Daily 5 checklist

Today was the first day of 3rd quarter, and we took the opportunity to begin self-recording our Daily 5 progress onto these checklists.  Click here to check out the newly revised checklists!

As we increasingly learn to be more self-regulated in our learning, we hope to see tremendous growth in our learning by the end of the year!

Here are a few student examples, so you can see how we filled out the checklists. As you're browsing, though, keep in mind that this was the first time all of us (Mrs.Allen and students in Room 121) have implemented a checklist like this. If you look at the revised checklists linked above, you'll notice changes that have already been made. Why? Because reflecting and revising are major parts of the learning process!

Notice "Mode of Writing: pen." :)  It looks like I (Mrs. Allen) need
to do a mini-lesson soon to review the modes of writing! 

Read to Self: Day #1

As part of learning routines and procedures for Daily 5--new to both 5th graders in Room 121 and Mrs.Allen--we began learning about everything Read-to-Self encompasses this afternoon.

We discussed the importance of reading to ourselves: become a better reader, become smarter, learn about new and exciting things, and become more independent. Then we talked about and agreed on behavior expectations during Read-to-Self for both students and teacher.

Here's our first I-chart for Read-to-Self as part of the Daily 5.

When we were finished with our discussion, we had several volunteers demonstrate examples and non-examples for what Read-to-Self looks and sounds like. Myka and Madison were model readers who  made it so easy for the rest of us to match all of the behaviors on our chart to exactly what they were doing. Landon and Caleb showed us exactly what not do by moving around, reading aloud, distracting others by throwing things across the room, and hardly reading anything at all.

With just a couple minutes left of school before the announcements, we were able to practice Read-to-Self as an entire class. It took about 30 seconds for everyone to find a spot and begin actually reading, but they soon got right to work!