First Things First...Read to Self

If you are familiar with the Daily 5 the 5 components of the Daily 5 are Read to Self, Listen to Stories on Tape or CD, Work on Writing, Word Work, and Partner Read.  Students rotate to all the activities every day with mini lessons in between each rotation.  I could NOT make this rotation schedule work for me because of time and specials. 
I only had time for 2 or 3 rotations each day, but I felt very strongly that Read to Self should be happening DAILY....period!  So here is what I have worked out in my classroom.
Every morning when students arrive they drink milk and silent read for 30 minutes.  (We do 2 or 3 rotations of the other activities later in the morning during Daily 5 time. More on this in a later post.)  While my students are reading I am holding reading conferences.
During Read to Self time, my students are reading books from their book bags.  Each student has a Book Bag that has books they have selected that are at their independent reading level. Fridays are Free Read Fridays and students can read any book from our room they would like.  The goal is they will use the I PICK method taught earlier in the year. :)

How do I know that  my students are getting books at their independent reading level?  Well, I have two classroom libraries in my room.

This is my leveled library.  The books are leveled using the Fountas and Pinnell guided reading levels. The baskets are given a color coded sticker rather than the actual level so as to not put too much student focus on the level. After I conference with students I direct them to the appropriate basket where they can pick out 10 books for their book bags. 

This is my classroom library that is divided into a fiction and nonfiction section.  Books are organized into various categories.  Some are organized by subject and others are organized by author.  Each basket has a sticker indicating what books are in that location. On the back of each book their are two stickers.  The first sticker is a fiction or nonfiction sticker so students know what section of the library the book belongs.  The second sticker is a label sticker that matches the sticker on the basket.

This is the nonfiction section of my library.

This is the fiction section of my library.