I am a walking advertisement for Daily Five and CAFÉ. Whenever I speak with other teachers the conversation always lends itself to talking about Daily Five and/or CAFÉ. Sadly for the others it is usually because they mention that they don’t have enough time in there day to fit everything in. Well, anyone who is doing Daily Five knows that comment is an invitation for advertisement. Not only do I fit everything in, my teaching is also purposeful and tapping into the needs of every student in my classroom.
In the last two weeks we have had four visitors in Café 48 who came in to observe the Daily Five. Each visitor left extremely impressed and all I could say was read the book and you too will be able to experience the success we are having in our classroom. That’s it! No hidden secrets. It is attainable for any and all teachers and classrooms.
Now that my gloating is done I’ll get into the nitty gritty of my past two weeks...
As I mentioned in my last blog my focus for the past 2 weeks was “context clues” and “getting to know your characters”. For context clues we learned two strategies, 1) read the words before and after the new word, 2) use your prior knowledge to help with the meaning of the word. A great book for context clues is The Boy Who Loved Words. This book is perfect for talking about interesting words. In addition to this book I also made copies of 3 short articles regarding the USA. We are currently learning about the USA and it was a perfect way to combine reading and Social Studies. Each child was given 3 short articles with new vocabulary words underlined. After reading the articles together (1 in each mini-lesson round), I then made a 2-column context clue chart. The first column was labeled New Word and the second column was titled Context Clue. The students loved pretending to be detectives!
Along with Context Clues we have been “getting to know Edward Tulane”. This is by far the most PERFECT book for teaching character traits and character development. During Edward Tulane’s Miraculous Journey he is owned by many different owners, each of whom give him a different name and circumstances lead him to develop new emotions in each chapter. The possibilities for lessons to teach with this book are endless. So far we have learned about character traits, character development, interesting words, and next week we will be discussing cause and effect. We will analyze the different experiences that he has and the effects they have on him. While reading the book we created a flow chart. Each time Edward Tulane became a new character or gained a new emotion we charted it. When we finish the book we will use this chart to help us analyze the experiences Edward Tulane had and how they affected him.
I seriously don’t want this book to end and either do my kids! Today when we were talking about the book my student teacher said she was so excited to read the next chapter to find out what happens next. One kid chimed in and said, “I don’t want to read the next chapter because that means we will be closer to the end and I don’t want the book to ever end!” I am racking my brain trying to think of the next read aloud. It is SO hard! A challenge lies ahead of me trying to find a comparable book to Edward Tulane and The Secret Garden. Any suggestions?????
Next weeks goals are to chart one or two strategies on the CAFÉ board. I was doing so well with this in the beginning and then lately I’ve noticed that I have not kept up with adding new strategies. I think the reason for this is that we are spending more time on one strategy. This being said I still think it is important to add a new strategy once a week in order to keep things fresh.
Daily Math is moving along. We still have only introduced Math with Someone (Games) and Math with the Teacher. The past two days we managed to get through three rounds. The kids are doing well but I need to slow down a bit and take the time to model the correct and incorrect behaviors. We need to work on whisper voices (very hard when kids are playing games! The excitement gets the best of them :-))
Have a great weekend!
Words of Advice:
Read the book Edward Tulane (you must have seen this one coming!). It is truly an unbelievable read aloud!!!
