CHAPTER 5

During Chapter 5 the two sisters present a series of examples of conferencing sessions they have performed with children who are all working on a range of strategies.

The first goal they introduce is Comprehension with the strategy of ‘check for understanding’. They conference with students who are both beginning readers and advanced readers. Sevila is a beginning reader who knows her letters and sounds and can decode words easily, however struggles with understanding.  To help Sevila with this strategy Gail demonstrates how she can stop and think about what she has just read. After reading about 5 pages Gail stops and retells what she has read.  Gail mentions to Sevila that once she can retell the story she can move on. If she cannot retell the story she needs to reread that part. The secret is to think about the story, as we read not just read the words.

Inna, is an advanced reader who is working on the strategy ‘check for understanding’ too. Because she is an advanced reader Gail choose some picture books that would support her vocabulary and story line. These were the kinds of texts she needed, with more support for understanding the text and vocabulary in it. Gail used the same approach to model the strategy for Inna as she did with Sevila. She asked Inna to stop at the end of each page to see of she could retell what had happened. She told Inna to ask herself ‘who and what’. Who did we just read about and what were they doing? She mentioned that they would meet with Inna daily to move her forward into more sophisticated strategies to improve her meaning.

The next goal the sisters looked at was Accuracy with the strategy of ‘flip the sound’.  Again they met with an advances reader and a beginning reader. Jaeger was a begging reader who knew all the letter sounds in isolation. When he made an error reading or something didn’t make sense he new to go back and reread, however he could not correct himself.  He was reading the word stop as stope. To help him with this mistake Gail taught him how to flip the sound.  I really liked this strategy as this is a common mistake kids make in Kindergarten and this is a great way to help correct themselves. Gail gave him some sticky pages to put in his book every time he used the strategy to help reinforce this.

The flip the sound strategy was also used to help the advanced reader with the same problem. When teaching this strategy, whether it is for a beginning reader or an advanced reader, we follow the same sequence.

·      Model with the word the child has read within his or her text.

·      Continue modelling a few times from the child’s text.

·      Have the child practice flip the sound a few times

·      Give the students the task of practicing the strategy during Read to Self and record the words they practiced.

·      Set another appointment to review the strategy.

The next strategy Gail introduced was Cross Checking.  When using this strategy with a beginning reader, Gail encouraged the student to look at the pictures in the book for a clue. Look at the picture and look at the first letter of the word, does it make sense? I have found myself using this strategy a lot in Kindergarten

For an advanced reader the strategy changes, as they tend to read books with out pictures. Students still cross check but they are looking for understanding as well. Students need to re read the sentence and cross check which word in the sentence doesn’t make sense and why. When student reread the text Gail encouraged him to read each work slowly and cross-check it by asking himself ‘Does the word I am reading match to letters on the page, does it sound right, and does it make sense? Sound familiar J

The third goal was Fluency focusing on rereading the text.  During this meeting Gail meets with a students who was taking along time to read. This was from years of reading texts that were too hard for her. To improve her reading Gail asks her to read some books that are a little easier for her. Reading these books over and over again will help her read it fluently and with expression. I love how this example is exactly what we are doing with our Home Reading system and encouraging kinds to improve their fluency.

The last goal was Expand Vocabulary using the strategy of ‘tuning into interesting words’. Ikman could read anything but struggled with comprehension because he didn’t know what the words he was reading meant. Gail encourages Ikman to write down any words he doesn’t know into his personal word collector and during Read to Self Ikman can write down words he doesn’t know onto post-it notes in his story. Gail makes a note to meet with him to show him how to find the meaning of the words the next day. Gail also talks about Table-Talk books. I thought this was a great idea. Students can take their table-Talk book home and share the new words they have learnt with their family.

I found this chapter really interesting as it gave me an idea on how to ‘meet’ with the students. I haven’t introduced meetings with my class yet as a lot of them are reading under level 10 and we are just getting into picking our own activities during daily 5. However, I have found myself modelling some of the strategies during Listening to Reading when I read to the kids. 

What strategy did you introduce first?

How often are you conferencing with students?

What's the best time to begin this? Should it be dependent on a reading level?

Look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Kristen

CHAPTER 4 - CAFE

This Chapter focuses on how to conference with Students. The sisters realized the need for students to set their own goals for reading and the need for more explicit teaching of how to reach their goals. The biggest shift for a teacher in doing conferences is that they move around to meet with the student, the student doesn’t come to them.

