FAQ - How do I hold students accountable to practice the mini-lesson content, or do the structure and choice afforded by the Daily Five negate this immediate practice expectation?
A: This is such a great question. The skills and strategies we teach are a series of lessons that will eventually lead to deep understanding. We intentionally select focus lessons that meet the needs of the majority of the group, but due to vast ability and readiness levels, there will be a few who already know and a few who aren't quite ready for the concepts presented. Therefore, our instruction follows a dependable sequence or pattern:
We teach a skill or strategy to the whole group and students opt in and out of practicing based on their needs, prior experience, and the kind of reading or writing they are currently involved in.
We teach the skill or strategy to a small group who would benefit from a bit more scaffolding and who have a common need for what we are teaching. The small group setting provides students with an opportunity to gain assisted practice with us before we release them to practice independently.
We further teach, support and assess each student's learning through our one-on-one conferences. These one-on-one conversations provide us with a timely opportunity to offer guided practice, modeled demonstration, explicit teaching or sharing of examples when students are ready for it.
This work with small groups and individuals is recorded in our conferring notebook. Our conferring notebook holds our thinking and provides a simple system for accountability. Furthermore, since our work with the gradual release model and brain research has taught us that the brain needs many opportunities to hear, see and practice strategies before they become an inherent part of our learned repertoire, we don't feel the panic that would come if we asked everyone to practice or master a strategy on a given day. Instead, instruction is based on assessment and accountability follows.
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