Monday, January 30, 2012

les cinq au quotidien

The Daily Five and Café are part of a literacy model developed by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser.  


Daily Five station signs (printable)

Daily Five tracking strips for students (printable)

  • cut into strips, students place in their envelope for the week, few days, colour each task as it is completed
  • teacher can see at a glance where students are at even if they were absent

  • for tracking over 12 weeks, students keep this in a folder or glued to the inside cover of their journal to track where they have worked


stratégies de lecture de Madame Bernice:
Améliorer ma précision
Enrichir mon vocabulaire

You'll notice that some students wanted a 'loupe des sons' in their pocket as well.

Actual version pictured here (download).

Watch this xtranormal video for a quick overview of how The Daily Five work.  Your students can easily create their own videos using extranormal, (oui en français!).  You may need an account, basic access, like an app, is usually free.


  1. This sounds great, but can I do it with a Grade 3 French Immersion class?



    1. Our school does Daily Five from grades k-4 French Immersion and English. The books are helpful to explain what it would look like at different grades, Daily Five and Café by Boushey and Moser.

      This is a link to a Pin Board on PInterest of a FI teacher who uses Café and Daily Five:

    2. Thanks Shannon. I will do that. What about the tracking strips that are printable? Are those only for Kindergarden? Can I use the exact same ones for Grade 3?

    3. I posted a chart that I use for older students and for grade 1 later in the year. See the photo and link above in this post for an example and printable.

  2. I am interested in the pockets below the chart for each child. I'm not sure I understand how the popsicle sticks work. does each number represent a work station? are the sticks located in the work stations? do they change around during the work period?

    1. Bonjour Katya. I numbered the popsicle sticks 1-5 to represent each work station. If Levi comes in on Monday and chooses station 3, Work with Words, he puts the #3 popsicle in his envelope. The next day or the next session if you do 2 sessions a day, Levi has to pick something other than 3. Often students couldn't remember what they had done or wanted to always go back to the same station and would avoid others. With this system students and I could tell at a glance which stations they had done and what their remaining choices were. It also solved disputes if I had a substitute teacher. Some of my stations could accommodate 6 students at a time, some only 3 or 4, I only left out enough sticks for however many students the station could accommodate. If there were no more #3 sticks you had to pick something different. Does that make sense? It's a trick to find a system that's easy to maintain for myself and students. Ultimately I wanted them to be self-directed but in grade 1 they still needed supervision and follow-up to be sure they were visiting every station. I had about 4 ipads and those were circulated too, if you had that stick in your pouch it meant you could use the ipad or laptop. Once all 3 stations were visited and all 3 sticks were in an envelope the students put them back in their cans and started over. If students were absent they may end up with only 2 or 3 while others had already done all 5, that was just fine, they continued to work through the 5 and started over when they were done.