The Daily Cafe

Making Daily 5 Work with "restrictions"

#1

I am about to start my first year teaching 3rd grade! I want to implement Daily 5 during the first week but I am required to read several texts throughout the year with the students. In the past they have been read whole group, round robin (ugh!). I want the students to have choice in the texts they read during read to self, but need to get these texts read as well. Does anyone have any suggestions? I thought about recording them and using for Listening to Reading but they are longer chapter books and I don’t know if that is realistic.

I appreciate any help!!!

#2

Oh, I think your idea for recording them for Listen to reading is a great idea! Another idea might be to find a time–or a day-- when you might have a “weird” time in your schedule to have an extended “read aloud” time.

A resource book comes to mind . . . “Goodbye Round Robin” by Optiz/Rasinski that gives many alternatives to “round robin” reading.

#3

I am going to do with the basal reader what I did last year: read the story to them once while they follow along, use it to generate discussions, have them pair up to practice reading it together, and then occasionally (later in the year) have them answer questions based on the state test format (the readers and the materials that go with them do not use the question stems, so they are useless. Some series already have the stories recorded on tape or CD; you might ask at your school if those are available, that would save you some time.