Emphasised in this chapter was the benefit for shorter, more focused time with student on a more regular and consistent basis. 

The sisters found that teachers differed in their conferencing observation, instruction and goal setting techniques across the board and were taking much longer than them to conference with each child. For this reason they created a conferencing sheet as a guide with icons to show what to be looking for and what to do at each stage of the conference. 

By using the CAFÉ board it gave the students the language to talk about reading and how to improve it. Instead of students trying to get to a level 22 reader as a goal, they now have reading strategies as a goal. Once mastered, they can clearly move to the next strategy with a sense of achievement about their reading.

From Conferencing to Coaching

This part of the chapter the Sisters address the issue of timing and presented the point that we need to change our focus from longer conferences to a more focused, quick coaching style technique whereby the teacher comes alongside a student for shorter more regular times.  On p56 it gives a clear overview of what an average coaching session will look like. The rough guide is

Prepare  - 30 sec

Observe – 1min

Reinforce & teach 1min

Practice – 1 min

Plan 30c

Encourage 15sec

These time frames are only rough guidelines and it was clearly noted that the most important part of a coaching session is to be fully present with the child for the short focused time you have them and not be so rigid in following a schedule that you forget the needs of the individual child.

The key is having clear goals and having them recorded so time is not wasted each session trying to figure out where a child is at.

Seven Steps

1.  Check calendar for appointments for the day

Note: Not all children will have appointments regularly. They are made on a needs basis with each child.  A key point is that we often neglect able readers when trying to meet the needs of less able readers.  The way the sisters monitor this is by having two recording systems. One is the Calendar where students book appointments and the other is a ‘Keeping Track’ sheet where teachers have a class list and date next to each child’s name each time they meet with them. This way teachers can easily see at one glance any students that have been neglected and plan to meet with them.

2. Prepare for Conference

The teacher quickly glances at the teach points from last session and the ‘take away’ focus point. This time is very short and is usually done whilst walking to the area the child is reading in. It is important to note that the children don’t come to the teacher as this disrupts the children by calling out for kids whilst they are trying to focus. The teacher goes to the student. The sisters observed that this was also an excellent way to monitor social behavior and check on students on the way to the next student they were meeting with.

3.  Observe Child and Listen to Reading

The teacher makes note of what the child is reading and asks them how they are going. They check if the child is using the strategies that they were taught last time.

4. Reinforce and Teach

This is always started by the teacher telling the student what they noticed about their reading. The aim is to move the child forward from where they’re at without overloading them with too much information. Keep this to about one minute.

5. Practice Strategy

This gives a chance for the child to practice the strategy taught with the teacher present. This time is important for checking to see if the child understands what their goal is and what it is they need to do to improve their reading.

6. Plan

If a child has mastered a skill they can move to a new strategy. This is worked out by looking at the 4 -5 touch points and seeing if the student can do them.  They move their name to the strategy part of the CAFÉ menu board whilst the teacher records their progress. Together they decide on a plan of action and book in a meeting time on the calendar.

7. Encourage

This is the most important part. Leave the child with a positive and clear direction of where they are going next and how they are going to achieve it by the goals you have set together.

By having these shorter session, teachers will be able to meet more regularly with students, meet their needs more effectively and use their own time more productively.

My Thoughts!

I found the time guideline really helpful. This has really helped me pick up the game in terms of getting to more kids and having a quality focused time with them. 

I have found the setting of small achievable goals ideal and helpful for the kids so that they know what they need to be working on. I've used milo as a way of tracking my kids for the day. I make a certain number of milos for my kids and my aim is to, by the end of the day, have conferenced with each child. It works really well because I can just say, " Who had a milo today?" and I instantly know who I havent seen. I can also at a glance look around the room to the drinkers and know whom I'm conferencing with without disturbing them.  

I've really loved moving away from the kids coming to my desk for assessment and enjoyed lying on the floor with them or on the couch. 

How about you guys? 

What's been working for you in terms of getting to as many kids as possible?

How do you manage to do the teach and two rotations before SRA? 

What strategies have worked well for you in terms of time management??

Kelly

Chapter 3 - CAFE Step by Step

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a detailed step-by-step explanation of how to implement CAFÉ. The clearer our understanding of why we do what we do and how to do it, the greater success we are likely to have.

