Daily Five and CAFE on my mind....

Let me start off by saying I have 24 people coming over in 1 hour! Do I honestly have time to be blogging, no!!!! However, I was in the mood. Okay, maybe I'm procrastinating a bit from everything else I should be doing :-) 

As I said in my last blog choice is going very well in my classroom. We completed two days and the kids loved it! I was blown away by there check ins. It went so fast! The kids were so flexible. For one round I had only one student choose Read to Someone. All I had to do was ask for a volunteer to switch over and they did. Another child's partner got called out of the room half way through his read to someone session. He quickly looked at me and then made the choice for himself to switch to another Daily. In the past I know that this situation would have been chaos! My children this year are so well trained! I know it is due to Daily Five and taking the launching slowly. I believe this is because we went through every potential problem and solved them before they occurred over and over again. 

Of course my classroom is not perfect! On Friday, I had three children fooling around on the carpet during my mini lesson. I had two reactions to this. The first way I always react (ever since starting Daily Five and CAFE) is by asking the children if they want to get better at reading and writing. They always answer yes. Then I say, we know the only way to get better at reading and writing is by doing the Daily Five and actually reading or writing. We are now wasting the class reading and writing time by having to have this discussion. They immediately stop without fail. The second thing I do is stop to do a quick brain break. Since starting Daily Five and CAFE I view my students differently. When they are fooling around 9 out of 10 times I honestly think it is because my mini lesson is dragging on too long or they just need a break! The brain breaks I do are SO quick and easy. Probably take the same amount of time I would use to continue telling the same students to stop fooling around. Some examples are a quick game of simon says or stretching. 

This week I am tutoring a first grader and plan on starting the emergent CAFE menu with him. I am SO excited to move through the CAFE menu in a 1:1 setting. I think this is going to be so beneficial to the child and help me organize my tutoring. I plan on starting off with him by teaching Good Fit Books. I know this is one of the things his mom is concerned with. 

Along with tutoring I also have Back to School Night! I can't wait to talk to the parents about Daily 5 and CAFE in person. I know my love for both will shine through when talking!!!!! I hope to get feedback about how the kids feel. I also plan on doing a quick survey with the kids about their feelings towards Daily Five and CAFE. I am so curious! 

Alright now I'm off to set up for my company! I guess this was my very own brain break :-) Enjoy your week! 

Words of Advice: 

If you see children getting off task, take it as a hint that they need a break! 

Also, try using a timer for your Daily Five rounds. I did this the other day and it really made me think about my pacing. 

Choice!

We did it! We made it through our first day with choice. My kids made me so proud when I looked out at the class and they were all on task and engaged in their work. I was SO amazed by how smoothly it ran.

I started off with a mini lesson on checking in. I explained that they could choose between Read to Self, Read to Someone, and Work on Writing. The kids were told they had to do Read to Self for at least one round. Before hearing their choices, I anticipated that they would all jump at the opportunity to read to someone. Boy was I wrong! Only 8 children chose read to someone, which oddly enough was the limit. Perfect!

I was so impressed by my children and how they individually made decisions for what they wanted to work on. I talked with them about choice and how it is a wonderful responsibility and privilege to have. I spoke about me knowing how to help them as readers, but they are the only ones who know how their brain and body feel at the moment. While talking about knowing themselves so well, we talked about how to make choices wisely. I explained that some of us might want to do read to self first. These particular children may know that they have the greatest stamina during the first round. While other children might choose Work on Writing first. They may be in the middle of writing a story and know they won’t be able to concentrate on reading, while having their writing on their mind. I continued to give examples like these. I didn’t use a book for this lesson, but looking back I think a great book might be “Too Many Toys”.

Before sending the boys and girls off to start their first round of Daily Five, I taught them how to choose a partner. I loved hearing my kids say, “Would you like to be my partner?” and “Sure. Thank you!” We modeled the correct and incorrect way to choose a partner and then they were off!

As I said we did three rounds. I didn’t do any CAFÉ mini-lessons instead I did check-ins each round, and talked about how the kids felt. During check in some kids chose the same choice, while others switched up their choices. After each check in we modeled partner choosing. I honestly don’t think I could have planned our first day of choice to of gone any better!

Next week, I will introduce word work and listen to reading. For word work we are doing Words their Way. Each day the kids will choose from a list of sorts that they have already learned how to do in the past 2 weeks. Together we will model the correct and incorrect behavior for each sort. As of now I may introduce task cards, but no other materials. My goal is to provide the kids with activities that they can do in or out of the classroom. Another activity I may introduce is http://www.spellingcity.com. If you have not ever used this website, check it out! It is wonderful!!!!! This will depend on the availability of laptops. For Listen to Reading I will be using the Raz Kids website. I’ve never used this website, but I subscribed because I’ve heard great things!

