CAFE Chapters 5 and 6…

I am so glad I hung in for these two chapters….These are what I as a mostly visual learner need when I am learning new strategies and tips for managing and teaching my classroom…EXAMPLES!!! 

Chapter 5 is all about the individual conference with students and the mini lesson.  One take away from this chapter is reminding students about their goals.  Many students I have found in my own experience fail to see the connection to why we do anything at school other than occupy their time or they think the goal to say to teachers is to get better at reading.  While that is a valid goal, goals for reading need to be very specific and tailored to the learners needs.  Moser and Boushey would remind the learner of their goal.  It was one of the parameters of the conference itself.  Most students in the examples were ELL’s and could not articulate their goals or remember them.  So a reminder at each conference is well served!

My favorite highlighted strategy is flip the sound and I can see it being very helpful for my students.  Also combining the check for understanding strategy and pulling it into a summary!  That is really going to work wonders for my kids this year.  I have taught it in a similar way in the past but it never connected well…I can see my kids bridging the strategy with this approach!  Especially since the Sister’s have a menu of really concentrated strategies and they are repeatedly hit over and over as the school year progresses!

This is echoed in Chapter 6 for whole group lessons…Keep it short for short attention spans and then allow the bulk of your time to be spent on strategy group lessons and individual conferences. Hit this scaled down selection of the best and most used reading strategies often and build upon them daily.  Having said this,  I don’t know how in the world I will get in three whole group sessions a day.  I know I can do two a day but I still will have to work into that….We have a new reading series and a pacing guide in development so that has to be followed.  I can see me having to make CAFE fit into this mold and not the other way around.  This is a formality at best but this is my teaching reality.  I know from this chapter that I will need to hit comprehension and accuracy strategies in whole group mini lessons and my fluency and expanding vocabulary can be taught very easily through modeling and think alouds during read alouds. 

Tune in next Wednesday for Chapter 7 and 8!!!!  Thanks for stopping by today!