Daily 5 Chapter 6-Stick with me to the End

Hello there!
So..... how do I look? Nice, huh?! Nice new blog name and design, thanks to Barbara at Grade ONEderful!
This is my first Daily 5 link up since I got the new look! I'm so excited to share with you! She did such a great job! Ok. Enough about me...

I'm happy to be linking up for the continued discussion about the Daily 5. I can't tell you how excited I am to implement this in my room and this chapter has gotten me even MORE excited!!!

Work on Writing
I must say, I've always loved my writing station. It's on a nice little round table and I had their supplies in a little bin and I even sometimes let the kiddos write with colored pencils or markers, just to be nice. And everyone did so well in that station....until about mid October, when they realized, I don't want to write, I've got these great markers here, so I'll just draw a great picture. And we would come back together at the end of stations and we would talk about what the writing station was and what we should do there. And the next day, I would have another mini lesson on what I Can do in the Writing Station. And the kids would start writing stories, etc. again, for about another week. Then, they were back to pictures again. By March, I'd given up and I would just listen to the details about the picture that was drawn, in the writing station.
I'm really hoping the Daily 5 lessons and introductions will really help me tackle this writing problem. The funny thing is, my kids usually like writing because I give them a choice in writer's workshop and they mostly enjoy writing and sharing their stories. But in the writing station, I wasn't carrying over what they were doing in writer's workshop. I hope to really improve this, this year.

Word Work
I am soooooooooooooooooooo happy I am finally going to have something to do with all these games I have stored away in my word work tubs.
I don't really know why they stay stored away. I guess the problem has always been that the children were not independent enough to be able to play the games successfully. I'm rereading my post and I'm really sounding like a sucky, controlling, type A kind of teacher. I am really not that way. I just have expected them to be able to do things independently when I haven't done enough scaffolding before I let them go. The funny thing is, I'm always the teacher that says, You have to have your stations up and running for 6 weeks before you can do guided reading successfully. I guess I'm going to have to walk the walk now, huh?!
Well, I am loving the great ideas I'm getting from you guys! This is definitely one of the best book studies I've gotten to be involved in. Thanks everyone!

If you have some suggestions for me on how to start these parts of Daily 5 or to build the student's Stamina (this is my word for the year) I would love it if you left a comment!!!

Oh, before I go, I do want to give you a link....my school district has done a great job on the resources they've given us on our website. They finally have even come up with a "Suggested Spelling Sequence" for the year that goes along with our Common Core Units and Standards. You can find the link for first grade here, and scroll down to Suggested Spelling Sequence and it's broken up into the 6 units we study in the year. If you teach another grade, start here, then find Elementary Curriculum and click, then click on Elementary Curriculum by Grade Level, then click on your grade level and look for Suggested Spelling Sequence. I think all the grades have them. Kindergarten's is listed as Suggested Phonological Awareness, etc...  There are a lot of other great resources on these pages. Our curriculum coaches have worked very hard!

Hope this gives you some ideas!!!!