On another note, my kids are having difficulty coming back to carpet after each round. Today I started the chapter book “The Secret Garden”. While the kids were putting away their supplies and coming back to the carpet I read a chapter of the book. I found that many of my children were motivated to come to the carpet quicker because they didn’t want to miss the story. Also, I felt more at ease because I wasn’t waiting for anyone. If they missed a page so be it, at least the other kids weren’t getting off task while waiting, and I was using our time effectively.

I’m looking forward to Day 2 of choice tomorrow! I hope to get everything up and running in the next 2 weeks. Only time will tell, I don’t want to rush it! I’ve learned that modeling and moving slowly really makes a difference.

Words of advice:

Try reading a chapter of a book, short story, poem, joke, riddle, or picture book, while transitioning from one round to the next. If the literature is really engaging the kids won’t want to miss it!

 

 

 

Day 10 and other random reflections...

On Friday we continued the launching of Read to Someone! I was so proud of my kids! As I listened in to their conversations, I heard every partner set saying, “I just heard you read…” It was so awesome!!!!!! I told my kids that they made me so happy and of course got many smiles out of them.

I also talked about individual goals and read the book, “Franklin Plays the Game”. This book was perfect! While reading it I checked for understanding, and also talked about the goals that Franklin had, along with the strategies his coach gave him and his friends to use. The goal was to score a goal and win a game. The strategy was using teamwork and practicing. In the book there are few different characters. Each character has an individual goal. For example, the Goose is trying to remember to not use his feathers unless he is the goalie, while the beaver has trouble with long and heavy tail because it gets in the way when he is running. After reading the book I talked about the CAFÉ board and how each student will have individual goals”. We spoke about how each of us are different readers, read different types of books, and need to use different strategies. I also introduced my pensieve, which is called my recipe book to go along with the cooking theme. It stands for: Reaching Every Child, Individually, Purposefully, Everyday.  The kids loved the “Recipe” book! They were so excited to see that they each had their own place in the book. Using the book I talked about my goals as a teacher. I said my long-term goal for the year was to help each student be a successful reader, while my short-term goal was to meet with every child within the next two weeks. I said that my strategy was to keep a record of each conference but I also needed their help! I explained the urgency of them doing the right thing during daily 5 and how this will help me meet with them and their classmates. I think by them hearing that I needed their help, they were even more motivated to do SO well on Friday during our two daily 5 rounds. In read to self, they got to 17 minutes of stamina and in read to someone they got to 5 minutes but could have easily kept going. I stopped them because we had to go to art. During writing time we decorated our writer’s notebooks so we didn’t graph any stamina. I have to admit that I haven’t had the time for many writing lessons. This is why in my last post I mentioned that during the upcoming week I would like to try out a different schedule. I will also be introducing choice. Choice will make me feel much more at ease if I don’t get to a formal writing lesson everyday. At least I will know that they are still writing everyday. 

In addition to trying a new schedule, continuing to build our stamina, and introducing choice, on Monday I will revisit the book “Franklin Plays the Game”. I will use the book to teach a lesson on, “coaching and Time”.  I love when books have so many mini-lesson purposes!  Whenever I revisit a book on a different day, I retell what I previously read. Sometimes I will “pretend” that I can’t remember a characters name or something else from the book. Then I go back and reread that part. I have also broken a picture book up into three different mini-lessons. When doing this I always reread the last page I left off on before continuing. One time one of my students said, “You already read that page!” I replied with, “Thank you for noticing, I always reread the page I left off on to remind myself of what happened and get my brain ready for what will happen next.”

Enjoy your weekend and have a great school week! I know I will have lots more to blog about in a few days!

Words of advice:

Show the children your pensieve if you have one. They will feel so special! Also, talk to them about your goals and the urgency of needing their help to meet these goals.

 

Days 8 and 9

To be honest I wasn’t going to blog today. One reason being that I don’t have any exciting “good” news to share. No record breaking stamina times or cute comments. We did 14 minutes yesterday and 7 today. Then after thinking about it, I decided that if I was going to be honest on this blog, it can’t only be filled with “fantastic” days. The ordinary days will also need to be shared. For my two followers (haha, join in on the fun, follow me!) I want you to see that it’s not always “perfect” in Café 48. I’m new at this, just like many of you!

