EASYCBM.com

I have discovered a resource that is going to be very helpful for my work in my Daily 5 classroom. EASYCBM.com offers assessment for reading fluency, comprehension and math. The website is supported through a federal grant. You can read an explanation of easycbm.com at easycbm.com-online progress monitoring system.

I am using easycbm.com with all my classes today as 'field testing' it for several days. My field test including paying my grandchildren $1 for each test they took for me. I wanted to see how close the tests were to their actual grade level. I also wanted to know what kinds of data I could get for them. I am very impressed so far.

Have any of you tried easycbm.com? I'd love to hear from you.

More on Three Ways to Read a Book

I have a few additional comments to make about our 3 ways to read a book lesson which was my previous post. First, in case you are not aquainted with the Daily 5, here are the 3 ways to read a book.
1. read the words 2. read the pictures 3. retell the story to someone

After Mrs. Leep's lesson on three ways to read a book, I took the 6th graders on step further. I let each of them pick a picture out of their reading material in their tubs. Most of them had magazines with lots of pictures. They were to show their picture to the class using the document camera. The class had to guess what the picture was showing. Then the student read the caption to the class and they compared how close they were with their guesses.

This gave the students additional practice on reading & looking at the captions plus it was fun to compare the guesses with the actual caption. Sometimes they weren't even close.

If you are wondering why I used this lesson for middle school, you might want to read this entry from the Daily Cafe web site-thedailycafe.com. Why would I teach 3 Ways to Read a Book when so many of them are reading chapter books?

Three Ways to Read A Book

I had worried that the content of the Daily 5 program would be too elementary for my middle school students. But so far, I haven't found that to be the case. We recently covered the topic of Three Ways to Read a Book.

I had a literacy coach from our elementary school come and present a specially prepared lesson.

She found an article with four pictures that she used to present the lesson.

Mrs. Leep talked about the three ways to read. I had told her before she came that my students really enjoyed reading magazines during Read to Self but I was worried because most of them seemed to be only looking at the pictures. So Mrs. Leep tailored her lesson to meet that challenge. She emphasized the importance of reading the caption to use pictures to help you understand the article or book. She picked an article from National Geographic for Kids. We looked at the pictures which she had put into a Powerpoint. Then we discussed the pictures-first without looking at the caption and then after reading the caption.

If you would like the Powerpoint we used for the Three Ways to Read a Book lesson, just drop me an email and I'd be glad to share it with you. Email: mydaily5journey@gmail.com

One Month Under Our Belt

I meant to post every week. But I have been so engrossed with my class that I haven't taken time to reflect carefully on what we're doing.

I started an intervention class at our middle school for readers who are 'well below average' in their skills. I have 3 classes-6th grade, 7th grade and 8th grade with 25 students total.

The Daily 5 format is working very well. Most students enter the classroom quietly and retrieve their book tub and begin reading. They have built their stamina up to 15 minutes although my 8th graders today read for 30 minutes because a school schedule change gave us extra time. They had no problem sustaining their focus for that time and really seemed to enjoy the extra time.

We are one month into the class. I've learned much about the Daily 5 and the Cafe Menu and it really does work at the middle school level.

We have two teachers in the classroom on Monday, Wednesday and Friday which means we conference with each student at least once a week and sometimes twice weekly.

Today, I introduced the Strategic Instruction Model Word Identification Strategy. This strategy is from the University of Kansas-Center for Research on Learning. I had not planned to use it for the entire class but rather in a strategy group. But my preliminary testing with the Qualitative Reading Inventory showed me that all 25 students are below grade level in decoding. So the Word Identification Strategy is meant for them.

Today I shared with each student exactly what their decoding level is. I wasn't sure I should do that. But at this point in their schooling, I wanted to build a sense of urgency in their work in my class. After they saw their decoding level-which ranged from 2nd to 6th grade, each student set a goal for where they wanted to be at the end of our strategy instruction. Most students wanted to be at their appropriate grade level but one student put, "I want to read a good-fit book." So I guess my good-fit book lesson on Wednesday worked.

Read to Self begins with Great Success

I started Read to Self from the first day of Reading Essentials Class. However yesterday we developed an I chart and practiced building our stamina. I wondered how this lesson would go for middle school students. So I followed the format demonstrated by the Sisters in the book, Daily 5. I also viewed the video on www.thedailycafe.com.

As I taught the lesson, I felt like I was just copying what I had read and watched. And I guess I was. But it worked with my middle school students. I even had students model good and bad Read to Self behavior. In each grade, 6th, 7th and 8th, I picked a student to model bad behavior in my mind. When I asked for a volunteer, in each class the volunteer was the student that I thought would do the best job modeling inappropriate behavior. The models reveled in showing us what NOT to do. All three of them looked disappointed when I asked them to show us good behavior but they followed through doing a nice job.

Doing the students had built their stamina up to 12 minutes. They wanted more time but I held to 12 minutes which is 4 times more than the 3 minutes we started with just 2 days ago. At the end of today's Read to Self, one student said to me, "This class goes so fast. Read to Self feels like one minute." Just enough encouragement to keep me going in this class. More reports to follow!

First Day Live

Today was my first day teaching my Daily Five class. Yesterday was a whirl wind as the principal and I met with a potential candidate to work alongside me in the class and teach the class when I'm not in the building. Chris came on board immediately and she and I worked together. I started by sharing my philosophy of reading teaching and the Daily 5 approach. We then worked on our classroom while getting to know each other. She must have been overwhelmed with every thing we did.

But she was here this morning when I arrived and we hit the ground running. For our first day, we had to go to existing classes and pick up our students, bring them to our new classroom and begin our Daily 5 life together.

Our classes are called Reading Essentials-6, Reading Essentials-7 and Reading Essentials -8. You can read about the class at our website at www.readingessentials.weebly.com.

The students were willing to listen to my beliefs that we could take a journey together to improve their reading. They listened somewhat skeptically as they shared their outside interests. With each student, I asked if they had to practice to get better at what they liked to do. "Do you have to practice horseback riding to get better?" Of course the answer is "Yes!"
It is the same with reading. You must read to get better.

Tomorrow is the introduction of Read to Self. We'll see how long middle schoolers can sustain their stamina. We will probably start with 3 minutes just like the Sisters recommend.

Daily Five ™

I am new to the world of Daily Five but I can see how hard the Daily Five company works. They have a very effective distribution system to help teachers across the world access and use their material. I appreciation their great entrepreneurial spirit. That is why I contacted DailyCafe.com about using Daily Five in the title of my blog.

I received a warm response from them and learned that I must include a trademark symbol whenever I"m using the term Daily Five. So my blog title has now changed to include the trademark TM. However this blogging platform will not allow me to place the TM in the body of this blog.

The Two Sisters stated they would like to see my blog. It would be great to share my work with the greater Daily 5 world. But more importantly, I would like to hear from others using the Daily 5/Cafe Menu at the middle school level. Are you out there?