Dylan Barton

December 2, 2014
Literacy Project
The Daily Five
For this project, I chose to study The Daily Five through articles, and in my practicum
classroom. This practice interested me in the beginning of the semester because it was something
that was required of the entire 2nd grade team at my practicum school, and it was something I had
little knowledge about. I decided that it would be something that I would like to learn more about
not only for this project, but for my own classroom and teaching. I read a series of articles about
The Daily Five, as well as asking my teacher questions about how she uses it in her own
classroom. I observed it being used in the 2nd grade reading groups, as well as the 2nd grade
Power-Up sessions.
The Daily Five is a series of activities and practices that aim to improve students reading
and writing. The five categories that make up The Daily Five are read to self, work on writing,
word work, listen to reading, and read to someone. These practices, when used together and quite
frequently, can improve a students writing skills, word recognition, fluency, accuracy,
comprehension, and overall confidence in literacy. Many schools use The Daily Five practice in
reading groups and writing workshops; in fact, most schools now require it. Reading to self can
occur in the classroom or at home. Students are encouraged to read to themselves whenever there
is downtime during the school day, and most teachers plan time for this as well. Students also
should be going home and reading to themselves for a set amount of time for most homework
assignments. Writing is something that has taken a backseat in school curriculum recently.

Although we dont see as much writing instruction, it is still a major part of literacy, especially at
a young age. Students should be encouraged to free-write (choose a topic of their choice and
write without any boundaries or expectations), write about a prompt, and begin writing formal
essays. Word work, or more commonly referred to as word study, is something most teachers use
in their reading groups. This is the study of a list of similar words with related beginnings,
endings, or vowel/consonant patterns. Students receive one list per week and they are to study
and practice reading and writing those words through various of homework assignments. This
aims to help students recognize words similar to these in their readings, and become familiar
with word patterns and vowel sounds. Finally, reading to someone and listening to someone read
is something that can be done in any setting. Students can pair up in the classroom and listen to
one another read the same story, rereading and practicing reading as the other does. For example,
when one student sees how the other is using expression or utilizing punctuation, they can do the
same; hearing someone else read the same story gives the students another perspective that they
havent necessarily heard before.
The foundation of The Daily Five is made up of six key aspects: trusting students,
providing choice, nurturing community, creating a sense of urgency, building stamina, and
staying out of students way once routines are established. Trusting students to accept the
responsibility of managing themselves and working independently creates a more smoothly run
classroom with less time spent dealing with logistical and behavioral issues during instruction.
Students will continue their learning even when they are not being managed by the teacher,
thus shifting the management of behavior from the teacher to the individual (Boushey & Moser,
2006). Students should be free to choose the order in which they will complete each task within
The Daily Five. If teachers break a students routine, or take away the clock and the schedule,

students feel less pressure to operate the same way each day, causing a loss of interest and
excitement. The students can choose which activity they would like to do during the literacy
block based on their goals, what motivates them that day, and what type of mood they are in.
Choice is highly motivational and puts children in charge of their learningPurpose+ Choice=
Motivation (Boushey & Moser, 2006). Teachers should always explain to their students exactly
why they are doing the things that they are during the literacy block and as a part of Daily Five.
This also helps to motivate the students and can be used to keep students on-task and focused on
meeting their goals. Creating this type of sense of urgency in learning instills the idea that all
learning and practice during literacy counts for the students. It encourages students to feel
responsible and take ownership for their learning. Building stamina during any type of literacy
activity is crucial to the progress and success of the students. Tasks must be manageable and
gradually increase in time and resistance; at the same time, teachers must provide the necessary
support for students to be able to read for long periods of time, or sit and focus on writing
without interruption. Finally, as much as teachers want to control what their students are doing in
the classroom, what they are learning, and how they are learning, we want students to make
decisions on their own and to monitor themselves. Students should not be taught to rely on
teacher reinforcement or constant encouragement; they need to establish a sense of individuality
and responsibility.
The Daily Five is effective through the use of a mixture of reading and writing activities
and choices for students. Students are to work independently to meet their personal goals, while
the teacher is expected to meet the individual needs of students in whole-group, small-group, and
one-on-one instruction. Daily 5 classrooms produce productive, highly engaged students who
are developing a true love of literacy (Boushey & Moser, 2014). There are many benefits of

using The Daily Five in your classroom that include helping students develop independence,
stamina, and accountability; less time is consumed by classroom management which leaves more
instructional time; it fits most district- and state-mandated curriculum; it improves school-wide
literacy achievement; and the behaviors of independence that it fosters in students transfers to
other content areas. The Daily Five has been adopted as something more effective than entireclass instruction in literacy because it allows teachers to assign personalized goals to each
student, providing them with strategies that are specific to their needs. It also gives teachers more
one-on-one time with each student which lets them monitor each students progress and provide
individualized instruction.
The first of The Daily Five choices to be launched in the classroom is read to self
which aims to create independent readers and writers. When students can actively and effectively
read to themselves they become familiar with the language, routines, expectations, and behaviors
of successful readers. Next, the writing component of the Daily 5 provides additional support
children require to become effective writers. Its purpose is to provide daily writing practice
(Boushey & Moser, 2014). The work on writing time in The Daily Five is used to allow
students time to continue work they have been doing during writing workshops or to do
sustained writing of any kind they like; students enjoy the freedom that The Daily Five gives
them. Word work focusses on spelling and vocabulary, providing plenty of practice time.
Word work allows students to experiment with spelling patterns through sorting activities,
memorize high-frequency words that will appear in many of their readings, and develop an
interest and love for new and unique words. The goal is for students to play with words, word
patterns, word families, prefixes, and suffixes to improve their reading and writing skills.
Listening to someone read is very vital to the improvement of students own reading skills. It

