Daily 5 Choice Board

Welcome back to our Daily 5 book study, brought to you by Brenda from Primary Inspired. 

This chapter is all about when to release your students and give them choices. Did your heart skip a beat? It's okay, mine too. This is always a little scary. Giving them choices means letting go of some control. I'm not good at that. The Sisters point out over and over in their book that as long as we set and model our expectations, give our students time to practice Daily 5 behaviors, and build their stamina, we will be good to go. 

In the book, they give three ideas for how to execute the choice part of D5: 

1. Call on them one-by-one to tell you their choice and their goal. After they tell you, they will find their spot.

2.  Call on them one-by-one to tell you their choice and goal but they all stay together until everyone has chosen. Then you excuse everyone in groups (Read to Self kids can go, then Writing kids can go, etc.)

3. Count to three, then have the entire class go at the same time quietly to their spots. 

When I taught first grade, I used a board with pictures. I could flash the picture of my board from back then but that would be embarrassing. I was so stressed for time and I literally didn't cut the lines straight. The clip art was random from the Internet (don't call the Clip Art police please!) Everything was askew. Sigh. So, I made this new board, which reflects how I would want it to look now. One of the teachers at my school will be doing Daily 5 for the first time this year so she gets to have this one. 

Here's how it works: 

On the way to the carpet, have your students grab their picture from their book box.  As you call on students to be excused, they will add their picture to the Daily 5 choice board to show what they will be doing during that rotation. Train them to have their idea in their head before they are called on. Practice doing this quickly and quietly. 

I sort of cheat here. Yes, I know, shame on me. Because too much noise drives me crazy in my tiny little room, I only have 6 Velcro dots available under the Read to Someone category. That means only 3 sets of partners. I love Word Work, but it requires more pieces and those materials can be limited, so I only have 4-6 dots under that category (it might vary by class.) The point is, if you want to hold on to a tiny bit of control, this is a way to do that. I teach my students to watch as others make their choices in case their first choice fills up. Then they need to choose a backup choice and be ready.  

If you want to download those parts for your poster, you can download them here for free.

To download ALL of my Daily 5 resources, click here:

If you missed the previous posts from this book study, you will definitely want to check them out! There are plenty of pictures and freebies to get you started if you are interested. 

You can check them all out by clicking here.

Make sure you check out the other bloggers to see what they have to say about Chapter 7. 

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