The Brown Bag Teacher

Teach the Children. Love the Children. Change the World.

Daily 5 Book Study: Our Core Beliefs

Happy Saturday, friends! Last week, we launched our Daily 5 Book Study with Chapter 1 which compared the 1st Edition of the Daily 5 and the 2nd Edition. There are some major shifts in thinking and flexibility, so if you missed them you can check it out here. Today, we’re looking at reading and writing, asking ourselves – “What do we inherently believe about learning?”
I believe in the power of words. I believe that books open doors and when students leave our classrooms loving to read, the possibilities are endless. Coming from 5th grade, I saw too many friends enter my classroom hating reading. They had never been given the opportunity to fall in love with genres or authors. They had been fed activities and sorts and busy work, but they had never been given the opportunity to fall in love with reading. So, as a 1st grade teacher, my kids – every year – will fall in love with books. That means I will spend inordinate amounts of money purchasing books my kids will love, modeling a love for reading, and spend enormous chunks of classroom time giving students experience with books – reading to self, with friends, listening to reading, and whole-class read-alouds. For the first time this year, I learned the power of books and community that reading can build…even in 1st grade. My 1st grade friends left my classroom in love with books. They had their favorite authors and genres, and they could talk to you about books…and that is an incredible blessing.

Within the 2nd chapter there is this fantastic table about the time 5th graders spend reading and how they percentile score on standardized testing. Friends, I know that we do not teach so students do well on standardized testing, but fostering a community of readers does foster successful test-takers. Over and over, research proves that the greater access to words students have the better they will perform.

When I taught 5th grade, I shared this chart with my 5th graders, and they were shocked! Even in 1st grade, I tell my kids all the time, “Words have power! The more time you spend reading, the more words you have access to, the larger your world becomes.” Now, I show parents this chart at Open House when I encourage them to build an at-home reading routine. I don’t think my pleas for “Please read at home” becomes ‘real’ until I show them this chart. The idea that reading 20 minutes a day alone gives students access to 1.8 million words and puts them in the 90th percentile of 5th grade students [one day] BLOWS THEM AWAY! Honestly, it does me too. Every time I look at this chart, I say to myself, “YOU MUST MAKE MORE TIME FOR DAILY READING IN CLASS!!!!”

I believe that time spent reading and writing together builds a community in which students are invested in one another. When friends sit down together working separately but knowing they can turn to a friends for help spelling a word or an idea for a transition word, there is safety. Students know they can trust one another and they know their ideas matter. When we sit and read as a class, we have a new common ground. Anytime we see a bird outside on the playground, we wonder if it is Mo Willems’ pigeon. After reading The Day the Crayons Quit, we giggle when we see a peach crayon being used. 😉  Time spent reading and writing, builds a community of learners.

I also believe in choice. The first 9ish weeks, we use the below rotation chart to give students structure and as I’m introducing all the parts of our Daily 5 routine. Ultimately, there comes ‘that’ moment when you know your friends have built their stamina and are ready to choose. This requires considerable trust in your friends and in your training…but if trained, they will be great. When I let choice happen with my 1st graders, it was fabulous. I have friends telling me – “Ms. W, I am working on zooming into my writing moment and really need some extra writing time.” or a sweet friend who fell in love with graphic novels would often say “I only have 40 more pages until I can read the next book. I’m visiting Read to Self twice today.” Even in 1st grade, choice can work. Now, did friends occasionally lose choice – absolutely! But it was a reminder that we needed more practice and we would try again the next week.
Within choice, there must also be accountability. I do trust my 1st graders to make choices that are best for them; but as the teacher, I am responsible for ensuring that every friend in my class is performing and achieving at high levels. For accountability, I goal-set with students (more about this later) and students use the below guide to record their choices. Students color the choices they made each day and then, at the end of our block we take time to reflect. As a class, we make a plus (celebrations of our learning) and delta (things we want to make better tomorrow) chart and then, students write their own plus/delta. As students finish, they put their heads down, I check their reflection (and many times have a mini-conference or write a note of my own), and then students line up for the restroom. This is a five-minute process that communicates to students that I am aware of what’s going on in the classroom and I expect their best every day. Time off task keeps us from becoming better readers and writers.

Friends, I know this post has been scattered, but these are the foundations for the future chapters – trust, community, more time spent reading/writing, choice, accountability. So, what did you think about Chapter 2? How do these core beliefs match your writing/reading block? Does the trust and choice part get you (sometimes I am so guilt of that!)?  I’ve love to hear your ideas!

Read along with us and join the conversation here:

Also, make sure to visit Adventures in Room 129 (who is hosting Week 2), as well as, the other awesome teacher-bloggers who are joining us. Even if you’re not a blogger, please join-in on the conversation below! 🙂

 

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Comments

  1. Your students are blessed by your teaching them to think, learn, and be held accountable. If there are more such teachers preparing our children for productive adult lives, there may yet be hope for the future. Thank you!

    Reply

  2. Your students are blessed by your teaching them to think, learn, and be held accountable. If there are more such teachers preparing our children for productive adult lives, there may yet be hope for the future. Thank you!

    Reply

  3. I would really love a copy of your Daily 5 plus/delta sheet. Is there anyway you could add it to your reflection sheets on TPT? I bought it hoping it would be in there and was bummed that it wasn't 🙁

    Reply

    • Hi Kristen. Thanks for the note. Honestly, I didn't know anyone would want that particular page because it is so specific to how I run Daily 5. In the future, I would encourage you to ask (via email or TpT Q&A) for something to be added before leaving feedback. I am very intentional in tailoring resources to meet the needs of lots of different classrooms and am happy to honor requests! If you re-download the file, I have added the reflection sheet for you. 🙂

      Reply

  4. Catherine, I'm jumping into the study a little late. But thus far I am loving your added commentary! I was curious if you could share more about your recording sheet. Specifically does the sheet have a section for each day and you give one page a week, or do they get a portion of a sheet each day. Do you collect these or do the students store them somewhere. Also can you tell me about the Delta and why it represent what they will work on and how you introduce this to the kiddos? I'm looking forward to your reply! Thank you for creating such meaningful posts!

    Reply

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