CAFE Chapter 3 Step-by-step: The First Days of School

I remember my first days of school each year.  My bulletin boards were up and full of cool laminated letters, words, and "people".  It is a paradigm shift for me to look at the "blank" CAFE bulletin board on p.28.  Did any of you try this?  It could be on windows, closet doors, a white board, or a bulletin board.  What do you think about making it interactive?

How do the upper grades (4th and 5th) use a read aloud like noted on p.32?  Those look like too juvenile of titles for those ages.  Maybe I am wrong....

I like how they emphasize that if the TEACHER does not constantly "think aloud" and physically point to the bulletin board or CAFE strategies like check for understanding or crosschecking then the students will never really buy into it.

7 Steps from Assessing to knowing the Instruction the student needs

• Assess individual student
• DRA, CBM, running record, what else?
• Discuss findings with student
• How comfortable are you with this process?  Do kids use the phrasing that you are modeling?
• Set goal and identify strategies with student
• This is the hard part.  You want to hit a home run the first time when you individualize it and pick a strategy for the student to practice independently.  How can we connect the strategy we are picking for students in PK-2 to match our PLA common area of retelling????
• Student declares goal on menu and in notebook
• I like that the students are an active part as they write, review, and record/post it.
• Teacher fills out Individual Reading Conference form
• This would be an excellent artifact to share with parents.
• Teacher fills out Strategy Groups form
• This part confuses me a little.  If you are not meeting with each student equal times, how and when do you rearrange the groups for guided reading based on CAFE input from individual conferences? Or do you always have one of each of the 4 groups going and then rotate the kids as needed so the membership is always different from week to week?
• Instruction
• Imagine how great this system will work in a year or two when the kids have had it in K, then 1st, then 2nd, etc.....

CAFE Chapter 2: The CAFE Notebook & Record-Keeping Forms

Amen on the love/hate relationship with sticky notes!  I remember my first year teaching 5th grade in Houston.  I had a blue 3-ring binder.  Each grading quarter had a divider between.  Each student had a black piece of white paper in each quarter.  Each student needed to have 3 anecdotal records every 9 weeks in this binder.  Boy, what started out great in August was not pretty when my principal looked at it at the end of 1st quarter! The notes were subjective.  The notes were random.  The notes did not guide instruction.

In case you weren't sure, here is the definition and a picture of pensieve:
Pensieve

The Pensieve as seen in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

A Pensieve is a stone basin used to store and review memories. Covered in mystic runes, it contains memories that take physical form as a type of matter that is described as neither gas nor liquid. A witch or wizard can extract their own or another person’s memories, store them in the Pensieve, and review them later. It also relieves the mind when it becomes cluttered with information. Anyone can examine the memories in the Pensieve, which also allows viewers to fully immerse themselves in the memories stored within, much like a magical form of real world virtual reality.
Users of these devices view the memories from a third-person-point-of-view, providing a near-omniscient perspective of the events preserved. Rowling confirmed that memories in the Pensieve allow one to view details of things that happened even if they did not notice or remember them, and stated that "that's the magic of the Pensieve, what brings it alive".^[16]

I think it is an AWESOME idea to use staff development time to create this data collection notebook and personalize it.  We can do this in the future, maybe?  Any scrapbookers out there at TJ?  I am NOT!

Section 1: Teacher Notes

• Love, love the calendar.  It sounds simple, but keeps us (both the kids and teacher) accountable
• Keeping track form will show, again, that fair is not equal. This needs to happen to close the gap....
• Strategy Groups form is a new way of grouping for guided reading!  I mentioned this in a previous blog.  We need to group by CAFE principles, not DRA levels.  Thoughts?
• What are touch points?

Section 2: Dividers/tabs for each child

• Do you already have a laminated version of the "Literacy CAFE Menu"?  What an awesome reference....
• Reading conference form and writing conference could be a "job-embedded" way to track progress for a BAT student with a skill that is being evaluated?

Happy reading....I am popping in the CD now!

CAFE Chapter 1: The Beginnings of the CAFE Menu Assessment System

So, I am really excited to see that the authors followed up their "theory" book, The Daily 5, with an application that tells teachers "how" to make this work.

