Serve it Up! What's On Today's Cafe Menu

This summer I spent an extensive amount of time researching best practices in reading instruction. I have always used a mix of whole class, small group and individual teaching approaches; however, I have struggled with how to mesh them all together. Another area of personal struggle for me keeping the rest of the kids working independently while I meet with groups and individual students. I have tried centers in the past, and I know many teachers who are able to use them successfully, but I am not one of them. I find centers to be a ton of work to set up and manage. So, I was very excited to find Daily 5 and CAFE.

You will be amazed with the focused reading instruction that your student will receive this year. If you would like to know more about it, I have attached a parent letter here

We began Daily 5 today with "Read to Self". The students worked on how to correctly read to themselves. We practiced for 3 minutes. Tomorrow we will increase our time, and in the next few weeks, work our way up to 20 minutes. By slowly increasing the amount of time the students are expected to work independently we are building reading stamina. I expect all of my students to eventually read for 20 minutes without getting up, talking, or "wasting time" and I know they will all accomplish this goal.

During CAFE today, the students learned two reading strategies that they should be able to tell you about, Check for Comprehension and Cross Checking. I will post about each of these important strategies in the next week or so. After we learned about each strategy, we placed them on the CAFE menu so that we can all access them on a daily basis. Tomorrow we will practice these and learn two more.

Please talk to your child about Daily 5 and CAFE. Ask them which reading strategies were "served" on today's menu! See you tomorrow!

The Cafe board. Where reading strategies are served daily.