The Daily 5(ish)

Last year, I read a great little book called The Daily Five by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser. The authors advocate using five stations that students should rotate through every day, as opposed to teacher-created centers, which are often very time-consuming to make and manage. These are the five stations:

1. Listen to Reading
2. Read to Self
3. Read to Someone
4. Word Work
5. Work on Writing

I am planning to take some of the ideas I gathered from the book to use in a way that would best benefit my students within the confines of my schedule. Here's what I'm thinking reader's workshop might look like, while incorporating the Daily 5:

First, I will conduct a shared reading mini-lesson, during which I will teach a strategy or skill that the whole class needs to learn. Next, we'll move into our three "rounds" of stations, each of which will last about 15 minutes. While students are in their assigned station (yes, I will assign stations, even though the authors suggest letting the kids choose - they get to make plenty of choices throughout the day, and things will be much better managed if I assign the stations!), I will be working with guided reading groups at my small group table. Here's what my rotation is going to look like (in my head, it all works out!), with 4-6 students in each group. Remember, I will also be plucking students from their station rotation to do guided reading with me:

Round 1 - A: Word Work (Mountain Language, spelling, vocabulary, etc)
                 B: Listen to Reading  (Tumblebooks on the computer)  
                 C: Work on Writing (cursive, journaling, reading responses)

Round 2 - A: Work on Writing
                 B: Word Work
                 C: Listen to Reading

Round 3 - A: Listen to Reading
                 B: Work on Writing
                 C: Word Work

After the third round, we will do a whole-class share to reflect on the day's learning during reader's workshop. Now, one of the stations in The Daily 5, Read to Self, takes priority above the other stations. Because of this, I did not want to include it in the 15 minute station rotations. Instead, I am devoting a 30 minute period outside the daily 5 time/guided reading time for students to independently read. While they are reading, I will be conducting independent reading conferences, ideally conferring one-on-one with each student once every week to two weeks.

We'll see how my plan works out in terms of practicality! I am always open to tweaking as I go to make things run smoothly.