Literacy Initiatives
Daily 5
It’s no secret that building strong literacy skills from an early age pays huge dividends for students. However, implementing an effective literacy program in the classroom—one which meets the widely varying needs of all your students while building a genuine love of reading—is a significant challenge.
One of the most popular and successful frameworks that has emerged to help educators meet this challenge is the Daily 5™, first introduced by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser. This method offers students the following five choices of activities to work independently toward personal literacy goals:
Read to Self
Work on Writing
Read to Someone
Listen to Reading
Word Work
At Beaumaris North Primary School, we follow the Daily 5 literacy framework. Daily 5 instils behaviors of independence, creates a classroom of highly engaged readers, writers, and learners, and provides teachers with the time and structure to meet diverse student needs. The basis of Daily 5 is the five tasks the students choose between or a directed to by the teacher during our literacy block.
The Daily 5 are launched at the beginning of each year. Each of these tasks have behaviours the teachers expect to see when students are engaging in the various tasks. These behaviours are practised within the classroom in order for the students to build up a level of stamina.
Read to Self
- Read the whole time
- Stay in one spot
- Read quietly
- Get started straight away
- Ignore distractions
- Work on reading stamina
- Persevere
The “Read to Self” component is just what it sounds like: during this time students are each equipped with books, seated alone, and reading independently. While this may seem pretty straightforward, creating a classroom full of independent readers with extended stamina requires slow and thoughtful execution.
Before students can start reading independently, they need to be equipped with the right books to suit their needs. There are those students who spend all their time “choosing” a book in their classroom library only to find the right one just as you call time, and you’ll quickly see the merit of this approach.
As a strategy developed by Boushey and Moser, “I-PICK” teaches students to consider purpose, interest, comprehension, and word knowledge when making their book selections.
Read to Someone
- Sit EEKK- Elbow to elbow knee to knee
- Read the whole time
- Stay in one spot
- Read quietly
- Get started straight away
- Ignore distractions
- Work on reading stamina
- Persevere
Often a Daily 5 favourite, ‘Read to Someone’ offers children the opportunity to pair up and share a book of their choosing. This activity is sometimes referred to as partner reading, buddy reading, or read with a friend. No matter what we choose to call it, ‘Read to Someone’ provides a meaningful time for developing readers to increase their comprehension, fluency, and accuracy.
Listen To Reading
- Get materials out
- Get started quickly
- Listen the whole time
- Stay in one spot
- Listen quietly
- Work on stamina
- Persevere
‘Listen to Reading’ can take many different forms, including online audiobooks and Web-based solutions. For emerging readers, time spent listening to fluent reading models is invaluable to building reading pronunciation and expression. Struggling readers also find this rotation beneficial, as it allows them to access texts that meet their listening comprehension level, even if that exceeds their reading level.
Word Work
- Get materials out
- Get started straight away.
- Work the whole time.
- Stay in one spot.
- Work quietly
- Work on stamina
- Ignore distractions
- Persevere
- Pack materials away
The ‘Word Work’ component of the Daily 5 focuses on spelling and vocabulary by creating a print-rich environment and offering learning manipulatives for students to experiment and develop an interest in language. Students are able to select from a variety of materials to play with words, word patterns, word families, and so on to hone their knowledge and increase their writing skills.
Work on Writing
- Write the whole time
- Stay in one spot
- Write quietly
- Get started straight away
- Ignore distractions
- Work on writing stamina
- Persevere
During this rotation, students should have extended time to practice and the freedom to explore different writing topics. ‘Work on Writing’ can be used to continue the writing style or process that is being taught in a separate writing tie outside of the Daily 5.
From Prep to Year 6 students are able to verbalise the expected behaviours for each aspect of the Daily 5. Regular practice of these behaviour ensures independence and uninterrupted learning time.
