily 5 choices.

Do you give the children choices or do you pick for them?

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