[breezes97]

I am moving to 4th from 6th (self-contained) and before that kinder and would love some input from you . . . how do you teach reading? I will be using novels mainly. Do you like the Daily 5, some form of it, or do you do something different?

[msk5]

I usually begin reading class with a mini lesson and then I have my students doing either individualized reading, lit circle groups, a little whole group (at the beginning to teach the procedures for lit groups or individualized reading). I usually alternate lit circles with individualized texts because the kids and I get bored if we do the same thing all the time. While I am working with a small group or conferencing with a student the rest of the class is working on a form of Daily Five,/Centers, reading, or working with their small group.
I love the Book Whisperer and would like to do more of her stuff next year.
Good luck in 4th, it is by far the best grade to teach

[Mariely]

This is how I do reading in my class. I allow my students in class time (about 30 minutes) to read their own book of choice. Once a week I require them to complete a reading response, in the form of a friendly letter, inside their reader's notebooks. We setup our notebooks in the beginning of the year and take notes on the different genres, reading strategies/skills, etc. I give them a grade on their response and respond back to them with a brief message.

In addition to this, I also do mini-lessons to introduce a variety of reading skills. I then have students incorporate these into their reading responses. For example, if I just had a mini-lesson on making connections, visualizing, or cause & effect, I'll have students include a paragraph in their reading response where they made a connection in the story they are reading, visualized something in their reading, or noticed a cause & effect relationship.

I also do class novels with my students. I mainly use them as shared reading where each student has a novel and they follow along while I read. Sometimes I'll ask students to read the novel silently or with a partner. It all depends. Within these novels I do mini-lessons on reading skills and have students apply that to the novel we are reading via sticky notes they place in the books, reading response letters, or another type of skills sheet/project.

I teach 4th grade gifted students so we don't use the basal, Houghton-Mifflin, too much. We usually just use it as a read aloud and discuss the story orally. This doesn't take too much time and then we'll continue on to our novels or our Junior Great Books series (which is the gifted supplemental reading books).

I have heard of the Daily 5 but haven't really used it in my classroom. Our district hasn't adopted that yet as a whole since they mainly focus on Guided Reading (which in my opinion is similar to Daily 5). I hope I've helped you in some way. Best of luck!