Organization Week Day 2: Literacy (aka Daily 3 Bootcamp)

Yesterday's organization linky party from Mrs. Patton's Patch was on literacy centers.

As yesterday was a crazy day (make that Crazy with a capital C!) as Mondays tend to be, I'm a day late.  :)  Actually, I'm a day late and a little off topic, since I don't use literacy centers in my classroom.  Centers just DON'T work for me and my kiddos.  I use the Daily 3, an adapted version of the Daily 5.  My Daily 3 are Read to Self, Work on Writing, and Word Work.  Since I am required to use a basal reading series (McGraw Hill Treasures), my Daily 3 is pretty different than the Daily 5 model presented in the Sisters' book, but the essence is still there! :)

After Shared Reading, we usually get to two Daily 3 rotations a day (3 if we're really flying!!).  During these rotations, I am always meeting with guided reading groups.  Because I teach the "big kiddos," I ask them to plan out their weeks on Monday morning.  I give each kid a literacy packet (don't cringe when I say packet, it's not busy work, I promise!!) that has their graphic organizer, vocabulary words, and comprehension questions for our weekly shared and guided reading.  On the front cover is a blank schedule that says when they will meet with me.  The kids then fill in which Daily 3 choice they plan to do when they are not meeting with me:

I also keep a visual schedule of who I'm meeting with when on the board:

(BTW, the kids choose their own group names, in case you were wondering how I came up with some of these gems!)

Now, for the Daily 3 choices.  Here are our anchor charts:

We made these as a class the first weeks of school when we were modeling, practicing, and implementing each of the Daily 3.  Now, I refer back to them when we need a little bit of re-teaching, which is fairly often. :)

Read to Self: The essence of the Daily 3 and literacy instruction. :)  For Read to Self, the kids read.  Plain and simple.  They bring their book box to a quiet spot in the room (I have pillows, bean bags, etc.) and read.

Work on Writing: For WoW (as the kiddos like to call it), most often the kids choose a piece from their Writing Workshop notebook/folder to work on.  Some will draft, some will revise/edit, others will grab construction paper or a laptop and publish.  It's very unstructured and I don't monitor it carefully, but it WORKS because I have a successful Writing Workshop foundation in the classroom.  Last year, it was like pulling teeth to get the kids to write during Daily 3.  This year, because we have spent so much time developing Writing Workshop, the kids not only know what it looks like to sit down and write, but they have pieces in progress at all times.  We store writing folders and notebooks in bins (by team) on top of our computer cart:

I am currently using notebooks and 4-pocket folders, but am considering switching to looseleaf binders next year...thoughts from anyone who does Writing Workshop?

Word Work: Okay, I JUST revamped my Word Work program TODAY.  (While I know most primary teachers use WW to focus on spelling, I focus on vocabulary during this time.  Spelling is important, but I think a rich vocabulary needs more of a focus in intermediate grades.)  Up until now, I was using vocabulary sentences for my main Word Work activity, plus some fun extras once those were finished.  You guys, it was awful.  It was like pulling teeth to get them done every week, plus I HATED grading them!  I had an epiphany in the past few weeks: my WW was tanking because I had failed to include the most crucial element of Daily 5--CHOICE!!!  So, my fabulous Lit Specialist and I brainstormed some new vocabulary activities.  Now, every week the kids will have to choose one activity from the Word Work board:

All of the handouts and instructions, as well as lists of our vocabulary words, are stored in the hanging files below:

Most of the new activities are things like graphic organizers that ask for parts of speech, sentence, picture, etc.  I also have options for writing a story using vocabulary words, illustrating the words with a sentence, sorting the words into categories, etc.  I'm hoping that these work better because of the choice factor.  I'll let you know how they go in the next few weeks!

Last but not least, here's how I display our vocab words.  We don't have a word wall, but I hang the 8 vocab words from Treasures in the blue pocket chart.  The red pocket chart has 6 social studies words + 2 "real world" words (based on current events).

 So, that's how we stay organized for literacy and run Daily 3 in my room!  Phew!