Daily 5 Kickoff!

Well, my first grade monkeys are well into Daily 5 by now.  

I wanted to let you know how we kicked off the routine.

If you are thinking of starting Daily 5, the first thing you need to do is read The Daily 5 book by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser.  

The first year you try Daily 5, you should try to do it as close to the way it is described in the book.  The Two Sisters know what they are talking about!  I really was worried the first time I tried it - didn't think most of it would work.  I was pleasantly surprised.  The kids became so independent and I was able to run meaningful small groups.  I was ready to find another job, then along came Daily 5 and saved my career!

We started Daily 5 lessons on the second day of school this year.  I introduced the 3 different ways to read a book first.

 This was really important because I have a lot of non-readers this year.  They needed to be reassured that "reading" the pictures was legitimate.   We took 2 days to complete this, like it is explained in the book.  Then we reviewed the concept for weeks afterwards.

My Daily 5 board ready for T-Charts.

The next step was to introduce I PICK good fit books.

I took 3 days to teach this lesson and it needs to be reviewed often.  www.brainpopjr.com has a good video about picking good books, too.

The kids love the I PICK lesson.  I teach the lesson pretty much word for word from the book (substituting playing in the snow for golf).  They love my shoes. (There's nothing special about my shoes, they just love the glimpse into my closet!) And walking out of my husband's large running shoe gets them laughing hysterically! I leave the shoes up for a couple of weeks as a reminder.

Then I introduced the student's book boxes 

and they went shopping for good books.  

(These colored, plastic book boxes are from www.ReallyGoodStuff.com) 
I suggest spreading the book boxes around the room, so that kids are not pushing their way to their box at Daily 5 time.
 

We started talking about Read To Self the next week.  Taking it slow in the beginning pays off in the end, so go slow and make sure the students understand and can explain each component before you go on to the next.

That's the kickoff!  Things just soar from there!

I love when visitors come in and stand, shocked, watching 6 year olds work independently!

Thank you Daily 5!

Before and After, Go Fish!

It's Go Fish, but the students will ask for the number that goes before or after the number they have.

We learned how important this skill is for kids in Strength in Number training through our district. First graders need practice crossing over the decades, so I made sure to include each one up to 100.

It is also in our new Alaska Standards:

1.CC.3. Order numbers from 1-100. Demonstrate ability in counting forward and backward.

So here it is. You have to click on it to see the whole thing.


I'm going to start off by having them work with an adult. Then they can play by themselves at Workplace time. (Maybe...we'll see!)
If you see any mistakes, please let me know so I can fix it!

Where is our class?

Every year I mean to make a sign to let people know where our class is, and every year things get too busy. Imagine that, teaching too busy!

So this year I decided to make one while I was watching TV during summer break. It's a lot easier to be creative when there's not a million things flying through my head. You can click on the picture to download. I left one blank to write in your own place.

I am going to decorate a clothes pin and have a student move the pin when we leave the classroom. It will be a classroom job...which is another chart I need to make!

Hope you are finding time to be creative!

More Shared Journals

Here are a few more shared journals I'm going to use this year. Feel free to use any that you like. The lettering and graphics are from Lettering Delights.

This journal will be for sharing our best days ever. I hope to encourage the use of adjectives. Maybe students will copy and use them from the cover.


Students can write about their favorite animals and their pets in here.


I hope students can share about their favorite books and inspire others to read them, too. I will need to teach about not spoiling the end, giving reasons to read the book, who will be interested in it, etc. I think I will need to write a sample page to give them ideas. I want to write comments to each student's writing, too, since I don't do that with their monthly journals anymore.


I think this one will be easy for the kids to write in. I think it will be the first one I introduce.


If you have ideas for other shared journal, let me know and I'll see what I can do!
That's the scoop from the zoo today!

I was reading about shared journals over at Delightful Daily 5 Cafe. She explains each component of Daily 5 so well. I highly recommend reading some of her posts. This particular post was about introducing Work on Writing to the class, and she reintroduced me to Shared Journals. I remember trying them back when I taught 5th grade, but haven't thought about them since coming down to primary. She had some great ideas and I am going to try it this year.

Here are some journals I came up with. I will glue these sheets onto spiral notebooks (if Walmart carries them in Kodiak this year...). You can click on the picture to download each page.For the students to record their owies.For students to record their favorite things in the whole world.
For students to share their recess shenanigans (instead of telling me!).

I'm picturing students choosing a journal at Work on Writing time, reading what others wrote, commenting on other students' "posts" or starting a new page with their own ideas. We'll see how it goes - I may need to make a T-Chart to share my expectations!

That's my thought from the zoo today!

Classroom Coupons

Pintrest is awesome! I found some super cute classroom coupons on Pintrest from Seusstastic Classroom Inspirations. She has some great coupons to download for free, which got me thinking. So, I made some others that I can use in my classroom, and I thought I'd share a couple.

You can download these by clicking on the pictures.

I think I'll only let the kids redeem their coupons on Fridays to cut down on chaos. (I don't like chaos!)

I'm going to put these in my prize box, which is only going to have pencils, erasers, and coupons this year. It gets so expensive trying to keep a prize box full being an hour's flight from a dollar store!
(Is there one in Anchorage? I don't know. I usually fly to California to shop a dollar store and that's a lot farther away!)

If anyone has more ideas for coupons, let me hear them.
That's all from the zoo today!

Classroom Walls

I'm always amazed at how bare the classroom walls look after the last day of school. It makes me a little sad. I have always liked my walls to start off plain and uncluttered in August, but by the time May comes along the walls are stuffed! What a difference!
In August, I like to have very little on my walls. After reading The Daily 5 by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser, I finally have research to back that choice! Every chart on my walls when we start the school year is something we will use every day. From the first day of school, we are anchoring learning to each chart.

Main Wall in August

I seem to have lost my other photos, so I will continue this another time... :(