Name Sierra Gentry

Date 1/31/18
Book The Daily 5
Reading Range Chapters 1-4

As the Super Summarizer, you have the duty to summarize the main points of the reading selection
for this Lit Circle. Your mission, if you choose to accept it (and you do), is to write a short summary
below that can be shared to you Lit Circle in 2-5 minutes. Write any additions to the back of this role
sheet. Your final mission: be SUPER!

The Daily 5 can enable teachers to spend extended amounts of time focusing on small groups while
allowing other students to develop their literacy through the Daily 5 "rotations". Rather than do "busy
work", students can be more engaged in their learning by participating in various reading, writing,
and vocabulary activities. It puts in place routines and procedures that later become natural habitats
in the classroom. The Daily 5 builds student stamina in completing these tasks because of the variety
of activities and loose structure that doesn't rely on time frames for each activity. This also allows for
students to make choices in what they would like to do with their literacy time. Ultimately, the Daily 5
is a loose but effective structure that can be tailored to classes in many ways.
The core beliefs of the program are simple: trust and respect your students to do the right thing,
create and nurture a solid community in your classroom, allow students choices in how to spend their
literacy time, enable students to hold themselves accountable to do what they need to do during
Daily 5 time without disrupting others, consider how the human brain operates (like how long to
hold attention and how much practice can help develop skills) when teaching, and incorporate brain
and body breaks for students to take a break and refocus (and even sometimes to include a
minilesson).
The 10 steps to teaching and learning independence are as follows: identifying what needs to be
taught; setting a purpose and sense of urgency; recording desired behaviors; modeling these
behaviors; modeling undesirable behaviors and following them with the desired behaviors again;
placing students in their most productive spots in the classroom; practicing to build stamina; allowing
the students independence by staying back; implementing a discrete signal to regroup; and enabling
the students to self-reflect.
The Daily 5 only requires a few things. A signal that doesn't encourage the class to get rowdy is
needed to mark transition times. The signal should however be loud enough for students to hear and
get their attention before the teacher tells them calmly and quietly to move to the group meeting
space (the group meeting space also being required). Chart paper or any other paper that can be
displayed for students to see is needed to construct the I-charts that tell students what they should be
doing during each of the rotations. The I-Charts should remain displayed throughout the year. Tools
for keeping students who need extra help keeping attention can be gathered to keep "barometer
students" on task longer. Book boxes for each student enables everyone to have enough reading
material to last them the duration of Daily 5 time. The classroom layout should be flexible for the
students to have choices on where and how they do their Daily 5 time.