provides a model for punctuation and expression that comes from hearing someone read fluently.
Listening to reading is especially beneficial for those students whose listening comprehension
exceeds their reading level. Finally, reading to someone is probably the most used and useful
aspect of The Daily Five. Developing readers can improve their comprehension, accuracy,
fluency, and prosidy. It also increases involvement, attention, and collaboration among young
readers when reading to one another.
In my practicum, I have observed the Daily Five being used in their Power-Up sessions
as well as during reading groups. Power-Up is a 30 minute literacy session where the students
are broken into six different classes (for the six 2nd grade teachers) depending on their literacy
levels. My teacher teaches one of the lower level groups and uses Daily Five to improve their
reading skills. She begins each class with a read-aloud where she asks the students probing
questions that get them making predictions, asking questions, and making connections. This type
of read-aloud demonstrates to the students how they should be reading when reading to
themselves and to one another. After the read-aloud, the students read the same book to
themselves, becoming more familiar with it. They are encouraged to ask more questions and to
make different connections than they made the first time based on the fact that theyve already
heard the story. Becoming familiar with a book by rereading it to one another and to themselves,
helps the students practice reading because they know how it should sound and ensures they read
the words correctly. When they read to one another, they are to use expression the way my
teacher does when she reads to them; reading to someone else holds the students accountable for
doing things like pronouncing the words correctly, using the correct expression, emphasizing the
punctuation, and reading in way that is understandable. The students usually do some sort of
writing activity that accompanies the book such as writing down the themes they noticed, any

connections they can make to other books they have read in that class, or simply laying out the
sequence of the story with explanations of the plot and characters. Power-Up utilizes four of the
five categories of The Daily Five: read to self, work on writing, listening to someone read, and
reading to someone.
Reading groups are set up similarly to Power-Up where the students are separated into
groups based on their PALs scores. The focus of reading groups is practicing comprehension,
fluency, and accuracy, as well as word study. The Daily Five is used to help the students become
more fluent and accurate when reading by reading the same books to themselves (rereading).
Because they are reading these books several times a week, they are becoming more familiar
with the words, improving on the difficult ones, and using expression in their tone of voice. They
are encouraged to practice reading the way they would like to be read to, with enunciation and
correct punctuation. Students are given a fluency passage each week that they read to the teacher
cold, which means it is something they have never seen before and the teacher wants to see
how well they can read it. After this cold read, they are to practice reading the passage to
themselves, to a teacher, or to a parent. At the end of the week, they read this passage to the
teacher again and she documents their improvement. The goal is for the students to be able to
read the short passage without any errors, pausing, or stumbling across words. Throughout the
entire class, the students are rotating between word study, fluency work one-on-one with a
teacher, group reading, and reading to self. The Daily Five allows students to have practice
reading to different people and in different environments to gain the practice and familiarity with
reading in general.
The students also have a word study list each week where they are given a list of words
and have to practice reading, writing, and sorting them into categories based on their beginning,

middle, or ending sounds. The only homework they have to do each night is based on word study
activities and practicing these things. Because my students are second graders, they are just
beginning to practice their writing more and more. My teacher has them practice essay writing a
few times a week in reading groups; she brings them to the back table in small groups and
teaches small lessons on sentence and paragraph structure, as well as describing words,
transitions, and flow. In the 2nd grade reading groups, the teachers use all five aspects of The
Daily Five through reading to self, a teacher, or a parent, short writing workshops, and word
study practice each night.
Throughout this project, reading and learning about Daily Five, as well as observing it in
my practicum classroom, has taught me a lot about literacy development and effective ways in
which to teach reading and writing knowledge and skills. Before beginning this project I was
struggling to find an effective and efficient way to conduct a reading group. Although I have
observed reading groups in all three of my practicum placements, they were all set up and run
differently; I couldnt decide which was the most beneficial to the students learning, and I was
trying to figure out how I would like to do this in my own classroom. Through all of my READ
courses I have compiled many ideas and methods for teaching literacy in the elementary
classroom. This course in particular gave me some great tools and resources to use for analyzing
student test scores in reading and writing; how to place students in groups based on those scores
and their literacy levels; and what I should focus on and teach in order to meet the individual
needs of each student based on their level. The Daily Five is an excellent resource to have
studied and to know how to implement in the classroom because it focuses on each aspect of
literacy that is important for children to learn and practice. After doing research, observing, and
drawing conclusions from this project and the study of Daily Five, I feel confident in my ability

to bring literacy into my classroom in a way that will be effective and beneficial for each student,
no matter what their reading and writing levels are, or their individual literacy needs.
In the future, I plan to use The Daily Five similarly to the way in which my practicum
teacher uses it now-- as stations for reading groups-- so that students can engage in each part of
it, whether it be individually, in a small group, with the entire class, or one-on-one with the
teacher. I feel that this type of project was extremely helpful as someone who will be having
their own classroom in less than a year because it gave me multiple perspectives and opinions on
a teaching method that I can use, as well as opened my eyes to many other ways in which I could
teach literacy. The research and observation aspect of this project helped me to develop the
resources necessary to evaluate teaching strategies and how they can be used in the classroom, as
well as finding valuable online sources to use for further research or questions related to teaching
literacy in the future. I now recognize the importance in developing a strong base for literacy in
the classroom, and to continue to find effective ways like Daily Five to help students grow in that
area.

References
Boushey, G., & Moser, J. (2006). From "management" to "principled habits": Foundations of the
Daily Five. In The Daily 5: Fostering literacy independence in the elementary grades
(pp. 17-25). Portland: Stenhouse Publisher.
Boushey, G., & Moser, J. (2014, January 1). Daily 5. Retrieved October 27, 2014, from
http://www.thedailycafe.com/daily-5