Heather, from Beg, Borrow, and Teach! here!
I'm going into my fourth year of teaching 4th grade, and I'm constantly looking for ways to make my classroom more collaborative, while providing opportunities for choice and accountability. That's why I've been curious about Daily 5 and CAFE. It really lookes like it will fit the bill! I'm excited to be writing about chapter 5, especially Listen to Reading, because it's near and dear to my heart. So I've decided to start with Listen to Reading and then do Read to Someone.
I'm a believer in the quote at the beginning of this chapter: "We need a definite purpose, a specific reason for listening, otherwise we don't pay attention and don't really hear or understand." ~Robert Montgomery~ (p. 59)
So what is the purpose for including Listen to Reading in our center rotation?
Listening to reading fulfills the following needs for readers:- Hearing good readers read with fluency.
- Hearing good readers read in character with expression.
- Gives the power of choice. Students can choose to "read" books outside their comfort or instructional level because it's more about listening to reading than deciphering the words.
- Supports ESL students and those that are missing a daily read-aloud component at home
- Students sometimes get a "false" sense of their reading level based on the books they've been "reading" at the listening center. For example, "Harry Potter" books are excellent for most readers to listen to, but not for them to try to read on their own. This is when you want to reiterate the "Good-Fit Books."
One of my Donors Choose projects was to get 4 portable tape players (walkmen for the children of the 80s) and 4 portable cd players.
I put the tape players in the blue baskets numbered 1-4, and the cd players in the white baskets numbered 5-8. I wrote numbers on the CD/tape players in Sharpie, and hot-glued the
corresponding number on the basket. That way, students know which players
belong in which basket.
This is a close up of the table that houses the hanging bags that hold the books on CD and books on tape. Both the book and the CD/tape are in the bag. I try to keep the CDs and tapes on seperate hanging racks. There's a pull-out drawer on wheels below. I keep the extra books and listening equipment down there. I also have a large tape player beside the baskets so students can rewind or fast forward the tapes instead of using the portables and draining the batteries.
Where do I get books, cds, and tapes for free or cheap?
- Your school library. Check out that audio section and ask your librarian for suggestions.
- Your public library. Ditto on asking for suggestions.
- Goodwill Books online. About as cheap as it gets next to yard sales and flea markets.
Here is my symbaloo webmix that has websites divided into the different Daily 5 & CAFE centers.
Read to Someone
What is the purpose?- Students have a support system when they try out new words
- The listener may hear a word that the reader misread or skipped and can gently guide them
- Students can reread things that were difficult for them to understand with a student who understood
- Upper grades students have a difficult time staying on task, especially when reading with friends.
This is the order I would teach the following:
- Review I-Pick and Good-Fit books from Read to Self (p. 70)
- You may need to do a separate I-Chart for choosing a partner depending on the needs of your class (pp. 71-72)
- EEKK (Elbow to Elbow, Knee to Knee): shown in My PowerPoint (p. 63)
- I Read, You Read: Students take turns reading different paragraphs or the same paragraph if you want to practice fluency (p. 63)
- Choral reading: both partners read the same thing at the same time (p. 63)
- Coaching or time: Use Use Reading Buddy Strategies poster to remind students how to coach each other (p. 73)
- Check for Understanding when finished each section (p. 64)
- Beth Newingham's Buddy Partnerships
- My Buddy Reading Partnerships (in the PowerPoint)
- My webmix at symbaloo with websites to integrate Daily 5 & CAFE centers
Closing Thoughts
I hope you found some things you can use and ponder. All comments and suggestions are welcome and appreciated!
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33 comments:
Thank you, Thank you for sharing your symbaloo webmix!
While I didn't use the Daily 5 this past year, I felt the listening to reading was a must for my classroom. I taught fifth grade last year, my lowest reader was a reader at the first grade level and my highest was at the 9th grade level. I honestly feel the listening helped both readers as wide apart as they were because the high ability student read with almost zero fluency while the other student struggled to get through a sentence with material at his level and the 5th grade level.
I continue to worry about the read to someone aspect of the Daily 5. My group was extremely chatty, but overall a well-behaved group. When given group situations, I felt like I had to police behavior way too much. As I have mentioned before in other posts, I did not allow enough discussion and improper modeling of behaviors and didn't post our expectations in the room. We did discuss what was to be done, but the students weren't shown what was wrong. They ALWAYS wanted to work with the same friend too. Have any Daily 5 users had "friend" problems where the students always wanted to work with the same partner? What was your remedy if you saw that happening?
