Fun in PreK-1 & Kinder

Welcome back to another blog post all about the new Daily 5!  This post is all about Chapters 3-4.  We are really getting into the meat of the book now! One thing I love about most about the Daily 5 Model (and there are many things!) is the gradual and structured release of responsibility.  If you follow the 10 Steps to Teaching and Learning Independence, most of your kiddos will catch right on and it will be smooth sailing from here on out.  Here they are! This whole process is grounded on what many of us know about memory.   Let's look at each step in detail! 1. Identify What Is to be Taught Right from the beginning it's important to create a lasting anchor chart (called an I-Chart) with the kiddos.  The first step (in the words of my college supervisors) is to set the objective.  This step outlines WHAT will you be teaching today and is written at the top of the I-Chart. You may be wondering what an I-Chart looks like...

I'm FINALLY getting around to linking up for the new Daily 5 book study!  I was lucky enough to attend a training by the two sisters last fall, so I got a sneak peak of some of the content and was able to use some of the info to manage my D5 Literacy Block last year.  I've been dying to read the new edition ever since.  On to Chapter 1! I LOVE this quote from Regie Routman at the opening of the chapter: This chapter details both the two sisters' journeys from their first years of teaching (aka seatwork), through centers and workshops to the newest version of Daily 5.  The current Daily 5 is a great management system for your literacy block and is structured so that children can independently engage in authentic reading and writing tasks.  It's flexible , easily differentiated , and incorporates student choice . The teacher, on the other hand, has more time to give individualized instruction and spends less time managing behavior. ...

Hello friends!  Last year I usually linked up every Friday Freebie at TBA.  This year it's just not going to happen.  BUT I think I can link up most weekends and share what in the world we've been up to in Kinder!  :) Here's what we've been doing the past two weeks... (sorry this will be a long post, we've been up to a lot!) Getting to Know You This always makes me think of the song from Mary Poppins.  (In fact, this is usually our clean-up song for the first few weeks of school.  It's a longer one which is good because they usually take longer to clean up while they're learning where everything goes!) We spent the first week sharing these cute Me Bags (grab the cute freebie from Mrs. T's First Grade Class by clicking on the picture below). Establishing Rules & Routines I can already tell that our biggest challenge this year will be working collaboratively.  We have been working A LOT on sharing, taking turns, and using w...