How to Organize Daily Instruction, Part III
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Daily 5 
01 June, 2014
29 Comments
| Blast from the Past: This entry was first published on June 1, 2014, and is being re-posted on March 30, 2019. The reason for the re-posting? In the last two weeks I have received several questions and several requests for speaking engagements focused specifically on what the literacy school day should look like. This entry doesn't propose a particular schedule, but it does provide the key tenets on which to plan a day's lessons. Man, I hate to see so many frustrated teachers. For the past couple weeks, I’ve been hearing from teachers who use Daily 5. They’re mad because I criticized the idea of organizing their day around activities instead of outcomes. Many have been surprised that I said there isn’t any research on Daily 5 or the activities it promotes. Some complain that I just haven’t seen it well implemented. But that really isn’t the problem. The fact is teachers find it difficult to stay focused on learning. They become consumed by classroom activities and daily routines. And because of that, any scheme that encourages them focus on activities over outcome is a really bad idea. The point of Daily 5 is a good one: teachers should routinize the use of classroom time. Reducing the sheer number of daily scheduling decisions for teachers is smart. But routinizing a day is not the same thing as ensuring learning. Especially when the activities you are including aren’t certain to instill learning. There has to be a better way. Let’s take it a step at a time. First, decide how much time will be devoted to literacy. In many schools, 90 minutes is the standard, but I’d argue for 2-3 hours per day. Provide more literacy work when kids are especially challenged, and less otherwise. Second, decide which learning categories require attention? Put the time into aspects of literacy prove to help kids become better readers and writers. There is substantial research showing that if you teach young children to hear the sounds within words (phonemic awareness), then they end up doing better with decoding and comprehension. I would definitely teach that. There is similar evidence concerning the systematic teaching of letters and sounds, so phonics is in, too. And, there is a substantial body of work indicating the value of teaching word meaning (vocabulary), oral reading fluency, reading comprehension, and writing. They all deserve some time within your schedule. You can be a bit arbitrary in dividing the time across these categories. For instance, I group all the word skills—phonics, phonological awareness, sight vocabulary, meaning vocabulary—into a single set, and they share 25% of my ELA teaching time. That means kids would get a lot of decoding instruction early on, and less vocabulary support; but as they went through the grades they would get less and less phonics, and more and more focus on word meaning. Fluency, comprehension, and writing, would get the other portions of time. Third, these categorical divisions then need to be expressed in terms of specific learning goals. Let’s say 15 minutes per day of the word time in my kindergarten this semester is focused on letter names and phonological awareness. My goal for the kids is to make sure they can recognize all the alphabet letters and can fully segment words (that is divide spoken words into all of their separate phonemes). Or, perhaps, the fluency goal this report-card-marking in second grade is to make sure students can read texts at 75 words correct per minute, with pausing that reflects the punctuation and meaning. In reading comprehension my goal may be for students to be able to read and summarize 3 text pages without teacher input or support. Or perhaps I’d want them to be able to read a social studies chapter and explain the connections among the subsections. Such goals do not have to be singular or simple. Either or both of these comprehension goals could be a point of focus of my lessons, or the teacher could emphasize additional—and very different—goals, like wanting students to develop a rich knowledge of their literary heritage. That means I could teach the above goals, and simultaneously expect kids to gain an understanding of the significance of a particular cast of characters or plot elements from fairy tales or Shakespeare. None of these are activities. They are all measurable learning outcomes and my days should be organized around these kinds of goals. Fourth, once I know what I am trying to accomplish, then I must select activities and texts consistent with those learning goals. Sometimes these choices will be highly constrained by the goal itself: if you want students to know the characters and plot of Romeo and Juliet, it is probably wise to focus heavily on that play. If you want kids to distinguish Little Red Riding Hood from the Wicked Stepmother, and the Wolf in the Three Little Pigs from the one who devours Grandma, then this probably dictates a Fairy Tales Unit. In other cases, there are choices. Should the student read the selection in parts or all the way through? Will the teacher ask questions or will the students take over this role as in Book Club? Will the analysis be through discussion or writing? Will the phonics practice be synthetic (focusing on the individual sounds within words) or analytic (using known words as analogies)? Will students reread a fluency text a set number of times or until a particular performance criterion is met? Such