D5 Math!

We've started working on Daily 5 Math! D5 Math is very similar to the reading/writing Daily 5 format. The students will choose between "Math by Myself, Math with Someone and Number Work". We introduce each choice the same way using an I-Chart and having students model and practice what is expected of them within each choice. Below are two options during Number Work. The first picture is using Play-Doh to make/create numbers and the second is tracing numbers, shapes and so forth using mini-cars on a road shaped in that number.

Listen 2 Reading

We have started our fourth choice during Daily 5/CAFE time. Listen to reading is one of the students favorite choices. Each student has a job when they go to this station. They are either in charge of pressing play/stop/rewind, passing and holding the books, cleaning up or collecting the job cards. Having a job for each student is helpful in keeping the station organized and going smoothly without needing help from the teacher. The same book will be available for two days in a row before it is changed. This is to ensure any student who wanted to listen to the story has a chance before it is swapped for another one!

CAFE/D5 is moving along!

Our CAFE board is growing! We have introduced and are working on four different strategies. We started with "3 Ways to Read a Book" which are read the pictures, read the words and retell the story. We then moved on to retell a familiar story, use pictures to tell a story and are not working on check for understanding. Once a strategy is introduced, we continue to practice these strategies all year long.


After introducing a piece of Daily 5 we practice building our stamina. When Read to Self is first introduced the class has stamina of usually less than a minute. We chart our stamina after each round to see how much we have grown. Below is a recent chart and as you can see the class is doing a wonderful job of doing their job during Daily 5, so the teacher can do her job working with kids.



Our latest Daily 5 activity that has been introduced is "Word Work". The students LOVE this choice because they tend to not realize they are learning while working with letters and words. Some of the options they can choose are magnetic letter pans, play-doh, magna-doodles, wikki stix and much more. Before a choice is open to be used in the word work station, it is demonstrated and practiced by the students as a group.

Writing

The class has been working on both writing workshop, writing letters of the alphabet, sentences and responding to reading/stories during "Work on Writing" for Daily 5. In kindergarten, writing phonetically is encouraged. The kids use the sounds they hear in words and write them down, with the exception of sight words which should be spelled correctly. The class is off to a great start with their writing and will continue to improve as their letter sounds and knowledge of words and practice with reading improve!