I have decided that I will do Daily 5 and include some of the others centers that have been popular in my previous class. My question is (since I do not have the book and have no money to get the book) is how do the students pick where they want to go and what they want to do? Is there are rotation chart? Do the students tell you? How do they switch when its time to change centers? What if they all want to go to listening center and you only have room for about 4 students. This is driving me nuts. I can't get a handle on this at all. It has always been a breeze but now with more over 30 kids its very hard. My other two teammates are so frustrated they are not even worried about centers at this point.
You could try a number of things. If listening is where you have the least amount of room, trying buddying the kids up. You could put them on a rotation chart but I think that defeats some of the ideas. The Daily 5 allows students to sign up for the station that they want. If Listening is limit, have the students sign up for that first so that you can say you get the first rotation, you the second, etc. The authors do recommend dismissing the read to someone last so that the students left could be divided into partners easily.
So how do the students decide? Do you put the chart up in the morning and they move their name to the desired center or what?
VANewbie, Is there any way you can get the Daily 5 book used or split the cost with your colleagues? I feel that it is a worthwhile investment and will help Daily 5 run smoothly. This is my first year trying Daily 5 and I have been modeling how to do each activity exactly as the book recommends. It has been working so well so far.
What I do, is I call the kids by table (depending on who is more quiet) so that they choose centers. If a center gets 4 people, the other kids know they have to go to a different one. I do not do rotations, I do only one center a day. Next day, they know they have to choose a different center from the ones they chose the day before. By the end of the week, all kids must have visited every center. This organization helps you have things run smoothly since one single center never gets crowded of fought for.
This is exactly what I am going to do. I'll just keep it really simple. Minimar1-what centers do you use? The exact ones from daily 5?
I do not have the book either, but having been doing my own, modified version since the latter part of last school year. My students have their own Daily 3 (I only do 3 of the Daily 5) calendar. So, as they do go through the day, they check of the daily 3 activity they have done, and during the next rotation they choose one they have not done.
