Friday, July 6, 2012

The Daily 5 Chapter 2 - Book Study - My Notes

I am participating in the book study at  We Read, We Blog, We Teach.
Chapter two really focuses on the mind-shift that teachers need to make when they implement Daily 5 from managing their students to teaching their students how to manage their own reading thus forming principled habits.

The authors state that the key core foundations of Daily 5 are:
*Trusting students
*Providing choice
* Nurturing community
*Creating a sense of urgency
* Building stamina
*Staying out of students' way once routines are established

As I read this chapter the thoughts that came to my mind was how I sometimes don't trust students enough to make the right choices.  I have an urge to create schedules and checklists for the students to make sure that they are choosing each component often enough.

But, when I think about my own habits as a reader, I know that I don't set aside a twenty minute block of time each day devoted to reading, another twenty minutes for working on writing, another twenty for building my vocabulary.  My own habits might be spending 6 hours of the day engrossed in reading a book that I just can't put down, or maybe spending an hour writing a blog post.  I need to trust the students more- if they want to spend a Monday working on writing because they had an amazing adventure that weekend, I need to trust that they will spend Tuesday working on reading someone else's amazing story. 

If the child is not developing good habits - such as they are only choosing read to partner because they want to goof around with their friend, that should be a teaching momement, where I ask the student, "Is this helping you to reach your goals as a reader?  What could you choose to do instead?"  I think allowing the student to have the ownership of their own habits will increase the likliehood that these will be lifelong habits rather than just 20 minute chunks of time that were directed by their teacher one year during their school careers.

Your thoughts?

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