Daily Five

I have started the daily five with my preschool and pre-k classes a few months ago.  Believe it or not, I have seen so much improvement in their writing and reading.  I don't set my classroom up exactly like the Sisters; (http://www.the2sisters.com/the_daily_5.html) however have used their ideas and tweaked them to fit a preschool classroom.  I had to go into this very slow, and add on little at the time.  I started out by doing small groups.  One group I would work with while the other group would work on a math box or some other individual/partner work at the table.  This taught them just how to work individually or by asking others for help when I am working with students in a small group.  My group or my assistant's group would work on activities that would prepare the students for the daily five such working on journal entries, playing word games, and reading small groups. Because I am so busy getting in everything else in the mornings, I do not do the Daily Five until the afternoons.  I am usually by myself in the afternoons without any help, so I thought doing this in the afternoon would be a way to help the students to improve without wearing me out.  Both the preschool class and the pre-k class are combined in the afternoon, therefore, I felt like the students would benefit the most from doing the Daily Five.  Below is how I usually run my daily five:
     First, I do some sort of small lesson.  I will give more details of these later, but for now an example of a small lesson I do is journal writing.  I ask the students to turn their thinking caps on and think about what we could write about.  This last week, a student said Easter.  Therefore, I went into more details and asked the students what they would want to write about Easter.  Another child said eggs, so I decided to write about eggs.  I wrote "I like eggs" on the board.  As I was writing it, I had the students help me sound out each word and wrote what they said.  (Kid writing)  Most of my students know how to write 'I' and 'like' because they are our sight words.  Then we sounded out the word 'eggs'.  After writing the words, I ask the students what else I should add to my journal entry.  Most of the students know by now that we draw a picture and write the date. Then, I split the students into groups.  I do not allow the students to choose their groups.  I choose for them because I have different age groups and sometime split them by ability and sometimes I like to mix younger with the older students so the older children can help out the younger ones.

We actually only do four groups instead of five.  We combine Reading to a Buddy and Reading Alone.  I allow them to choose which they would like to do on the carpet.  If they are reading alone, they may read with a puppet.  If they choose to read with a buddy, I have matching sun visors they can wear. The books the students can read (They know when I say 'read' it means they can read the words, read the pictures or retell a story.)  Depending on the day, I will sit out different types of books.  Some days they read or retell big books we read during whole groups.  Other days I will sit out our sight word books or themed books for them to retell or actually read.  Some can read our sight word books because they have two weeks to practice.  The first week, I introduce books to the students and we read them in class.  The next week they take them home in book bags (ziplock baggies) and read them to a parent or another family member.  The third week, I have them out during our Daily Five in our sight word book basket.

See posts: Working with Words/Letters, Working on Writing, Reading with a Buddy or Alone for individual groups and activities we do within groups.