That being said I’ll move on to Days 8 and 9…. Read to Someone and Pay attention to Punctuation were introduced, along with a review of the previous strategies learned. Read to Someone went okay, but I don’t feel my kids did as well as they could of. I will attribute that to lack of modeling. I did model but in reflecting on it, I don’t think I did it enough. I heard some kids Checking for Understanding while reading together, but others were completely unfocused when their partner was reading. I stopped them when I saw this and we reviewed the “I” chart. We reviewed how to be a good listener and why it was important to share your reading experience. The book I used to introduce “Read to Someone” was Aaaarrgghh! Spider! It actually said the word “EEK!”. So I thought it was perfect.

I don’t have a cute clever comment that my students said, but I do have one that my nephew said. My nephew is 2 1/2 and LOVES to read! Last night I was putting him to bed and he asked me to read him a book. He started off on my lap and then said, “I want to sit here”, plopping his body right next to me. Of course, the teacher in me came out and I said, “The way we are sitting is called EEKK”. Picture wide eyes and a very confused look (remember he is two and I hadn’t made an “I chart yet”, jk, ha!). I continued on and explained that EEKK stood for elbow, elbow, knee, knee and that was how we were sitting. His answer back, “how about we say knee, knee, tushi, tushi!”. HOW CUTE!!!!!!

Back to my class… today after school I stayed for a little and thought about my schedule. After multiple attempts, I am still struggling with finding the “perfect” schedule that allows my kids to have enough time in reading and also fit all other subjects in. We manage to get to everything, but I would still like more time devoted to the daily five. I did tweak my schedule a little bit and decided on a compromise that I will try next week. I noticed on Pro-teacher that many people created a CAFÉ menu called PACE for math. I thought this was a great idea, but also thought there could be a way to incorporate the already existing CAFÉ into my math lessons. The math program that we use is very reading based. Many of the questions that are asked, require a lot of reading. Also, the math program provides literature titles that are related to the contents of the chapter. SO next week I am going to TRY and teach a CAFÉ mini-lesson and relate it to the math lesson of the day. For example, I was thinking I could do a lesson on “adjust my reading rate” or “back up and reread” the problem if you are unsure of what it is asking. Even cross checking will be helpful in math! I hope this works because I think it would be so beneficial to show the children how important reading is for ALL subjects! Also, I think the common language will help!

Next week I plan to do more “Read to Someone” lessons. I would like to introduce and practice all three ways. I am looking forward to teaching the children about Coaching and time! I think they are going to really enjoy that. Also, I plan on doing DRA’s, in order to find out more about my students as readers, and of course I will continue with my individual conferencing. I have appointments set up already with some of my kids!

I’ve come to the end of my blogging for today and I must admit I’m SO happy I wrote! I feel much more at ease and was forced to see the bright side. Not every day is going to be a perfect day, but everyday I will learn more about my kids as learners.

Words of advice:

Go slow! There is no race, and sometimes when we rush to the finish line, we miss out on the best teachable moments.

If you haven’t done so yet, have the kids write on the strategy cards! They love doing so and the board looks great with their writing on it!

 

 

Days 5-7

We are learning so much in Café 48! On our 5^th day we reached 15 minutes of stamina in reading! My kids were SO proud of themselves and so was I. Monday was our sixth day and there were many teachable moments involved.  The read aloud for the day was “Max’s Words” and we reviewed “Tuning into Interesting words”. My children loved this book! They really got the point of what it means to tune into interesting words and how words make the story come alive. The theme of our classroom is cooking, so I explained interesting words as being the spices in food. This connection really helped the kids and after a round of read to self the children were collecting words that were interesting and not just words they couldn’t read. This is a big turn around from last week!

On day 6, I also started individual conferences. This was a little difficult for me because I wasn’t able to have my eyes on the children at all times. What if they weren’t reading? What if my barometer child (children) revisited their old habits and I wasn’t there to ring my bell and stop them in their tracks? While these thoughts were going through my mind I managed to get in two conferences. The first was with a strong reader. The goal that we choose together was expanding vocabulary and the strategy is using pictures, maps, or diagrams. He is reading the book “Swordbird””.  At the beginning of the book is a map. Together we decided that he was going read his book and use the map to help him better understand the events in the story. His name was put on a post-it and he posted it under expand vocabulary.

Next up was a girl who is struggling a bit with her accuracy.  Cross-checking had already been introduced to the whole class, so together we decided this would be a great goal and strategy for her to work on. I modeled again what it looked like to cross-check by asking if the word looked right, sounded right, and made sense. Tomorrow, I have appointments with both students to check in with them!

