Hey friends! This post is mainly going to be for my teaching buddies, but feel free to stick around if you have nothing better to do. 🙂
Last time I posted on the structure of The Daily 5, but today I’m going to focus on The CAFE, which is the most valuable piece, in my opinion. As mentioned last time The Daily 5 is a framework to teach reading independence and essentially split the reading block into 5 “rotations”: Read to Self, Read to Someone, Listening to Reading, Working With Words, and Working on Writing. I explained before that these rotations were very malleable and could be changed to fit the needs of your students. I’ll explain how I organize my rotations at the end of this post.
Click HERE to view the Daily 5 on Amazon. Click HERE to view The CAFE Book.
The CAFE is an acronym for the four strands of reading: Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expanding Vocabulary. Determining where students fall in these strands is the key to maximizing your reading instruction and small group time. The great thing about CAFE is that students are able to articulate which strand(s) they need to work on and what strategies will help them improve, thus fostering independence and making them responsible for their own learning. For elementary students, this is a huge concept.
CAFE board
One of the staples of a Daily 5 classroom is a CAFE board that stays up all year. Each letter in the acronym has it’s own column. The first 5-6 weeks of school is devoted to individual conferencing with students to determine which strand they need the most work on. Each student then puts his/her name on a sticky and places it under the corresponding strand. As the weeks progress you teach and review strategies for each strand and add it to the column. This board eventually serves as a reference point for students throughout the year as they work on their reading skills. Below is a picture of my CAFE board this year. I did a movie star theme, so the board says, “Our Broadway CAFE”. As you can see, it is still the first quarter so not all of our strategies are up, but we are getting there!
After reading goals have been identified for each student you pull your reading groups based on reading STRAND, not reading level. You can do both, but I have found that pulling by strand is much more effective and actually makes a lot more sense. You can have a kid on grade level fluency-wise, but have very low comprehension. You can also have a kid who is great with comprehension, but is not reading fluently. See? Ah, the light bulbs are comin’ to life!
The AWESOME thing about both The Daily 5 and The CAFE is that they were written by teachers. What do teachers like? Cut and dry specifics. At the end of the book Boushey and Moser literally spell out the first 6 weeks of implementing the program. Seriously. They tell you EXACTLY what to do. It’s like having 6 weeks worth of lesson plans written. Done. Bam. Check.Mark. Yeah, we like that. Also, The CAFE gives you a full page lesson plan for EVERY READING STRATEGY. Think of it as a cheat sheet for every strategy in every strand. The CAFE comes with a CD that has all of the forms and strategies you will need to get started. What more could a teacher ask for, eh?
Let’s Rotate!
edit: I revamped the way I did my CAFE groups a few years later to be much more differentiated. You can view that post HERE.
So moving on to how I do rotations. Here’s the deal, 3rd grade is the first year students take a standardized test. It’s a huge year for them and we work HARD to get them ready. So I feel that my students need more written, tangible practice in some areas that go beyond the suggested 5 rotations. Boushey and Moser are or were multiage teachers, and for that setting their suggested rotations are perfect, but in a single grade setting that uses a specified curriculum, I needed something different. I’ve tweaked and tested and tweaked over the past four years over how to do it best and still make it differentiated for students, and this is what I’ve come up with:
So I made this puppy from a 12×12 multiplication pocket chart like the one found HERE. The little cards included in the multiplication chart I repurposed by creating the student name cards, the rotation header cards (across the top) and the hundred or more “work in progress’ cards on THESE sticky labels by Avery, which I found at Wal-Mart (but were cheaper on Amazon). The labels are the exact size of the squares provided with the multiplication chart, so I just stuck them on there and bam! Done. My rotations are listed across the top and each student has their own row of “work in progress” cards. When a student has finished their work on that rotation they flip the card over to the star. This way they can keep track of what they have done and what they need to finish, which falls in line with Boushey and Moser’s concept of students choosing what they work on. On my front board I have the tasks listed for each rotation, so they know exactly what is expected. One of the main reasons I did it this way is because I have some students who will not have all of the same rotations due to them being pulled for reading intervention or resource, so I wanted the freedom to change out rotations as needed for specific students.
The one rotation I’ve changed is the CAFE rotation you see on the far right. During this rotation students may choose to do activities that are listed on the CAFE menu under their reading strand(s), which is posted right next to my CAFE strategies. It looks like this:
This is the first year I am organizing my rotations this way and it is working out beautifully! It took some prep on my part, but I’m glad I did it!
The Pensieve
The last thing that has become invaluable to my reading instruction is what Boushey and Moser call “The Pensieve”, which is a conferring notebook where you keep all of your info on each student and each reading group. Y’all, this was EPIC for me as a teacher. Before I had assessment reports, running records, observations, etc., in folders here, there, and all over the place. I felt very unorganized and knew it was inhibiting my effectiveness in my reading instruction. Now all of that is over with a simple $3 notebook and some dividers. It literally was a facepalm moment when I watched the video on Boushey and Moser’s website on how to form the pensieve. Here’s what mine looks like:
Inside you’ll find four sections:
Calendar: Here you’ll have a checklist to see very quickly how often you’ve seen/conferenced with students both with reading and writing; a monthly calendar to make ‘appointments’ for student conferences both for reading and writing
Class: This is where you’ll put any class reports you get, such as reading assessment summaries
Strategy Groups: This is where you will write your observations and plans for your guided reading groups
Students: This section has a tab for each student and is used to keep individual student reports and your conferencing notes
Doesn’t this make total sense? My students are very used to seeing me with this big notebook now. I tell them from our first conference not to be intimidated by it, that I use it so I can remember what we worked on because as much as they think I know everything about everything, I secretly do not.
So that’s my shpill on The Daily 5 and The CAFE for now. Go buy them tonight. Read them tomorrow. If you are truly interested in learning more I HIGHLY encourage you to go snoop around Boushey and Moser’s website: http://www.the2sisters.com/ I also encourage the one month $39 access to all the videos/forms/downloads available. Once you have seen everything and downloaded what you need to, you don’t need them anymore, so the year/6 month membership is not really needed, imo. The videos are truly a god-send if you are really trying to implement everything. They have a video on everything from designing effective classrooms to what read to self should look like in upper elementary. EXCELLENT.
Happy teaching you beautiful people!
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