After two years of testing my fabulous doctor at Ohio State Medical Center finally gave me a diagnosis- Achalasia. It's not very common and basically what it means is that my esophagus does not squeeze at all and never will again. The surgery was to make a cut in my esophagus essentially stretching which will allow me to eat more than one piece of bread a day. It was an inpatient procedure and I finally got to the point where I could survive without pain meds yesterday. If you're a teacher, you know what I mean when it's more difficult to plan for a sub than it is to plan for yourself, which is why I put off blogging more about the Daily 5 last week. All my free time was spent prepping for my sub (who was fantastic!) and getting ready! Recovery has been well and I have about 1.5 weeks until I can have solid foods again!
Enough about me, back to the Daily 5! I introduce Read to Someone about 4-5 days after introducing Read to Self. By this time, students have built stamina and are ready to read their books to someone. The first day of read to someone is always... interesting. Even though they've practiced reading to self and appear to be confident, there's a lot more that goes along with reading to someone. This is usually the point where I hear "But I can't read!!" I continue to scaffold "how to read" but sitting in with small groups reading to someone but I don't call them back to the carpet the first couple days if they're not doing this exactly as they should. One thing at a time!
The primary focus for the first day is getting EEKK straight. EEKK stands for "Elbow to elbow, knee to knee." This is how they sit so they can share books with each other. We read a poem daily- that I found on TPT and you can download for FREE here- It's a fantastic resource. This TPT seller also has several other Daily 5 freebies available. The poem is short and sweet reminding students to sit next to each other and keeping the book in the middle. I had a student who took EEKK so literally she looked like her elbow and knee were glued to her partner, too cute! This is a great mini-lesson for the first day of read to someone because it's something they can be successful with!
The second day and beyond, our read to someone mini-lessons involve role-playing and me modeling how to ask questions. In the beginning, we focus on the basics- "who was your favorite character?" "What was your favorite part? Show me!" And of course, sharing connections they've made to themselves are also great ways to encourage conversation about books.
As students get more practice "reading" aloud to someone (as mentioned in previous posts is mostly reading the pictures and retelling stories), students become more engaged. My favorite part of observing this activity is hearing students retell stories. This is where I think they're the strongest in reading at this point- especially with retelling David Shannon's "David" books. You can hear parent's and teacher's voices in their expressions say "No, David! You can not do ___!!" Encouragement and praise at this point go a long way in their success with read to someone. Reassuring students that their "reading" and conversations about books is the expectation at this point. Reminding students that reading stories is the same as them telling their own stories, just like when we talk about the pictures we draw during writer's workshop. As students progress you will begin to hear comments such as "Here's the letter/sight word ___ that we just learned!" Words will no longer be the scary jumble of letters on the page!
During this time of introducing read to someone, we are still practicing and building stamina for read to self as well. I still have the whole class doing the same thing at the same time. We begin with about 15 minutes of read to someone (mini-lesson and practice) and then a mini-lesson (review of anchor charts, reading strategies, reading behaviors) for read to self and then practice time to continue building stamina for read to self. We will not split off into groups where students are working on different things at different times until the very end of the introduction of the Daily 5 in its entirety.
In my next blog post, I will share about how I implement word work!
