Chapter 3- Daily 5 Kindergarten Book Study

Tammy at Live, Love, Laugh Everyday in Kindergarten is hosting the chapter 3 Linky Party. Link up and share your thoughts and comments :)

First of all I love this quote at the begining by Kathy Collins

 "When we follow routines day after day, our students can use their energy to grow as readers and learners rather than to figure out what we expect them to do..."

This is so true, stduents loving rules and routines. Who am I kidding, we love rules and routines! Remember go over your shedule EVERY DAY! Students need to know what to expect. Now for some new stuff.

In Chapter 3 we will look at 6 concepts:

1. Establishing a gathering place for brain and body breaks

2. Developing the concept of "good fit" books
3. Create anchor charts with students
4. Short, repeated intervals of independent practice
5. Calm Signals and check in procedures
6. Using the correct model/incorrect model approach for demonstrating appropriate behaviors.

Where is your gathering place? Like most of you, mine is my rug. (See it below- I am thinking about telling my kids this year to "Swim on over to the ocean"... sounds cute huh?) It is so big and all my students can fit together for some talk time. The Sisters call this "brain and body breaks." Makes since. We all know that getting your students moving -giving them chuck of info at a time, is what keeps them focused. The begining of the year is tough since we have not built staminia yet to sit sit at the rug for long periods. So remember, as students are at the rug you need to keep them engaged. One thing I have done last year is started WBT (Whole Brain Teaching). This involves repeating information 3-4 times in different ways. It keeps the students talking, engaged and most of all learning!

How the bain and body breaks place works: Gather for instruction (your not the only one talking at this time, keep them engaged), release them to practice, and bring them back to share. Sounds easy enough.

How many of you realized that students need to have good-fit books? The five finger rule is probably the most common method, but I LOVE how the sisters teach "good-fit" books. They compare them to a shoe selection. They bring in a bag of different shoes- tennis shoes, snow boots, golf shoes, husbands shoes, etc... and then talk about how each pair has a purpose. What shoe is for what activity, just like books have a purpose; to learn about a certain topic or to read for fun. Then they move on to interest. Then guide students into discussion of what shoes where brought in (interests) and which kinds weren't. Before going onto reading for comprehension, the Sisters compare their husbands shoes with with their showing how they are not a good fit- even have students switch shoes to demostrate a 'good-fit' book for one student may not be a good-fit book for another student. Now for comprehension, bring in a book that is like a medical dictionary. Where you can read the words but do not comprehend what it all means. Then lastly, if they know all the words.

The sisters have covered Purpose, Interest, Comprehension, Know all the words.

Do you think our students feel like this when choosing a book?

I love these, wonder if my husband can make them ;)

How many of you have book boxes for your students? I have seen these before but never used them. What was I thinking! This is a great way for students to choose books that interest them and are on their level. Plus it takes away from standing their infront of all the books for minutes beyond minutes searching for a book. Some questions I have are, when do your students get to choose these books, when do you switch them out, and how many do you allow them to put into their boxes? I was thinking maybe 4 books each and that this could be part of their morning procedures. When they came into the room they would choose 4 books for the day and put them in their box before they took tubs to their table. (tubs are things like blocks, leggos, etc..)

This was a book box I made. Click the picture for previous post.

However, if I can afford it, I would love to have these instead. 

Who doesn't love some anchor charts? I love building anchor charts together, but really... where do you hang them all?!

The sisters say "This visible learning makes up the tapestry of the year and the decorations of the classroom. Hence all work is kept and constantly referred to. Disposing of it would be throwing away a connection to prior thinking and learning."

Many of you teach through 'VAK' (Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic). Anchor charts give students the visual and auditory systems children need to learn, but also having students independently practicing what is put on the anchor charts allows for Kinesthetic learning to take place. I love me some anchor charts! Search Pinterest.. so many great ideas.

From adsit.net

From crisscrossapplesauce.typepad.com

From mrsterhune.blogspot.com

Short Repeated intervals of independent practice- When we go to a teaching conference, what do you remember? Every little thing that was said? No- what things interested you, how you got up and moved to remember the information and possibly if it was repeated several times. Now think about how 5 and 6 year olds feel when we expand presented information over 10 mins (max) without getting them up and moving to practice what they just heard. I have got to get better at this! Like I said before I did start WBT at the end of the year and this helped with short repeated intervals of independent practice.

How many of you use check in procedures? Note to self: I love this idea and have to use it more frequently. After practicing a skill independently we need to have a signal (quiet song, quiet instrument, etc..) for students to come the the meeting spot and check in. At this time we would review on the I-chart (anchor chart) what we were do that was good, other things they saw that we may need to add to the chart and and overall what were they working on. I see an I can... statement being referred to here. Check in may be done sooner than later if incorrect behavior is being practiced. We do not want incorrect to be put into their muscle memory. After using the I-chart you would have a student model the correct way. This would be a good time to use that child that was doing it incorrectly to put the correct way into muscle memory.

WOW, that was a LONG post. I hope you all are very excited about Daily 5 as I am. This all makes sense to me, why didn't I think of this stuff before :)

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