How to Implement an Effective Daily 5 Schedule for Your Classroom Reading Block
As teachers, we are all WAY too familiar with the struggle of trying to fit everything in…
I mean, trying to cram all the instruction into 180 days feels near impossible, but trying to get all the DAILY stuff in - especially all the components of a well-rounded literacy lesson…that’s just plain ludicrous!
And that’s exactly how I felt about planning my literacy block until I implemented the Daily 5 framework. (Seriously, it’s been a GAME CHANGER for me and my students!) That’s why I share my story and what I’ve learned along the way with other teachers - because I want you to feel the same level of success with their instruction that I have.
And in my conversations with teachers, I’m usually met with this question…
“But Molly…how on earth does the Daily 5 Schedule work when time is already so tight?”
Well, teacher friend, that’s exactly what we’re going to chat about.
The Importance of Implementing an Effective Daily 5 Schedule
The Daily 5 framework is a way to structure your literacy block. The schedule that I’ve used in both my first-grade and fifth-grade classrooms included:
A whole group mini-lesson
All or a select few of the Daily 5 components (more on that in a bit…)
The Daily 5 consists of 5 repeatable, consistent components that students interact with every day: Read to Self, Read to Someone, Listen to Reading, Word Work, and Work on Writing.
So, why does this matter?
As teachers of literacy, we understand the importance of including each of the 5 pillars of reading into each lesson, which isn’t always the easiest to do and isn’t always included in our packaged district curriculums. This makes it our job to find time to add in the missing pieces.
What the Daily 5 does is offer a simplified SYSTEM to incorporate all the literacy your students need, all while meeting students where they are and fostering independence. (Cue that joy when your students are all busily working independently on a task…)
Here’s what I did to add the Daily 5 framework as a first-grade and fifth-grade teacher.
Create a Daily 5 Schedule that Works for Your Classroom
Before we dive into what I did to make the Daily 5 framework work in my classroom, I want you to start thinking about what your classroom needs are so you can see how this framework can work for you and your students.
Start by calculating how much time you have for your Literacy Block…
Finally, looking at the Daily 5 components (Read to Self, Listen to Reading, Read to Someone, Word Work, Work on Writing), decide which are your “non-negotiables.” Which are the elements that your students MUST have every day? For example, I knew that I wanted my students to get to Word Work, Work on Writing, and Read to Self every day.
Got all that?
Good…Now let’s talk about schedules.
Components for an Effective Daily 5 Routine
Before we talk about how to create an effective Daily 5 routine for your classroom, I first want to remind you that the Daily 5 is a structure—it provides us a way HOW to teach, NOT what to teach.
Keeping that in mind will help make sense of how this schedule can work for your classroom.
The schedule that I created for both my first-grade and fifth-grade classrooms included the following:
Whole group lesson (20 to 30 minutes): This is the time when I would invite my students up to the carpet (yes, even my fifth-graders) to teach the lesson from the district’s curriculum for that day.
Word Work/Word Study Mini Lesson (10 to 15 minutes): During this time, I would teach students about the day’s concept, which will also be practiced in their word-work station.
Daily 5 Stations (typically 15 minutes each): I chose to have my stations last 15 minutes, but you can make them shorter or longer depending on the needs of your students and how much time you have in your literacy block. For these stations, it’s best to choose structured activities that relate to the day’s whole group lesson or review past concepts that you’d like to revisit or you feel students need a booster on.
Here’s my schedule that I ran in my first-grade classroom.
Fitting Daily 5 into Your Literacy Block Schedule
You’re probably doing the math right now, trying to figure out how to get in a whole group and mini-lesson and then five 15-minute rotations squeezed into your literacy block. And you might be realizing that you might not have enough time to make it work.
I’ll be honest, I never did all five components.
I would recommend that your goal should be to get in at least four of the 5 components. But even if you can’t fit in four—if you can only do three or maybe only two—that’s perfectly fine!
That’s the beauty of the flexibility of the Daily 5 framework.
When deciding which of the five Daily 5 components you’d like to include in your schedule, consider your non-negotiables that we talked about in the beginning, and use those as your guide to decide which rotations you’re going to do, and which you’re going to let go of. You might also choose to consider your literacy standards and the 5 Pillars of Reading.
The key is to stay CONSISTENT. Use your non-negotiables to choose three, maybe four rotations to stick with all year.
And let’s be real—some days you don’t have time to get in all your normal rotations because of schedule changes, fire drills, school assemblies, etc.
If you can only get to two rotations on those days, that’s perfectly fine! Just be strategic on which rotations you’d like to include for that day.
But What About Writing?
As much as I LOVE the Daily 5 framework, a 15-minute, independent station is NOT enough time to teach writing effectively.
Even though I included the Work on Writing station every day, I also had a separate time during the day to explicitly teach writing skills to my students.
I would reserve the Work on Writing time during the Daily 5 rotations for students to work on creative or free writing—something we didn’t always have time for because of the writing standards we had to cover.
Check out this image of my fifth-grade classroom schedule to see how I incorporated a separate time during the day to teach writing.
Tools to Help You Build Your Daily 5 Schedule
Coming up with a classroom schedule that incorporates everything you need to get into during the day can be tricky, but with an effective Daily 5 schedule, it will take some of that stress away.
And, to help you along the way, I want to share with you Daily 5 toolkits that I put together that have everything you need to implement an effective Daily 5 schedule this next year hassle-free.
Tips for Adding the Daily 5 to Your Reading Schedule
I’ve also created many videos on YouTube documenting my journey with using the Daily 5 in my classroom and also sharing tips and strategies that I’ve learned along the way.
Click the link below to binge-watch my entire Daily 5 playlist.