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.