Daily 5 Chapter 3

1. Establish a gathering place for brain and body breaks. (Do you call your gathering place anything special? A few of my teammates did. Annie called hers the "Family Room" and Kim calls hers the "Learning Space." I need to come up with something better than "the carpet" lol!)

Mine area is "the carpet" too.  I never really thought about calling it anything else but maybe it's time for a new name.  My room has a terrible layout.  I have no wall space (it's taken up by windows, countertop, the kitchen etc.).  So I really only have the carpet area.  Maybe I should get the children to name it.


2. Developing the concept of "good fit" books (There are LOTS of examples of different good fit lessons in blogland AND Pinterest)

This is one thing I do have lots of, and that is levelled books.  I need to go through all my other books though and see if there are some others that I can level. I had a volunteer begin to catelogue them for me but I would like to organize them by categories and levels and put stickers on them so the children can return them to the correct box.

3. Create anchor charts with students How will these be visual in the room? Where will you store them? What about small spaces?

I do like anchor charts and I have lots of room to put them up.  I have will have one blind student though, so I will have to come up with something else for him.  Maybe something smaller with Braille for him to touch. (even though he can't read yet).

4. Short, repeated intervals of independent practice and setting up book boxes (How are you going to keep track of stamina? What will you use for book boxes? What are you going to put in those book boxes on the 1st day of school?)

I have the perfect boxes for book boxes and I'm going to have get some books into them for each of the children.  I need some Braille books for my blind student.  I got a new pocket chart from Really Good Stuff to celebrate success so I might be able to use that to keep of track of stamina.

5. Calm Signals and check in procedures (Do you already have a signal? How will you handle check ins?)

I don't really have a signal.  With only 7 children they don't usually get very rowdy.

6. Using the correct model/incorrect model approach for demonstrating appropriate behaviors. (Will you keep track of inappropriate behaviors? If they are not doing what is expected, then they are calling out for attention...what other ways can you give them some extra attention so that they can be more independent during D5?)
This is one part that I haven't done before and I'm looking forward to.  I think it's going to make a huge difference in how quickly we will get routines set and everyone on the same track.  I don't think that I'm going to get much inappropriate behaviour, I think I will just get short attention spans.  It may take us a bit to get set up (moving children in and out of wheelchairs) so I'm not sure if I could just call everyone back after 3 minutes.


Head on over to Live, Love, Laugh for more great ideas on chapter 3.