Let's Talk about the Daily Five

Cover of The Daily Five

Our teachers in kindergarten through sixth grade are teaching students to read using the instructional model - Guided Reading. This just means that students are grouped according to their instructional reading levels and given reading material that matches that level.


A critical piece of the successful implementation of Guided Reading is keeping students who are not in your small group engaged in meaningful work that moves your curriculum along.  Our teachers discovered the book, The Daily Five: Fostering Literacy Independence in Elementary Grades by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser ("the sisters").  This book has helped many of our teachers develop a plan that ensures that they are helping to create readers and writers and not just keeping students busy.

The sentence on page 7 of the book says it all - "...the way teachers structure the learning environment and the way students spend their time influences the level of reading proficiency the students have attained at the end of the academic year."  The Daily Five are: 1) Read to Yourself;  2) Read to Someone;  3) Work on Writing; 
4) Listen to Reading;  and 5) Spelling or Word Work.

Take time to visit the Sisters' site - http://www.the2sisters.com/the_daily_5.html.