I love your symbaloo! That will help alot with integrating technology. Love your ideas!!
Love this chapter so much. It really helped me focus in on some important questions I had been asking!
msgingrade3.blogspot.com
Thank you for the great tips that you provided for this chapter. I will most certainly "beef" up my Listening Area come fall with the sites you provided.:)
Amanda with regard to your students always selecting a "friend" to read with..this happened quite a bit in my class..however a few days a week I told my class that they had to read to someone other than their closest friend. that seemed to do the trick. I think if they are able to read with their friend at least once or twice during the week that would suffice..however check out Beth Newingham's site like Heather mentioned, with regard to Buddy Reading...I may do some of her techniques with a reading Buddy Survey and such. Hope this helps.
Thank you for sharing so many great ideas for listening to reading. It is very important for students to listen to others read & to practice reading with their peers. Your symbaloo has many great resources that would be useful in my 4th grade classroom. I will also incorporate my school's Tumblebooks & Bookflix subscriptions.
I will be teaching three groups of 4th graders ELA this year. Students love to read with someone else...I've always had them reading the same book. I really like the idea of I read/you read the same text. I will be curious to see if students will choose to read two different books. Seems like it would be hard to manage and check for understanding in both books and keep it all straight. I have book bags with multiple copies of books for students to enjoy the same book.
For listening...I agree that it's so important to hear someone read to them...and enjoyable. I don't have any CD players/tape players...but have a few computers. My problem is lack of headphones. I may ask for these in donors choose. I found some magazines on-line from National Geographic for Kids...they are free. I found it on Pinterest. Here's the link. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngyoungexplorer/moreissues.html
There are also books read by members of the screen actors guild. Here's the link. http://www.storylineonline.net/. We also have access to Scholastic's "Trueflix" at school.
Thanks for the links and discussion of Chapter 5, Heather.
This was a great chapter. I was so absorbed in it, that I ended up reading chapter 6 before I realized it. I love the idea of counting to 3 in coaching or time. It's an idea I will definitely use.
Listen to reading is not something I would have chosen to do before reading this chapter, but now I can see it happening. I plan using my classroom set of iPod touches for this area. Does anyone know of a great place for literature for 5th grade that is "cheap"?
Regarding the I charts - do you record all the kids' thoughts, even those that are completely off base, or steer them towards a better answer before writing their response on there?
Last, but not least...I absolutely love this book and it is starting to come together in small pieces. However, I have one huge question that is driving me insane. How do you use your basal with this? I know the answer is floating around in my head, but I can't seem to grab onto it. I am worried about getting all my standards/CC taken care of. Any insight will be much appreciated.
I am going to be teaching 5th grade for the first time. Thanks so much.
Tammy Hubbart
Tammy...I am new to D5, so I am certainly not an authority. I am also concerned about state standards/common core and plan to use our new basals. The stories in our basal are grouped by themes...so I am going to try to have writing topics, read alouds, etc...follow the theme in the basal. We have decided to send it home nightly with students after the story has been read in class to share the story with someone at home. Our basal does a good job teaching strategies, too. So, I feel confident that I can use these in our mini-lessons. My basal also has every story available for students to hear. I plan to use these in a "listening to someone read" choice...and I love that it's available on-line at home if desired.
Thanks for the help Wendy. I am concerned with so many changes taking place in my wing this year, that I am having a hard time seeing the big picture. I know this is the right direction to go, I guess I just need that little push. Thanks again.
Tammy Hubbart
I was excited for this chapter to come up. Here are some ideas I was thinking about doing for listening to reading: 1) There are some great websites that have people reading all types of book (like tumblebooks) that are fun and free. 2) I know a lot of upper-elementary that take this one away but what if you incorporated a fluency program into this (e.g. Read Naturally). Here they get to choose a non-fiction 3 or 1 minute fluency assessment. They cold read it and mark their score on a graph. Then they listen to it being read by an adult with the proper speed, voice, rhythm, etc on a CD 2-3 times. Then they retake the assessment and mark how much better they did. I think I will require them to do it once during a week and then if they have time afterwards in the week they can listen to a book on the computer or CD.
3)Also if you happen to do a chapter read aloud they are technically listening to reading. The only thing is choice is taken out of the equation here.
