Daily 5-ish Update: What Worked..What Didn't

So, I've been thinking about this post for a while now.  I'm just now getting a chance to put my thoughts down and reflect on how I want to change things for next year.  I remember this post on instagram from last year.

I was Sooo excited to jump into the Daily 5 and get it started in my classroom.  The entire concept of how it all works and flows together is remarkable.  The first couple of weeks, I did everything just as the book stated.  I took my time and introduced a few things at a time.  I absolutely loved it!  Best of all, my kiddos did too!  MOST of the time I would give them choice of what to do.  They had a calendar they kept in their binders that had guideline on them.  For example, they would need to use one of their rotations every day for read to self.  For Word Work, they needed to complete this no more than two times a week.  I had to go weekly rather than daily because there simply was not enough time to get it all done.  Instead of Daily 5, I quickly changed it to "Our Dailies."  We had daily things to do, and it was up to the students to ensure those daily requirements were fulfilled.

So, here's how it looked in my classroom.

Mondays: Whole Group Lesson (introduce standards for the week, review focus board, introduce weekly reading skill).  Sometime our weekly skill would be carried over from the previous week depending on how complex the skill was.

Tuesdays, Wednesdays, & Thursdays: These are the days we complete our dailies.  During this time, we have a 10-15 minute mini-lesson then three rotations where I meet in small group with all students.  While I am meeting with groups, students are completing their dailies and filling in their calendar.

Fridays: This is our assessment day.  The students always took a 10-question weekly assessment that assessed the skill we worked on that week as well as some we have worked on in previous weeks.  I also spend this day meeting with students and conducting individual conferences.

What am I going to change?

I actually changed several things throughout the school year, but one of the big things I am going to change are going to be our weekly assessments.  I am still going to have some type of independent work to assess student learning, but it will not be in the form of an assessment every week.  By week 23, I felt like these were just becoming a routine for the students.  I am also going to try and incorporate more performance task and projects in the place of assessments.  Last year was my first year teaching 5th grade reading since the implementation of the Common Core, so I feel a lot more comfortable going into it this coming school year.

I also have more thoughts on CAFE and how it worked in my classroom but that's another post!