Tweaking Daily 5 Bookmarks

I have received a few questions about my Daily 5 Choice Bookmarks, first mentioned HERE.

I love these things- they help keep me organized (win!) and keep the kids moving through all of their Daily 5 choices (double win!).

Want to make these yourself?

• Find the adorable graphics from Kindertastic HERE.
• Find a tutorial for how to print PDF "bookmarks" HERE.
• Find the bucket label HERE.

I did run into some problems this year that I didn't have last year, so I had to think quick and adjust these a bit.

First, I have less D5 time this year and second, my kids took much longer to get into the "flow" than my kids from last year- it was a lot for them at the beginning of the year to learn both the responsibilities of each choice as well as transition quickly between them- it was a logistical mess some days!

Also, this year I have a wider span of reading levels in my class, so I wanted to make sure that kids were reading with similar leveled kids so they were maximizing their "just right" reading level time and working on fluency with partners that were a good fit.

Enter rainbow bookmarks!

These colorful lovelies have been lifesavers this first trimester! We won't be using them the whole year- in fact, I am planning on going back to the black bookmarks after Thanksgiving- but they have worked wonders for setting us up successfully.

I gave each reading group their own color and they have been going through the rotations together and have also been coming to Teacher Time together. This has helped my kids build their D5 stamina with kids at their same reading levels which has been a huge success with getting Read With Someone and Listen to Reading off the ground. They keep these bookmarks with them from week to week (the bucket is in my closet for now) and have really built up their independence with transitioning and being responsible during D5 time (whew!).

*Note: Please know that I am not advocating for always keeping kids in a certain color group, nor do I address them as the green/red/etc. group. This is only used as a management tool to keep the flow going since time is limited :) In fact, I often collect the bookmarks and switch up who is blue or green or red, so there is not any assumptions that red is the "highest" bookmark or anything like that.

I definitely plan on keeping these handy, especially after our long Winter Break (do your kids tend to forget everything during that time, too?!) when we need to re-introduce D5 and build up our class-wide stamina again.

I hope this idea helps and that putting the tutorials all in one place can make these bookmarks a bit easier for you :)