Daily 5 Word Work

We posted earlier about incorporating Daily 5 into our classroom.  The students choose their activities each day.  Their choices are:  read to self, read with a partner, listen to reading, work on writing or practice word work.  They have a recording sheet in their folders where they can check off the activity they do each day.  We used this one, courtesy of "Firsties in 204."

  The idea is to work at a different skill center each day.  This allows them to keep track of what they have done on their own.

Daily 5 is a great addition to our classroom because the stations are pretty low maintenance.  They require a lot of modeling of appropriate and inappropriate behaviors, use of resources, i.e. word lists, sample activities to show them the expected product, working quietly with a partner, how to choose the "just right" book, etc.   but once the students learn the routine and what is expected they become very independent.

The idea is for the students to work independently at their stations so we can meet with guided reading groups.  The quality of their work is also important, these stations are by no means busy work.  They know they are held accountable for completing their work as well.  We have them keep "Daily 5" folders and if they don't finish at their station, they can take the work out when we have free time.  We check their folders each week to make sure they are getting to each station and producing quality work.  

Here are some of our students partner reading...

reading to self...

Working on writing...

For the writing center, the students were given a picture prompt.  They had to complete a four square graphic organizer based on the picture in order to write a story.  We used a haunted house to go with the Halloween theme.  You could also use stickers and have them choose a few stickers and write stories using the stickers or you could use pictures cut out from magazines.  There are a lot of options with writing.  We differentiate to ensure student success by providing a word bank and story starter for our struggling writers, and we allow the more creative minds to use their own ideas.  We also try to incorporate different types of writing as the year goes on.

and word work...

There are so many fun things you can do for the word work center.  You can use spelling words, high frequency words or words/spelling patterns that students are struggling with.  This allows you to differentiate the center to meet the needs of each child.  

Some of the activities we are using are: 

"Scrabble Spelling"- they build words using the scrabble tiles and they add the points up for each word.  

"Magnet Words"- using magnetic letters to build words on cookie sheets or magnet boards.

"Stamp It"-  Stamp words and write words

"Type It"- type words on the computer.  They can use different fonts and sizes.

So far our class is loving the Daily 5 and have been doing a great job building their stamina and independence!  Do you have any suggestions or ideas for Daily 5 that we could add to our classroom?