Starting the Daily 5 and CAFE

Well - we've been back at it for a week now, and I'm EXHAUSTED!  But it's a good exhausted, and I'm so looking forward to the year.  I've a got a great bunch of students this year, and I'm excited to share this year with them.

So, after our Daily 5 and CAFE book study at We Read, We Blog, We Teach, this summer, I've been excited to start these strategies with my class.  As I shared in my last post, I got my bulletin board set up (click HERE to read my last post and see where I got my printables for my bulletin board).  

We are doing a "Daily 4" in my classroom.  We have left out "read to someone".  We are still in the process of setting everything up.  Last week we started each class with Wise Guy's power point presentation for introducing the Daily 5.  After a few slides, and some discussion, we've been modelling good reading behaviours and building our independent reading stamina.  I started with 5 minutes on Wednesday and have been building one minute per day.  (I have many students who are ready for so much more, so I'm hoping the few that are keeping us from longer times will be on board really soon).  As you can see from the first picture, I have laminated the daily 4 signs and I am writing our daily tasks on them with a dry-erase marker.  We have also been introducing the CAFE strategies.  As I stated in my last post, I am using "CRAFT" as our acronym for CAFE strategies.  This week we were able to study two new strategies (a little slower than what the book recommends, but it's working for our classroom).  

The students are keeping a Daily 4 / CRAFT notebook (one notebook separated by a sticky note in the middle of the book).  Each time we learn an important concept in Daily 4 or a new strategy in CRAFT, the students are adding to their books.  This week in the Daily 4 section they wrote about "I PICK" for book choice, and made a web for why we need "trust" for our Daily 4 program to work (I let them work in pairs for this).  For the CRAFT side of the book, they will be recording the strategy, the "secret to success" (from the CAFE book), and "what it means to me" - where they will write a reflection about how they will use this strategy.

We've been practicing applying our CRAFT strategies during our independent reading and listen to reading sections of the Daily 4.  For our listen to reading, instead of the kids listening to reading in groups at a tape recorder or on ipods, I'm using "listen to reading" for our read aloud.  Thanks to the fabulous suggestions for read alouds given to me in the comments of this post, I decided to start our year with Wonder, by Jay Palacio.  We are LOVING this book - I'm so glad it was recommended to me - thank-you!  I have a few students in my class with different disabilities, so starting the year with a book that reminds us of the importance of empathy is so important!  When I am reading aloud, I am modelling the strategies we've discussed for CRAFT, and I am asking them questions from our Comprehension Question Fan at the end of each chapter.

The students are really responding to our Daily 4 / CRAFT strategies during our language program.  At the end of today, I gave them each a sticky note to comment on our learning goals - something they have learned or has stuck with them through the week.  I am LOVING their responses!  :)

Stay tuned for a whole new year of Math Journal Sundays starting tomorrow ... 

Happy Saturday!!!