Day 1 of daily 5 ACK!

I was super nervous about starting daily 5 (or daily 4 in my room). I have no idea why. I read the book this summer, I had my plans and materials, but I was palm sweaty nervous.

Actually I do know why. Setting up daily 5 is so important that I just kept thinking if the first few days aren't PERFECT. It's ruined. I know that's a silly way to think, you can always fix things, but still. Like I said, my nerves were getting to me.

Before I go on a little background. In my school we do leveled reading groups by cluster. I teach in the 2nd and 3rd grade cluster, so I have second and third graders in my group. Each reading class has 15-16 students. I teach the above grade level readers. We started our literacy block this week because we had to test the kids and see where they were. Perviously we had been doing reading instruction with our regular class. Make sense?

So yesterday we did some getting to know you stuff and filled our book boxes. TODAY we started daily 5.

I have no idea why I was so nervous. These kids are on it. But even though on day one, these kids were showing me that they could read for a lot longer than 3 minutes, we didn't because I wanted to take it slow and go by the book. I know it would come back and bite me if I didn't.

Here's our I chart. I decided to type it on the computer instead of using chart paper to save space. It worked great. The kids could still see the chart being made and take ownership of it, but it was a lot faster and neater than the traditional way. Here are their ideas.

One of my kiddos when asked what I will be doing said, "checking your phone?" Lol. I told her I won't be doing that.

Let me tell you how amazing my class is. Our room is next to the playground. I am continually amazed at how well my kiddos block out the playground noise. Especially when it;s writers workshop and its so quiet in the room and all they can hear is the K and 1 students at recess. So today during read to self, there was a P.E class outside, the class was yelling at the top of their lungs, "COOKIE MONSTER, COOKIE MONSTER, ARE YOU HUNGRY? Repeatedly, seriously it was going on pretty much the entire time we were reading, and it was LOUD. Not a single kid went over to the window or even looked up from their book. I was amazed.

Tomorrow is Yom Kippur so we have the day off. I have a ton of work to catch up on, so I am grateful. I have a lot more things to show you but I dropped my phone in water today :-( It is currently sitting in a bag of rice so no pictures today.


But before I go, I want to let you know that I am *this* close to 200 followers. YIPPEE. I am planning a super cool science themed giveaway! I've got a lot of awesome bloggers helping out. So hopefully I'll get to 200 soon. Or I might just get impatient and do it anyways. We'll see!