Regarding read with a buddy my kiddos loved doing it in 5th grade. One thing we did a lot is literature clubs/groups. We had 4 or 5 books (of the genre that month) students would read together (they picked their top 3 choices and then I fit them based on choice and level). They made a plan of how many pages they would read before the next discussion. They could choose to read together or separately and then they had to discuss the books together in the group. I will say at other times when we weren't doing literature groups it wasn't successful for them to buddy read if they didn't have the same book.
Thank you for sharing the symbaloo webmix. What a great idea for organizing sites for students to use!
I love this chapter! Last year in my room I utilized my laptop, desktop computer, and a few walkmans. I struggled with the walkmans a) because kids are clueless about this technology and b)my tapes started to get eaten up! Last Christmas WalMart had MP3 players on sale (on black Friday) for $10 so my mom picked up a couple for me as stocking stuffers. I've loaded them with audio books I've purchased and transferred to digital. I was also funded through Donors Choose and will receive 3 tablets. 1 for listen to reading, 1 for work on writing, and 1 for word work.
I've used bookflix & storylineonline in the past and the kids loved it. Your local library is also a great place to check out audio books. I found out a few weeks back that mine has ALL the Little House books on CD and many of the Harry Potter books too.
Here is my school webpage with the links I use in the classroom with listen to reading (& work on writing).
http://usd270.net/elementary/goplen/links/daily5/
Amanda C: I plan to have a "Center Tracker" job that will help students choose and track which centers they will do first. I'm setting the limit of 4-5 students in any one center. That should help send students in different directions.
Wendy: I have never had them reading two different books either. If they practice good listening, they should be able to say "I just heard you read..." and give a short summary. Thanks for sharing the National Geographic link and Storyline!
Tammy: Check out my link in the post about Goodwill Books. It's a great cheap source for books! As for I-Charts, I always steer their thoughts where they need to be if they get too far off base! For the basal, I would substitute it for the 15 minute read-aloud before breaking up into centers. I call it a mini lesson.
Heather - thank you for all the great resources! I have never heard of Symbaloo before and I thnk it looks fantastic!
This chapter again reminded me about the importance of modeling and repeated practice to build stamina. I think of my own management continuum similar to what the sisters had in chapter 1:
First years teaching; show students how to partner read once and expect them t do it. Very frustrated when students were off task.
Past year: model with kids how to partner and post pictures in the classroom of eekk position. Still frustrated with behavior.
This year: model and practice multiple times as well as teach coaching, correct ways to choose a partner and building stamina through whole class practice. Hopefully rejoice and enjoy partner reading!
Your symbaloo is amazing!
I'm noticing some recurring themes. This is a process. Each year I get better at some aspects of the Daily 5. I'm so glad we had this study group. It forced me to revisit the books and find my next refinement.
This year I also will be modeling, modeling, modeling. Anchor charts. model again.
I have seen such amazing results with my less-than-perfect attempts. I can't wait to see what happens next!
This chapter provided organization to a bunch of things that we do in our classroom. I like that. I've never used the reading two books approach previously, but think the way it was described here will work well.
The discussion of the listening center has me re-visiting some things. I have a collection of books with CDs that were provided us several years ago. I am not wild about the titles, but I suppose they are okay. I have wanted to build a library of recorded stories that I, other teachers, and guest readers record. Perhaps it is time to begin that.
I like organization. This chapter provided a plan for how to take some of the things I do in the classroom and make better use of them. Thanks!
Heather, thank you for:
* the Donors Choose link. I've been looking for such a site and had even asked for recommendations. I am now registered.
* Symbaloo This is a new service to me. I think there could be possibilities to use in the classroom. I will continue to explore that.
@Heather - what is a symbaloo? I am not registered on that site and not sure if I want to? Can you tell me a little about your post?
I've mentioned before that I use the Listen to Reading component for my small group, leveled reading component. I use the district mandated basal program. I supplement with the leveled readers when I can that come with the basal and once a week they listen to the tape that comes with the basals. I also use the time to work on our fluency timings and inflections for poetry. I train parent volunteers on what they need to do and when they show up I have them take a reading group. So, I may have 2 groups in Listen to Reading at a time or just 1. The length of my mini lessons depend on the help in the room (30 students). I have TONS of listening center books for primary grades but not much in the way for intermediate grades that are within the time constraints I have. Bummer. Btw, during Read to Someone I DO let students read 2 separate books or the same book to each other. It went well last year since we really emphasized being a good coach and the sense of helping everyone in our community. Hoping this year's crew works as well together!