Chapter 3 is the first really meaty chapter in the book. Because it talks about an implementation process, my encouragement would be to read and reread it. There is so much detail and direct speech, it would not be possible to do a just summary without copying everything verbatim.

Day 1

1.

1st Read-Aloud – Whole-Group Strategy Lesson 1 –Check for understanding : This is always the first strategy taught because reading is about comprehending and making meaning in the process.

2.

2nd Read-Aloud – whole Group Strategy Lesson 2 – Cross Checking: Used when trying to read the words of a book.This is especially important when students are tackling new or unfamiliar words.

3.

3rd Read-Aloud – Whole-Group Strategy Lesson 3 – Tune In to Interesting Words: The key thing during this time is tuning in to interesting language and expanding vocabulary. The purpose is not to define the words.

Day 2

Whole Groups strategy Lesson One – Back Up and Reread:Using this strategy successfully requires for the students to really pay attention to what they are reading in order to think about the meaning. It may also involve enunciating the words clearly.

Note:

Teach the strategies cumulatively referring to the ones taught with each new reading. As Gail and Joan say, keep using the menu metaphor. That way, students understand that they use a variety of strategies when they read, not just one.

Another important thing is to constantly refer to the menu bypointing to it or touching it as you teach and review the strategies. This way the CAFÉ display becomes something that the students have a background knowledge of andpersonal experience with.

From Whole Class Lessons to Individual Conferences( aka – Assessment to Instruction)

The seven steps as indicated in fig 3.2 (pg 39) are:

1.

Assess individual student.

2.

Discuss finding with student

3.

Set goal and identify strategy with student

4.

Student declares goal on menu and in notebook

5.

Teacher fills out individual reading conference form

6.

Teacher fills out Strategy Groups form

7.

Instruction

What are the key ideas or thoughts that really resonated with you as you read chapter 3?

If you have already implemented CAFÉ , what helpful hints or ideas  would you provide to others in our specific environment?

CHAPTER 2 - The CAFE Notebook & Record Keeping Forms

If you know me, you know I love using post it notes (or sticky notes as ‘The Sisters’ call them). They work for a while but a better way of recording was needed. After many attempts at keeping vital information together, the Pensieve was born. It is divided into 2 sections.

Section 1 – Teacher Notes

This is for organizing and planning time with your class, noting when you will confer with individual students and small groups and track how often each student has been met with. A simple calendar is used to make appointments with each student. You may speak to individual students about another meeting time and penciling this time on the calendar.he calendar is also used for strategy group meetings

Keeping Track Form is a simple grid with the name of each student on it and the date of the conference. The goal is not to meet with each student the same amount of times, rather the meetings take place on a needs basis (in regards to reading & writing).

Strategy Groups Form is used to create flexible groups based on similar goals of students. These are not ability groups, rather groups made up of children working on the same strategy eg: fluency.

Section 2 – Dividers/Tabs

Each student has a section of the notebook (CAFÉ Menu, Reading Conference Form & Writing Conference Form are included). At the top of each form there is space to note each student’s strengths & goals. Space is available to record instruction provided to help the child meet the goal (individually, in small groups or with the whole class). Space is also available to record what steps the child will take with teacher assistance to meet their goal/s. As goals are achieved, extra pages are added.

I am very motivated to get this happening in my room (obviously much better than what I have been using).

What have you found works when using this style of record keeping?

What folders/dividers have you found most helpful and user friendly?

Kaelene Harris

LET'S GO TO THE CAFE!!!

I'm so excited about our next book study. Many of us went ahead and have been working with CAFE by Joan Moser and Gail Boushey for the past couple of terms because we simply couldn't wait!


The success of Daily 5 has led us to want to expand our learning and our quality teaching with our students.


Gail and Joan had a similar journey. They were so amazed, just as we are, at how independent their students had become and the extended amount of time their students had following the introduction of Daily 5 to practice reading and writing. They had time to spend with small groups and students who were struggling. They then started coming up with new questions in their teaching practice, just as we have been as well! So, they set about developing another research based methodolgy.


They had concerns and questions about assessment. They knew the skills that were being taught but were worried about how little follow through they seemed to have with students after connecting the two.


Gail and Joan have come up with CAFE as a basis of wha they felt was missing.


C - Comprehension
A - Accuracy
F - Fluency
E - Expanded Vocabulary


The acronym CAFE also reflected the desire to have a selection of strateges for students to choose between when accessing the menu.


