Daily 5 in My Classroom

Can you tell it's summer time?  I keep posting because I actually have time to think and share.  It's nice for me because I start thinking about my set-up and what I can do to improve it as I blog away.

So my CAFE wall is by the rocking chair and rainbow carpet.  I keep all the reading strategies listed along with some items from the Comprehension Connections lessons for those strategies...hence the trash bag and lint roller tape.  I also put the word collector on large paper and laminated it.  For my class it works better to have it whole group rather than one for each student.  It's so cute to have them point wildly to the poster when I'm doing a read aloud and they hear an interesting word they want put on the chart.

I use the Daily 5 structure for my literacy.  These are my listen to reading bags.   I used the old containers from some basil samples we received when our district was adopting new textbooks.  It is just nice to have 2 areas for the student to disperse to when they choose their listen to reading materials.  I have collected portable CD and tape players for a few years.  I can now have about half my class at listen to reading because I have so many. 

Walmart has portable CD players online for about $10 - the store only carries more expensive ones.  But online you can find cheap ones and they have lasted me a couple of years.  Also, invest in rechargeable batteries and a charger.  It hurts when you first pay, but it is WELL worth it throughout the year. 

The students never change a tape or CD.  I have a gallon bag with the book and player in it.  When a tape needs to be re-wound it goes in a special container.  The CD players can just be replaced in the containers you see above.  This has kept my tapes and CDs from being ruined and I highly recommend it.  I keep tape players because a lot of times when you go to library sales they have books on tape and not CD.  I have gotten really good social studies connections because my listen to reading books correlate to the historical figure we are learning about.  The CDs come mostly for the Scholastic book orders - I got a bunch of the 4 books and 4 CDs for $20 when I was first building my collection.  I can be more picky now that I have a good start.  I change the books out about every 4 weeks.  That gives the students enough chances to have gone to listen to reading and get to all of the books a couple of times and it gives me enough time to where I am not always changing out books.  I usually charge my batteries during the change out day as well.

Sometimes I have a lot of books that coordinated with what I am teaching in science or social studies.  These are nice to reinforce those concepts in the literacy time for a few weeks after we have covered a topic in another subject area.  Here you can see I have several USA and weather type books.

My word work supply area is in another box from our textbook adoption time. I have some word family flip books and short vowel dry erase boards from Lakeshore that I use almost all year. But I do change out the bags of word cards / sorts based on what we are learning in science and social studies. This is a nice way to reinforce those concepts during word work.

Here are some close up shots of the word work bags – these are for the Pledge of Allegiance and Weather Words. I label the bag and the pieces so when I find one on the floor I know which bag it goes into.


I really enjoy the Daily 5 framework for my literacy time. Of course I modify it to meet the needs of my classroom, but I use a lot of the genius that the Sisters have come up with in order to help guide me. I love stealing ideas from people much smarter and more creative than me to help me become a better teacher.