I wasn't that excited about this chapter to the point that it took me longer to finish reading it. I guess that is difficult to find books on tape in spanish. But after finally finishing it :) I started to look and found 2 spanish websites. Thanks for the symbaloo. LOVE IT!!!!
Wendy,
I love the National Geographic site but it seems too young for 5th. Do you know if they offer higher level read alouds? Or have you come across any other sites out there? Thanks so much.
Tammy Hubbart
Has anyone ever tried using RAZ Kids for Listen to Reading? http://www.raz-kids.com/
It's not free, but some of the primary teachers in my school swear by it. I had it for a year or two, but never found a way to really use it well with my big kids so I let my subscription lapse. Now that I have D5, I'm wondering if I should bite the bullet and bring it back.
I was also thinking that you can download audio books as MP3s from a lot of public libraries now. . .is it still beneficial to Listen to Reading if you don't actually follow along with your eyeballs on the text? I mean, do I have to have a copy of every book they listen to?
Dennise: www.symbaloo.com is a free website that organizes all the websites you collect into different "webmixes" of your choice. It's kid-friendly because it lets you color code little blocks instead of having them scroll through lines and lines of websites to find the website they need. Check out how I organized my Daily 5 webmix at http://www.symbaloo.com/shared/AAAACEmR61kAA42Agb_D2w==
Lots of useful information in this chapter. I am working on getting my room organized for the D5 next year...although it may end up being the D3 or D4. In the past I have assigned 1 day per week to each students for audio books so that everyone had an opportunity. I am not sure if I will continue with that this coming year or leave it more up to the students.
Scholastic book orders is a great place to get audio books and you can buy additional copies of the text. I usually use my bonus points. I am now on the lookout for splitters to use with my CD walkmans so that 2 students can listen at a time.
Thanks,
Mari
http://bookwormteacherfifthgrade.blogspot.com/
I will be teaching reading to 6th-8th graders this year and I am very limited on resources. I do have two computers that could incorporate headphones. Does anyone read a novel aloud to their class instead of using listening centers?
I think for me these are going to have to be optional activities due to time constraints.
I do read a novel to my class instead of listening centers during their snack time. I may try to figure out some listening centers this year though as options.
I've also rotated between reading workshop and whole class novels being read aloud and discussed last year because I had such a range of readers. I liked it, but the kids had a hard time getting back into reading workshop routines at the end of a whole class book.
Has anyone used the Read to Someone strategies in a content area class such as social studies? I am compartmentalized for ss and would have another class that is not going to be doing D5. I am thinking of teaching them this portion to use in ss when we partner read our text books. Any thoughts?
Mari: I found splitters at Radio Shack. There're fairly cheap.
Tammy: I think you could substitute a whole class read aloud instead of a listening center. I would gradually work the portable MP3 or portable players in gradual.
Julie: I think that's a great idea to use Read to Someone in core classes! You can use it for review or to teach new information. Please let me know how it goes!
Julie,
I teach L.Arts and Soc. Studies. When I first read this chapter I totally thought of my kids reading their social studies text to one another. I know it doesn't give them a choice on what they are reading, but I thought I could give them the choice to read independently or with a partner. I have even considered recording myself read the chapters and adding them to the listening center. Has anyone done this? I'm brand new to D5 and feeling a bit overwhelmed with what I feel I need to get ready, but super excited at the same time!
I also saw someone post about the basal series. Once again, I thought I could use these books as options for the read with someone or listening to them on the iPods. At least they already come on CD so they are an inexpensive resource and the kids choose what stories they are interested in.
Hmm... I am wondering, how do we fit all of the "teaching" pieces together? Would you start by teaching Read to self, practice, etc for a few days adding time; then add in Read to someone while still adding time for read to self for a few days; then add on Listen to reading while adding time to the other two? Maybe this comes up in the Cafe book?
I am behind and trying to catch up with you all. Thanks for the book study I think it is great. I've been interested in these books for a few months but needed the study to push me in. I will probably be the only one at my site attempting D5. I teach 2nd grade, but have enjoyed your comments and insights. Thanks!
@Heather - Thank you!
Tracy- I noticed on the Sisters website that they state they have changed the order in which they teach since they first wrote the book. They now do Work on Writing second, right after Read to Self. This made a lot more sense to me - both Read to Self and Work on Writing are quiet,independent activities.
Mary
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