Daily 5: Getting Started with Read to Self

I didn't start teaching Daily 5 until the third week of school. We had a rough beginning of the year so I wanted to make sure I had all of my pretesting and routines down before I threw in another one. We started Daily 5 with choosing a good book. I brought in every shoe imaginable and we talked about where and why we would use them. The kids thought this was fantastic! It also gave them time to get to know me a little bit from my different shoes. (Who knew our shoes told who we are?!) We then talked about the I PICK. We came up with actions for each part of it so they would remember. We tried reading different books that were not on our level and talked about that.

That was Day 1.

Day 2 we talked about what Read to Self would look like. They came up with a good T-Table and we wrote it all down. Then we talked about me, what I would be doing. I explained that I get to work with each one of them back at our "Jelly Bean" table, which is our small group table. They were all thrilled about this.

The first day we made it three minutes. We talked about, and made it three minutes again. It's funny because I was sweating bullets trying to get them there. I created graphs so we could keep track of how long we were there. They loved to see them. Every day seemed to get better and by just a little over a week we made it to 15 minutes~ holy cow! I didn't expect their stamina to build so quickly, but it did, and now I am able to meet with a group for that time!

One thing I did as we were building stamina here, is I would go around and tap them on the shoulder. They would then start reading aloud so I could hear them read. I felt that this served two purposes- first, I wanted to hear that they chose a book that they could read, and second, I wanted them to get used to "distractions" so they could learn to ignore when we were at the table.

Notice my Daily 5 board in the back- it has my poster as well as the stamina poster (as well a full shot of my book boxes!)

I have made Daily 5 posters with an I PICK poster, as well as stamina graphs in my TpT store. I have pirates, Ocean Friends, and Monsters. (I haven't gotten around to making graphs yet on the last two) Feel free to check them out. Click on the pic to take you there!

Next post I will talk about what is in their book box, book shopping, and introducing Work on Writing!