The Daily Five

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The Daily 5, Reader’s Workshop, and Literacy Block are the buzz words you hear for reading in education, especially at the elementary level. The Daily 5 similar to Reader Workshop but incorporates the components of reading (comprehension, accuracy, fluency, phonics, phoneme awareness and vocabulary) is the most resent hype around reading today. The Daily 5 structure is the newest and exciting happening in our school. Teachers and students seem to be more excited about reading. The Daily 5 is a structure that is used in the class to help students develop daily habits of reading and writing to lead to literacy independence. The five components of the daily 5 are the following: Read to Self, Work on Writing, Read to Someone, Listen to Reading and Word Work. Within the daily five a menu called the CAFÉ is used to teach reading strategies. CAFÉ is an acronym for; Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency and Expanding Vocabulary. The CAFÉ strategies are the main focus for teaching reading.

I work in an elementary school as the ELL support and have seen first- hand how the program works in our school. Over a year ago many of teachers in our school deployed students by reading ability to different classrooms to receive reading instruction at their reading level. Unfortunately, the homeroom teacher was not able to know their student as a “reader”. It was especially difficult to share reading progress with parent at conferences unless the reading teacher was there at attend. Students in the classrooms worked on similar needs. Teacher used their own systems of delivery. Teachers used the anthology for teaching reading and pulled from their own sources. Some students who were deployed were apprehensive about going to another room and it...

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...tary level. Studies show a correlation between structured programs with a comprehensive systematic way of presenting curriculum is essential for helping students make progress in school). Explicit instruction is critical in teaching reading (Graves, 2004). Incorporating the CAFÉ strategies in whole group mini lessons and then allow student to participate in the Daily 5 reading activities seem to be a place where everyone is on the same page in teaching reading. The Daily 5 structure follows the characteristic of what “good literacy instruction” should be. It is consistent, and well designed in instructional routines. It has opportunities for authentic practice in reading and writing. It is highly motivated and engages students. Assessment is on going with each student and the class as a whole and learning objective build and change over time. (Teale, 2009)

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