I receive a lot of questions about how I run my literacy block. At my school, our schedule is blocked out, but I have freedom to arrange my own blocks (if that makes sense). So my literacy block is 9:40 – 11:15, and this is what I’ve decided to do with it:
We start right away with our minilesson. Students are fresh from recess and eat their snacks while I read and model strategies.
From there, students move into their Daily 5 rotations. (Our school using CAFE & Daily 5, but I don’t have time to rotate students through 5 stations daily, so I make sure some aspects of Daily 5 are integrated throughout the day!)
I keep this as simple as possible. I occasionally change it up, but rarely!
I have a chart in my room so students know exactly what their options are for each rotation.
During this time, I pull small groups. You may notice I do not include myself as a rotation. I do this in order to provide flexibility for myself. Sometimes, I don’t need to work with all students in one group, depending on the skill I’m teaching. Sometimes I pull students from multiple groups. I probably end up doing strategy groups more often than guided reading groups, so it just makes sense to me to leave myself out of the rotations. (I use The Reading Strategies Book (affiliate) to hold my strategy groups… more on this later!) I try to pull students when they are working on buddy reading, since I know they’ll be buddy reading at my table with me!
After our rotations, we take a quick brain break (thanks GoNoodle) before transitioning into writing. I do a quick (10 minutes or less) grammar lesson at the beginning of our writing time. It’s definitely hard to find time to fit it all in!
Writing looks a little bit different every day due to lack of time. On a typical day, I teach a minilesson and then students have the opportunity to try it with a partner or on their own.
Any further questions about how I run my literacy block? Leave a comment below, and I’ll get back to you!
