Daily 5 in Kindergarten....first day and a freebie!

What's happening this Wednesday?  My first REAL day of Kindergarten (I won't count yesterday!)  Today we actually got to a lesson.  You know, besides learning how to line up, walk, get drinks, go the bathroom....etc. etc. etc.!!!

Today we had our day 1 of Daily 5.  I was excited about introducing 3 ways to read a book with kinders.  MOST of them said they didn't know how to read and A LOT of them said they didn't think they would learn to read in Kinder (gasp!)  Their little eyes were HUGE when I told them,  "Yes, you will learn to read in Kindergarten". 
That was the only hook I needed!

So here is a quick rundown of how I introduced Daily 5: Day 1!

• We discussed our purpose for reading everyday.  (to learn to read, because it's fun, to be a good friend (I got this response numerous times), and because we want to be smart).
• Next we talked about how to read a book.  They all said you could only read the words...which made me extra excited to introduce reading the pictures. 
• After that {quick} discussion I got out a book (ABC's of Kindergarten) and we went through the pages.  I invited them to read the pictures and then raise their hand if they could read the picture for the class.  This had double duty.  #1 to practice raising our hand and answer my question, "What did you see?" and #2 to read the pictures! 
• They loved this quick read of the book and they were ready to give it a try.  Now in first grade at this point I would have done a correct model/incorrect model but with Kindergarteners they were DONE sitting at this point.  I quickly had one student show us how to go to a spot and open the book to read the pictures.  I then super quickly placed them around the room to give it a try.  Pure magic.  It's the first time in 2 days they all sat in a quiet spot!

 

• After just a few minutes I got a very loud, "Mrs. Langley I'm done!" so I went straight to my signal on the wall (a xylophone) and rang it.  I told them this was our signal to go back to the rug.  We put our book boxes away and went back to the rug.  
• At this point we started our Independence chart (I realize this is a little out of order!)  It looks something like this at this point: 

 

Of course this is not what I have up in my classroom but I didn't have a picture.  We only wrote down these couple of ideas from today, we will be working on this over the next week and half to 2 weeks before we have it all down.

I feel good about our start!  It was fun to see them so excited about reading.  

For suffering through this long post I also am offering this little freebie.  I started Writer's Workshop today and we used this paper.  We are focusing on drawing a picture to tell a story!

Just click on the picture to get the document!

Phew! I need to go to bed so I'm ready for Daily 5: Day 2!  More to come!