If you are frustrated because you are spending too much time trying to manage students, and not enough time offering the most rigorous and joyful literacy curriculum possible, then the structure of the Daily Five may be what you are looking for.

We know each class is different, and we spend at least 20 days building community, defining and practicing behaviors, building stamina, and assessing the needs of this particular group of children.

We had to trust that our students had the skills and desire, even at age five, to accept the challenge of making thoughtful choices during sustained independent work periods. 

Read to Yourself
The best way to become a better reader is to practice each day, with books you choose, on your just-right reading level.  It soon becomes a habit.

Read to Someone
Reading to someone allows for more time to practice strategies, helping you work on fluency and expression, check for understanding, hear your own voice, and share in the learning community.

Work on Writing
Just like reading, the best way to become a better writer is to practice writing each day.

Listen to Reading
We hear examples of good literature and fluent reading.  We learn more words, thus expanding our vocabulary and becoming better readers.

Spelling/Word Work
Correct spelling allows for more fluent writing, thus speeding up the ability to write and get thinking down on paper.  This is an essential foundation for writers.

Taking time to build trust and demonstrate caring is the foundation upon which all other elements of our literacy learning are built.  When trust is combined with explicit instruction, our students acquire the skills necessary to become independent learners.

Through lessons and guided practice, we gradually build behaviors that can be sustained over time so children can easily be trusted to manage on their own.

We begin be asking ourselves, “What meaningful activities does research say my students should be engaging in that puts them in charge of their own learning, is self-motivating, is worthy of their time and effort, and will improve their skills?” 

We spend a great deal of effort creating and maintaining a healthy classroom culture.  What the class experiences together weaves the tapestry that will create an environment of learning and caring for all students.

The tapestry of the community becomes more intricate with each shared activity and lesson.  For example, after concluding a Kevin Henkes author study with Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse, it wasn’t unusual to hear someone say for weeks afterward, “Wow.  That is about all I can say: Wow.”  Our shared experience and knowledge bind us together.

Children need to know that researchers say reading each day is the best way to become a better reader and that the best readers practice each day with books they choose.  When done enough, reading will soon become an enjoyable habit.

We needed to teach children how to build their stamina for independent work.  We had the opportunity to introduce this in a kindergarten classroom.  The students were able to read silently for only one minute on the first day.  After focused instruction and only one week's practice, they had increased their on-task independent reading time to ten minutes.

As classroom teachers, we understand how important the role of good-fit books is in the classroom, but believe the real challenge lies with our teaching children so they are empowered to choose good-fit books for themselves each time they go to the library, bookstore, or classroom book area.

We acquire books for children's book boxes in a variety of ways.  We have become fixtures at our public and school libraries.  Both libraries allow us to check out forty picture books at a time.  They happily print out a copy with all the titles, which we use to help us when it comes time to return the books.  We begin each year with a letter to our families asking them to keep us in mind when they are cleaning out books at home.  We also ask families to keep their eyes open as they visit local thrift shops or garage sales.  We let them know titles, authors, or series we are particularly interested in. 

The important thing to remember is that if a child, even one, goes off-task during the practice time, the signal should be given to stop and gather students back together to review how it went.  We never want children to continue with the off-task behavior, because that means they are practicing the wrong way and training their muscle memories incorrectly.  It is very difficult to change incorrect behaviors if we allow them to become ingrained.

One of our goals is to help children become self-reflective about their behaviors and learning.  We’ve seen that some kids are naturally self-reflective, but all children can learn to become more so.  Effective instruction is about developing learners who actively and independently monitor and regulate their own learning.