decisions should be shaped by research considerations and learning considerations—not routine. Research is pretty clear that students do better in decoding when taught systematically from a sequential program than when teachers try to be diagnostic and individualized. That likely means the phonics portion of primary grade reading instruction is best spent delivering lessons from a high quality phonics program. Or, studies show that oral reading fluency practice leads to the most learning when the texts are at students’ frustration levels. That means that having students read texts aloud to each other (partner reading) might be a good choice (though so is echo reading), but teachers should assign frustration level texts to either of these activities. Last point: the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) require the teaching of all of the topics that I have mentioned in this entry. But CCSS does not specify how to organize time around that instruction. The plan put forth here should help teachers to consider the whole set of standards, not just particular activities (e.g., close reading). Similarly, core reading programs (e.g., basal readers, literature anthologies), provide teachers with lots of texts and activities; usually more than can be delivered in a typical school schedule. This plan can help teachers to decide what to include and what to delete. Many teachers that I know routinely omit the writing activities. If writing outcomes were their focus 25% of the time, many of them would not make this bad decision. Or, teachers often complain that there are just too many decoding lessons. That may or may not be true, but if I had decided to devote 30 minutes a day to phonics teaching, I could determine pretty quickly what to omit and what to teach. Next time I’ll explore issues of flexibility and the applicability of this scheme in upper grade levels, including high school. |
Dr Shanahan...I enjoy your insights, but these last two blogs have been way too generic. Could you please give several specific examples of activities which are not worthwhile, and some specific examples of what is exemplary. Teachers need specifics....
thanks
Rob
Rob--
I've been trying to highlight those things that do benefit kids's learning rather than what doesn't. But here are a few losers: (1) independent reading (SSR, Read to Yourself): everyone agrees practice reading is a good idea, but research shows that the learning payoffs are tiny. That is fine when you are putting reading up against video games or watching television, but when you compare it with reading text with an adult (and discussing it, writing about it, etc.), it is just no contest. Reading on your own at school is a reasonable time management tool (for someone who gets their work done early), but I want my kid working with a professional when a professional is available. (2) read to someone else: again not a bad idea, but reading aloud to someone else has its payoff from two parts of the activity not stressed in Daily 5 (reading texts that are at your frustration level, and rereading them 1-2 times); (3) Listen to reading: I love reading to kids and would do it every day--but it doesn't count as reading instruction because there is no evidence that it builds reading skill (it can increase knowledge of the world and vocabulary and those are terrific, but they don't make students better readers very directly, so it would not be a good choice for "reading instruction." (4) Mini-lessons on almost anything: these non-systematic drop in lessons on some needed skill or strategy have never been found to benefit kids. More systematic approaches are needed, with greater consistency and follow through day to day. (5) Word learning centers where kids work on their own on things like phonics and phonological awareness; (6) I've been stressing the kinds of activities emphasized in Daily 5, but there are many activities that I like even less, like test prep activities.
Again, rather than trying to avoid those activities that have little or no payoff in kids' learning, let's embrace those things that do--and there won't be time for the activities that don't help much.
I've loved reading your posts on this topic, and I couldn't agree more. I am a speech-language pathologist. More and more our focus is including reading and writing instruction (although it always has - or should have). I can see teachers getting "uncomfortable" with your posts, but you've hit the nail on the head.
AMEN! Finally a respected literacy author, researcher speaks truth about The Daily Five. As a literacy specialist of 8 years, I have only seen one good example of the D5 in use. The teacher tweaked the D5 to include small group reading and foundational skills activities in support of all reading levels. I have observed far too many students reading incorrectly to one another while grounding themselves in inaccurate and inappropriate strategies and interpretations. This is due to the lack of elicitation of student responses and immediate teacher feedback. An opportunity to employ the formative process is lost and students are left with a shallow concept of the text and comprehension of the content. Too many teachers are patting themselves on their back because the D5 looks organized while students are engaged. I have often asked, is this rigorous engagement that hone critical thinking skills? I think not
What Are your thoughts?
Leave me a comment and I would like to have a discussion with you!
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