Our Reading Cafe

The new year brought some changes to our classroom. I took down students' Hopes and Dreams from one of the bulletin boards and replaced them with our Reading CAFE menu. Students are working on new Hopes and Dreams right now, which are star-shaped and will hang from the ceiling. The CAFE board is a place where we will keep track of the many reading strategies children have learned and practiced. Right now, I am reviewing many of the skills/strategies I've taught previously and we're adding them to the board. CAFE stands for Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expand vocabulary. The blank pages below the CAFE headings are where children will eventually post sticky notes with their names on it to indicate their reading goals. These goals will be based on some informal assessment I am doing with children right now. 

We have learned and practiced dozens of reading strategies--those that we've reviewed are listed under the category they refer to. For example, "reading sight words in a snap" helps children be more fluent readers, so this skill is listed under "Fluency" on the CAFE menu.

Since we now have a CAFE board, many of my reading mini-lessons take place in our "Downstairs Library," so that I can refer to the strategies listed as I teach. This is to help make this board more meaningful and useful for students.

Beginning Tuesday, students will end Reading Workshop by choosing one of the "Daily 5" choices for the last 20-minutes of our morning literacy block. They will decorate index cards with their names on them, which they will then put in the pocket chart to indicate which Daily 5 activity they will do that day. 

For Fun Friday, we did a literature-based art project inspired by the book Elmer by David McKee. Here is a sneak peak. It was so quiet and relaxing when everyone was working on drawing and painting their "Elmers." I actually got to sit down and do an entire project with them! I got so absorbed I forgot to take photos of students doing their artwork. This project is not done yet, but here's a look at what we've done so far!