Daily Five Jump and Jive

Ok so I can't actually jump right now seeing as my foot is still good and broken. But in my head  I am absolutely jumping and jiving!! Why you ask? Well, for the past three years I have wanted to get started with the Daily Five in my classroom. I bought both the  Daily Five Book and the CAFE Book as a first year teacher. (They've accompanied on many a Spring/Christmas break, and I've read them more than once.)

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 I taught my firsties to do Read to Self...and I started incorporating more work work centers..but I never really had either up and running. Then this past year my wonderful student teacher introduced it to my class because we had an extra 30 minutes of down time every morning due to the state testing schedules for a good month. Being as it was near  the end of the year, they very quickly were able to do most of the pieces with minimal training. (Oh the beauty of 4th quarter independence!!) So everyday they would rotate through a round or two of Daily 5. They liked it so much I called my friend in second grade in to watch, and she in turn got her class doing it too.

Then our school hired a new principal. {I will spare you the long never ending saga of drama that has surrounded- and continues to surround - the decisions that led to my school hiring a new principal, as it takes away from the happy I've got going on} But I will say I'm super excited to work with her. She is a former instructional coach and has already spent oodles of time working with staff in preperation for next year.

Well a few of my colleges and I approached her to discuss Daily Five/CAFE and our desire to incorporate these programs into our literacy block. And she was all about it!! She purchased the books and sat down with us yesterday to begin discussing how we can merge these programs with our current Basal curriculum. She also wants us to put together some professional development workshops to present to the elementary staff. And guess who volunteered their room as a "model room" to show the rest of the staff what a room that is set up for the D5/CAFE would look like....Oh yes, that would be me, the girl who recently broke her foot and hasn't even begun putting her room together as a result. But I couldn't help myself!! Apparently jumping and jiving will make you do irrational things. I'm sure I will figure it all out though. I have been all about owls lately. Not real ones, just the super cute one's popping up in classrooms across America.

Visions of Owls +Polks Dots + Daily Five/CAFE have been swimming around my head all day!!

So that was my news to share. I'm preparing to lose myself in a world of Daily 5 resources over the next few weeks. I'll be diving back through all the book study posts that have been popping up all summer long-- there have been multiple great ones going on!! Rachelle from What The Teacher Wants shared a post with some great D5 freebies today too. If you are a Daily Five/CAFE veteran-- any particularly awesome resources you would like to send my way are greatly appreciated! If you're a Daily Five/CAFE newbie like myself-- where are you at in your planning process??


Finally, if you've made it to the end of this post -- I have a super fun giveaway I want to share with you!!  Christi from Mrs. Fultz's Corner has recently begun designing custom blogs and she is doing some REALLY cute stuff!! You can see for yourself over by vising her design site titled, Design by Christi, and checking out her portfolio.

 Right now she is giving away a custom blog design to one lucky winner! I love my blog design, but I can't help thinking I would love it even more if I could customize it entirely. But even if I don't win this giveaway, I'm hoping one of my fabulous followers will!! Stop by here to get yourself entered :)