Gail and Joan believed that this new structure added coherece to their work with students.


I really relate to the honesty of their accounts. I too relate to Gail's story of being great at taking assessment and tracking student progress and they challenge in taking it to the next level of really knowing what students needed to learn, it wasn't clear or concise or manageable. This frustration led to the following questions:


1. How do we organise all of our assessment data so that we can make it work for us?


2. How do we keep track of each child's strengths and goals so that we can maximise our time with each child?


3. What about flexible groups? Is there really a way to make them flexible?


4. How do we present strategies so that students can access them when needed and practice them until they are proficient?


Joan goes on to explain the simpleness of the CAFE approach, ith the core elements being;


1. Teacher keeps notebook with key record keeping forms including calendar, individual student conference forms and strategy group planners. (Kate and I have been experimenting with evernote on the Ipad, making this a digital notebook and I hear the Sisters are developing an App to help with this as well)


2. Students meet with teachers during literacy sessions to conference, be assessed, receive explicit instruction, set goals and to follow up on previous goals. The teacher keeps track of progress and schedules future conferences on the calendar and the student posts their reading goals on the CAFE chart.


3. Teachers plan small group instruction based on clusters of studens with similar needs in one of the CAFE categories. These groups are flexible and based on needs rather than reading levels.


4. Whole group insruction is based on needs that emerge for many students, often using texts from whole class read alouds or other shared material.


The research base for CAFE is quite extensive and outlined well in Chapter 1. I found it most interesting that Pressley and Taylor's research indicated that the more whole class teaching offered, the lower the academic achievement in any school. There is a growing body of research to support this.


Gail and Joan do not consider CAFE a finished product and acknwledge the work of teachers all around the world refining and enhancing the system they developed. My aim at MACC is that we would continue that journey and that we refine and develop CAFE to suit our context.


I look forward to moving through our book study and from Kaelene with a summary of Chapter 2. In the mean time, I'd love to know what you think about the following ideas.


Did Gail and Joan's story resonate with you? Have you had similar concerns?


What are you most excited to learn about as we go through this book study?


Happy Reading!


Deb

Continuing the Daily 5 Journey!

As we embark on a book study for CAFE I'd really love for us to keep talking Daily 5 and to continue sharing our learning and our trials and tribulations as we use it in our classrooms. Feel free to use this post to keep the converstaion and interactins going about all things Daily 5!

Deb

Daily 5 Reflections

As we head towards the end of our first Semester of implementation with the Daily 5 and for some of us CAFE as well, it seems like a natural point to stop and reflect on what we have noticed in our classes and across our school.

As a Teaching Learning Project (TLP), we are well underway with our data collection and the results have proved very interesting. Overall we are seeing students progressing through the reading levels and increasing their stamina rapidly. I had some great advice recently from Leanne Woodley, a Consultant from AIS, about mapping our journey against the Quality Teaching Framework for further evidence of our changes in practice and pedagogy and I look forward to our staff having a chance to look at that in Semester 2.

What is difficult to measure are the attitudinal changes in both, us as teachers and in our students, towards Literacy learning. Should anyone ask me to express these in numerical value then I shall be a disappointment to them! I know, that I know, that I know, that the change is HUGE! To say we are better Literacy teachers as a result of our research and implementation of Daily 5 and CAFE is simply the biggest understatement ever. We have a new professional language, we have a new understanding of methods of managing the Literacy session and if that wasn't enough, we also have a greater understanding of how children learn to read and write and what teaching strategies we can use to move them along.

Our students as well have a new language for describing themselves as Literacy learners. They have a new understanding of their responsibilities in the learning process and they have a whole new world of strategies to draw on as they practice reading and writing. When I hear a student tell me their goal for improving their reading and to hear them actually articulate the strategy they will use to achieve that goal....well, I just get a wee bit excited! To hear a student during read to someone ask their reading partner if they need time or a coaching session and then have them share possible strategies with their buddy....well, I just get a BIG bit excited! To see and hear them cheer in classrooms when their teacher tells them it's Daily 5 time...well, that's ENGAGEMENT!!!!

When I see and hear our Prep students, our 4 year olds talking about Daily 3 in the Prep class, I just become amazed at what our little ones are capable of. Last week I had a visit from Finn. He showed me his Daily 3 card with a stamp on each activity. He told me that for Read to Self, he read a story using the pictures. For Word Work, he wrote his name in the sand and for Work on Writing, he traced a hopping picture. Frankly, he blew me away! What a bonus for our Kindy teachers next year when these little ones come all prepared!

