I have been reading with interest this discussion about D5 and reader's workshop. Our district was lucky enough to be trained by Columbia's reading and writing project staff several years ago. I love reading workshp I began using daily 5 and later the Cafe menu about two or three years ago and felt it only enhanced my reader's workshop. I teach first grade.... the structure of D5 provides the autonomy that first graders crave and helps them adjust to the length of the day as well as the lack of "fee choice" (center and play time in kindergarten). Now I must say I have not been able to even come close to five rounds a day with many... however I keep a weekly schedule and the kids do filter through the five rounds on more of a weekly (early readers) or every other day (more experienced readers) or daily (my super achievers) basis. I just check the pulse of the group after each round and later as they mature... the kids themselves keep records. Because I absolutely love Columbia's units of writing I do writing workshop at a different time of day and modify D5's work on writing to be kids' reader responses that they record in their reading journals... At this time, many are just using sticky notes with simple icons but as the year progresses, they become not too shabby reflections (related to the minilessons we've covered). To me this makes even more sense because it keeps the kids' thinking in their guided reading books. Because our spelling is differentiated with a words their way structure (that comes with a weekly protocol in and of itself) I modify D5's word work to mean sorting, blind sorting, and recording transfers of patterns of words in their guided readers that follow the patterns of their word list for the week. This also satisfies my need not to teach a spelling list but rather to teach the phonetic rules bound within word patterns so that kids can easily make transfers to new words. In this round of D5 I also add any vocabulary lessons from the cafe menu that I feel appropriate.... Again the kids are just thinking about words in their guided readers. Now I am not saying this all goes swimmingly... kids in first grade need gobs of time to do anything....esp. in the beginning of the year and many do not move seamlessly through transitions.... but this structure helps them plan and keep goals as well as become mindful of time on task. They get an authentic sense of urgency to learn new skills. So if you were a fly on the wall ...right now their stamina in guided reading is about 15 minutes.... by June we get up there to a full D5 expectation. When kids have difficulty moving to the next round because they are not finished they opt to stay at the same job.... in fact I insist on it but then my other requirement is that once they do finish a job they must move on to a new and different task of D5 for the next round of D5 (whenever that occurs: today, tomorrow, or later) I am wondering if any other folks in first grade have used or modified D5 and workshop.... and I also am hoping that those of you in the mosaic community who have the data keeping knocked share their ideas.... because at least until December the workshop is fast considering the minilessons, the whole group share, the small group work, and the individual conferencing.... when you throw DRA testing in there without an aide.... it gets murky... at least for me.... I have copied every structure of the penseive and watched the videos hundreds of time but that is where I am less successful. thanks in advance Pam _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org.
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