The "Daily 5" of Daily 5 Math

I set up my workshop with five different choices for students. Each day I ask students to do one choice and then they have the option of choosing the second choice for the day. I encourage students to choose the same choice no more than twice a week. I will share more about the logistics in a later post.

1. Practice It - This choice offers students a chance to practice content we are learning in class or review content from previous years/units that would support future learning activities. I try to pick worksheets that are more than drill and practice. I often pick sheets where students have to solve the riddle with their solutions or color a picture to that correspond to their answers. I also use the skill sheets and additional practice sheets that come with our curriculum. Often times, I ask students to bring this sheet with them when I meet with individuals or small groups throughout the year.

2. Write It - This choice is an opportunity for students to write about math. Last year, I spent a lot of time working with our literacy coach to make the writing opportunities more rich and connected to the CCSS. Students respond to math reflections from our curriculum or they will write feelings and attitudes they have toward the math we were doing. Sometimes, I will have students look at student work and explain whether this was a "good" solution or not.

3. Explore It - Manipulatives are the main focus of this choice.I encourage exploration and ask students to look for connections between the manipulatives and math we have done. I also ask them to look for patterns and connections to other manipulatives. Students have the opportunity to interact with maniupulatives before they are introduced in a lesson. I give students a focus when using the manipulatives by providing questions. My next step is to start having students document this work in their math notebook using our class set of iPods and Evernote. I want students to take pictures of the modeling they are doing with the manipulatives. I found that by giving student this time to explore, students are on task more often when we are using the manipulatives with a lesson. This time allows for them to "play" with the manipulatives.

4. Digitize It - This option involves our class set of iPod Touches. Some weeks students are asked to be on a specific math app that pertains to our learning and other weeks students are allowed to choose what app they would like to work on. When I meet with students, I often suggest apps they should be on during Digitize It to help with their math goals. For classrooms that don't have access to mobile devices, laptops or desktops would work for this option. When I was on leave one year, my long term sub used the classroom computers and had students rotate through Digitize It. I will list some of the apps we used in the technology post later.

5. Play It - Students play math games with a partner. I use games from our curriculum and games I have collected throughout the years. Students have to work with a partner in this choice. I have a binder of all the game boards and rules laminated for each pair to use. Some of the favorite games are the 24 game, Product Game, and Fraction War.

Math Workshop in 6th grade

Three years ago I was drowning while attempting to teach Languages Arts for the first time. In an effort to stay above water, I attended a training on the Two Sisters Daily 5/CAFE. I was inspired to try Daily Math in my class the next year. Over the summer, I started to gather research/ideas to help me implement the workshop method in my classroom. I realized that very little existed for the upper grades, especially 6th grade. My hope is that this becomes a resource for those teachers wanting to use workshop model in their Upper El/Middle School classrooms. 

Over the next few entries, I will detail how the workshop model functioned in my classroom. I am hoping this year to now integrate this model into a traditional 7th/8th grade math class. 

I dedicated 30 minutes every day to Daily 5: Practice It, Write It, Digitize It, Play It, and Explore It.  Each day students were assigned one choice and given the option to choose the other choices. Each choice lasted 15 minutes. During this time, I would work with individuals or small groups on personalized math goals and our current curriculum. My co-teacher also used this time to work with students on their IEP goals. Students worked independently or in pairs on their choices. 

I also integrated technology during this time. Students used iOS math apps during Digitize It and rotated in pairs through an interactive Whiteboard lesson.  I will go into further depth about the technology in a later post about the Daily 5 choices.

I loved this time and really felt as though I could meet the needs of all my students from the special needs students to the gifted children to the students on grade level. Most of my students grew one grade level, if not more than one. I feel this was due in big part to the use of the Daily 5 model.