As I was meeting with these students my student teacher said that two girls were talking the whole time! OH-NO!!!!!! My nightmare has come true (ok a little dramatic), now what! I had to intervene, quickly! On our way to library, we will call this “confer and walk”, I talk to these two girls about their talking. I asked them if they were building their stamina while talking, and of course they both said no! Then I asked why they thought they weren’t able to read the whole time. One of the girls said she couldn’t read the words in her book. Of course this led to a discussion about “Good Fit” books and why it is so important. I scheduled an appointment with her (yes all while walking to library!) and felt very good. Today (day 7) we had that appointment and went through the books in her book box. She only had 1 good fit book.  After talking about “good fit” books we read the book and revisited “reading pictures”. She is an ESL student who I know will benefit from this strategy. An appointment is scheduled for her on Thursday.

No, I didn’t forget about the other girl. During one of our mini lessons we again reviewed good book nooks. Today this girl came over to me and said, “I am going to stay in my book nook, but turn my body the other way.” It worked! Yay! I will meet with her tomorrow to further discuss this and choose a goal and strategy for her to work on.

Other strategies I’ve introduced are “Monitor and Fix Up” and using “Prior Knowledge”. A great book for these strategies is Livingstone Mouse by Pamela Duncan Edwards and Henry Cole. This book is also FANTASTIC for choosing a good spot to read. This was the first way I used it!

Tomorrow, I would like to introduce Read to Someone. The strategy I am going to talk about is attending to punctuation, while using the read aloud, “Leonardo the Terrible Monster”.  I am very excited to introduce another daily!

Words of Advice:

Try using the same read aloud throughout all rounds. Doing so has helped me to review previous strategies and also keep my mini-lessons shorter.

 

 

Daily Five and CAFE Days 1-4

The first week of school has come and gone! I have to say it was very successful. Only problem is I couldn't find time to fit in the "fluff" stuff because I was too busy teaching reading and writing! Not too bad of a problem, is it? 

After countless nights of staying awake over the summer, thinking about Daily 5 and CAFE, we made it through the first week! At times I ask myself, why was I so anxious to start this? The only answer I can come up with is I REALLY wanted it to work! I truly believe in these two resources/structures and the benefits of them on both my teaching and my student learning. 

SO..... how did the week go? Well by Friday we made it to 10 minutes of Stamina in writing and 5 minutes in reading. Not bad for third graders (I hope :-) ) Everyday we go through the 10 steps of muscle memory and my kids are really getting it! They are even using that big word "stamina". How cool is that? Seriously, I've had not one but a few kids asking me, "how much stamina do we have today?" LOVE IT!!!!! The children are enjoying the modeling (of course they love to do the incorrect modeling , but hey whatever works!). I've been working on trying to keep my mini-lessons short and somewhat succeeding at this. I say "somewhat" because it is a work in progress. I know I repeat myself over and over. Next weeks goal.... stop repeating things, they get it! They heard you the first time, and there is always the next round to review. 

When I first started reading and introducing D5 I thought there is no way I will get 5 rounds in! Well, I think there may be because in week one, I've been doing three. It works for my kids. Short but sweet mini-lessons (I know, I know, I'm working on it) and then we are off to build our stamina. Come on back... review, next strategy, and we are off again. LOVE IT!!!!!! After there stamina is built I will keep it at three. One CAFE strategy mini-lesson, writing mini-lesson, word work mini-lesson.

So far, read to self has been introduced and Word on writing. Work on writing is at a different time because I would like to keep Writer's Workshop separate. CAFE strategies introduced are: check for understanding, back up and re-read, cross check (we even did the hand motions, I didn't think I could do them with third, but they liked it), and tune into interesting words. My kids are using the word "strategy" when they refer to themselves as readers. 

Week one has come and gone and I'm very impressed! Next week we will continue to build our stamina during RTS and Work on Writing. I will work on keeping my mini-lessons short and sweet. Another goal is starting to work with small groups. During RTS I want to pull over a small group of Barometer children, so I can provide them with strategies to use when they are losing focus. I would also like to try some of the techniques the sisters use, such as a timer, small carpet, and maybe even play dough. 

Words of advice- 

Model, model, model! 

Try stretching before sending the kids off to build their stamina. I have been reading about Brain Gym exercises and they are working. My kids like the stretching and I think they need them. 

Special thanks to the 2 sisters for this fantastic idea of Daily Five and CAFE and two my Proteacher Friends who have been on this journey from the beginning. We totally understand each other :

Check back often....