As we get ready to launch into a book study of CAFE and hear from our colleagues who are already on the CAFE path, I think it timely to celebrate our achievements. A huge thanks to all those educators out there on twitter who have set a great example for us, shared resources with us and answered our seemingly simple questions along the way. You have all been an invaluable support. To the most amazing staff in JS, your commitment to research, trialling, sharing and always seeking to be better teachers is simply outstanding.  It's onwards and upwards Ladies!

Would love for you to all share your thoughts to date on our TLP. Just like the language we are teaching the students at the moment in evaluating lessons they are engaging in, let's go with:

3 what I love/learnt/went well things about Daily 5 and 

1 would be even better if..... 

Look out for chapter 1 of CAFE coming your way by Friday!

Deb

Daily 5 as a Teaching Learning Project at MACC

So it's official! We have set Daily 5 up as a Teaching and Learning Project at MACC. We believe so greatly as a whole staff that the success of Daily 5 to date is worth tracking and worth reporting on.

The aims for our project are as follows:

1. To improve students motivation and stamina in Reading.

2. To ensure all students meet the appropriate stage level of achievement in NSW BOS Reading outcomes.

3. To develop new teaching pedagogy based on current professional research in the area of Reading.

We are well underway with this project and have formalised our methods of collecting data. As a staff we decided to take a four pronged approach to collecting this data. We wanted it to be formative data that was useful along the way and not collected just for the sake of proving the point that we are all convinced of...that DAILY 5 WORKS, but to give us some quality information about our students and their progress as well as some diagnostic information about their individual needs to help us in planning for each student.

Here are our four prongs:

1. Standardised Reading Assessment using The Waddington Standard Reading Test 1.

2. Reading Recovery Levels following regular benchmarking from Running Records.

3. Reading Behaviour Rubrics.

4. Data analysis of individual Pensive's and student reading goals.

Of course we will keep tracking our stamina minutes as we go along and celebrate all the little achievements along the way!

Do you know of any other practices we could use for data collection?

How will you plan/schedule these assessment tasks in your classroom?

Looking forward to your thoughts/comments and reflections!

Listening to Reading.....ideas required!

Great to start a chat amongst our staff about Listening to Reading today. We are trying to come up with ideas for how to expose all students to Listening to Reading. There are so many great sites out there on the web that are excellent and more importantly free!

I found this symbaloo mix tonight:

 http://www.symbaloo.com/mix/reading2ndgrade 

When you open up this page there are more than 20 links to stories being read aloud! Click on them and have some fun. Some even have follow up activities and/or printables as well. Georgia has also listed several links on the previous post about web resources.

I think the biggest challenge we face is not finding stories read aloud but, how do we listen to them! Our Stage 2's have access to the IPods which is very helpful. Of course that will take some sharing etiquette as we mostly all do D5 in the morning session. Splitters were one suggestion. In that case do we need some more headphones? Will this work? We also have access to the Listening Posts. Is this a practical solution? How can we use these effectively? I believe that the way we manage Listening to Reading will determine the most effective way to use the resources we have.

How are you doing Listening to Reading in your class?

What are the resources you mostly use?

How do you manage student access to the equipment eg whole class or small group?

Would love to hear some ideas on the topic from everyone!

SO MANY RESOURCES OUT THERE ON THE WWW!

I found these great pages with links and documents galore to do with Daily 5.

This first link is terrific

http://k-5literacyconnections.weebly.com/daily-5.html

There are some videos to watch as well as some scheduling examples for 60 and 90 minute Daily 5 activities. There are also some good links to word work activities.

The second link has some excellent downloadable resources for D5:

http://www.sanjuan.edu/webpages/gguthrie/balanced_literacy.cfm?subpage=127464

Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page for some fantastic downloadables.

Finally, this one is mostly for the Kindy teachers:

http://www.sanjuan.edu/webpages/gguthrie/balanced_literacy.cfm?subpage=127464

This is a wonderful resource in google doc format that I read about on twitter. I tweeted the owners and requested access to it and @MMEGrinder26 and @Mr_Fines generously shared their curriculum map for introducing CAFE and D5 in Kindergarten.

These are great people to follow on twitter and moderate the #Kinderchat hashtag. Lots of Kindergarten resources shared on this hashtag.

Deb