Releasing Responsibility

Lots of discussions about trusting kids at school this week prompted by the Daily 5 reading we are doing. It's not something that comes naturally to most of us because as Teachers we have learnt to consider ourselves as the leaders and therefore the directors of how the learning takes place. In my quest to find some further info on this I came across a blog article on Realeasing Responsibilty in Children. I thought it was a good read which raised some more thoughts on how we can do this in our classrooms. It also got me thinking about the language we use with our students and how it could be modified to empower rather than instruct!
You can find the article here:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/397.cfm

Amazing Website

The Sisters have a great website. There are lots of fact sheets, downloads and videos to watch about The Daily 5. There is also a great section on classroom design and my next book to read CAFE! Check it out at:
http://www.TheDailyCafe.com/public/main.cfm

Chapter 2 Foundations of the Daily 5

It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about? Henry David Thoreau


I love the quotes at the beginning of each chapter because they set us up for what's to come as well as raising a thought bubble in our minds about how and why we do what we do. I love being challenged in my thought process and I believe it helps me to grow in my understanding, when I have to actually defend or provide an explanation of what and how I teach, even if it is to myself more often than not!

In this chapter The Sisters look at the process they use to move from management to principled habits. The core foundations of the Daily 5 are:

• trusting students
• providing choice
• nurturing community
• creating a sense of urgency
• building stamina
• staying out of students way once routines are established

I will leave it to you to read the chapter in more detail. Below I have just pulled out some of the points I found most interesting.

Trust

Trust is what makes the Daily 5 work. The Sisters say that when trust is combined with explicit instruction, students acquire the necessary skills to become independent learners. They will continue to learn even when they are not being managed by the teacher.

Choice

Children love structure and routine and the Daily 5 manages this whilst still allowing for choice. Children have choice over the order in which they will participate in the Daily 5 activities as each activity occurs simultaneously. The order they choose varies from day to day, depending on their goals, mood and motivation. Students plan their days with a few questions in mind:

1. What are my goals in reading/writing?
2. What will I do first?
3. Whom will I work with?
4. What will I accomplish?
5. What was I working on yesterday that I want to continue today?

Purpose + choice = motivation. This sums up what our students need to learn in our classrooms.

Community

The Daily 5 requires an effort in creating and maintaining a healthy classroom culture.

Sense of Urgency

The Sisters believe as I have for some time now that when people, including children, understand the reason for a task it provides motivation and encourages perseverance. When beginning with the Daily 5 The Sisters always start with explaining 'why' each activity is important.

Stamina

Building stamina works with even very young students. Stamina in reading to yourself activities is what allows teachers to work with individuals or with small groups in a sustained and focused way without being interrupted. It requires explicit teaching and instruction to build students' stamina.

Stay out of the way

When children understand what is expected of them, they've practiced strategies and built stamina, The Sisters say it's time to stay out of the way! The aim is for students to read, make decisions on their own and monitor their own progress. This can't happen unless we get out of the way and give them a chance to do this in a safe and supportive environment such as our classrooms.

Some of these foundations will make us look at ourselves....giving up control is a tricky thing for most of us teachers, however, the rewards are huge if we give it a go!

Which of these foundation principals do you think you would find the most challenging?

Do you have an example of how children knowing the purpose of an activity has increased student engagement?

Can't wait to see what others have to say on this Chapter. Looking forward to Kate presenting Chapter 3!

Debbie

Chapter 1 - Fostering Literacy Independence in the Elementary Grades

The typical teacher has children doing a lot of "stuff". How is what I'm having children do creating readers and writers? Regie Routman

This provocative statement sets the tone for the first chapter of the book. It immediately made me think about the kinds of activities that I had children doing when I ran my Literacy groups. Whilst I always tried to cover a range of Literacy tasks during these sessions, if I'm really honest my main focus was on the Guided Reading group and the other activities facilitated a time for me to spend with this small group. I always hoped that it was uninterrupted and it mostly was, however, there were always a number of students who were completely disengaged in the tasks but had learnt to leave the Guided group and me alone! It is questionable really if my structures were meeting ALL of my students learning needs. To go with this I generally had a HUGE pile of stuff to mark at the end of each session and that was seriously frustrating!

In The Daily 5 "The Sisters" discuss openly and honestly in this chapter about how their focus changed from when they first began teaching to today.  They developed the structure out of frustration with their inability to engage students in independent, meaningful reading practice. They say that the difference between then and now is that they have integrated the common core routines into a framework that they have called the Daily 5. In developing this they realised that it was critical to demonstrate and focus their teaching on what the child and teacher are to do in each component. They have incorporated explicit teaching and practicing of behaviours.

Chapter 1 has some great tables exploring the differences in "The Sisters" teaching and behaviour management from then to know. They go on to discuss how the Daily 5 evolved for them.

"Looking back at our teaching experiences, we have noticed a definite progression in the way we have managed our Literacy block. We began with a teacher driven model that relied on busywork and artificial reading and writing activities (worksheets and so on). We slowly progressed through centres to where we are now, with the Daily Five. The Daily Five is a student driven management structure designed to fully engage students in reading and writing. pg 12

The Daily 5 consists of:

Read to Self
Read to Someone
Work on Writing
Listen to Reading
Spelling/Word Work

I look forward to presenting Chapter 2 soon which will shortly be followed by Kate presenting Chapter 3!

• Do you believe each of your students are engaged during your Literacy Group Time?

• Are you burdened with coming up with new ideas for activities whilst you do Guided Reading?

• Do you often get interrupted when you are working with a small group to manage other students work habits/behaviour?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Deb

Let's Get Started

The Daily 5 by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser "The Sisters"

We are going to spend time as a staff reading this exciting book that we discovered coutesy of twitter! We are welcome to ideas from all around the world on how to implement this approach to Literacy structures within our classrooms.