C=Comprehension
A=Accuracy
F=Fluency
E=Expand Vocabulary
Can you visualize what each part of CAFE looks like in your PK-5, Special Ed, Core, or Title classroom?

Have you been able to integrate your reading assessment data into your instruction?  I think this is where we lose momentum at times.  We learn something new, we know we need to use it, we know the data shows areas of concern, but we struggle to find ways to match the strengths/goals of each child with the assessment data and our daily lesson objectives.

Here are my thoughts on their 4 "core" elements they note on p.6-7:
1.Would it help if we all had the "same" notebook set up for TJ to use in each classroom?  It would include the forms, calendar, and templates.  Maybe that is an idea to start for August?
2. I LOVE the idea of students setting reading goals for daily or weekly work.  Are any of you doing that?  Thoughts?  Goals lead to accountability.  What gets monitored gets done.
3. All of you use guided reading groups.  Are any of you creating these groups based on CAFE needs, not guided reading levels (all the 14s in one group, all the 20s in another group)?
4. Is your whole group instruction based on what you pick up in conferences and guided reading groups as skills that all or most of the kids need?  Or is your whole group instruction driven by the district "plan"?

The thought from Chapter 1 that has me doing a lot of thinking.....
"The more effective classrooms have a distribution of whole-class, small-group, and side-by-side instruction.  The more whole-class teaching offered, the lower the academic achievement in any school."
Wow, powerful.......

OK, so one more thought that made me go hmmmmm.....
"no negative impact for assigning the best readers more student-directed work" and "we no longer have to fret about meeting with each and every child one-on-one each day"
What does this mean for above grade level student readers?
www.thedailycafe.com

Chapter 7: Putting it all Together and Troubleshooting

So, I know that I did not assign Chapter 7 to you to blog about, but I was so impressed by this chapter that I did it anyway.  Feel free to join in...

Jugglers spinning plates- I love that analogy!  It is true, isn't it?

Students need choice.  Are you letting them choose by now?

Status-of-the-class conference!  I love that idea.  It sounds formal and is needed!

Students should leave the gathering place one group at a time to avoid the "stampede effect".  So true!

Daily 5 should help us realize that many times our students had truly been involved with unauthentic busywork that did not influence their learning.

Margaret Mooney, "Independence is synonymous with accountability."  Amen!  We have to trust them to carry out our expectations and to accept the responsibility to do so.

Has your room arrangement changed because of the Daily 5?

I love the idea of practicing the skill of ignoring the teacher.  That is so hard for some of our highly distractible students.

Do you have tech support helpers identified in your room?

I like the "Above, Pause, Whisper" signal to get students' attention.  Do any of you use it?  What do you use?

I like how they end this section by addressing how to make this work with intermediate students.  If you can only get to the Daily 3, then so be it.  I like the way they focused those 3 and the rationale behind it.

I hope you enjoyed the book.  It was an easy read and one you could reference over and over.  On to the CAFE!

Chapter 6: Work on Writing and Word Work

Work on Writing
I love the distinction of how Writer's Workshop is about writing using a taught strategy or genre.  Working on Writing is sustained writing of their choice.  That is the "fun" writing or at least should be in my opinion :)

Launching Work on Writing
Do you notice the kids being excited to work on writing?  Why do you think this is or is not?

Focus Lessons
I like the technique of showing them how to underline words they don't know and move on.  Do you have their "Writer's Notebooks" in their book boxes?  I don't know how much of that I have seen.
Are we getting 30 minutes of writing every day in primary and 45 in intermediate?  That seems like a lot of time??

Word Work
I struggle with this one as I know there are as many ways and programs out there as there are teachers.
How do you get them to recognize spelling patterns in your room?  How do you get them to internalize high frequency words spelling patterns?

Launching Word Work
Do you use Wikki Six?  I love those as a teacher.
Do you use this part of the Daily 5 since we have iSpell at 3rd-5th?
Have you noticed that as you add new Daily parts that they are "better" at it as you have scaffolded it with them?

I think it is crucial to note that they say to give them time to just play with the materials before expecting them to use them for spelling.  I like that they have it divided into thirds: Materials setup, Materials placement, and Materials cleanup.

How do you make sure to leave enough time for clean up AND to gather them back and check in?  That is always so hard......