CAFE Menu for Intermediate Students FREEBIE

I have been using The Daily Five and CAFE as my reading workshop structure for the past five years.  I read both books very early on and got to meet The Sisters just as they were gaining national attention.  I just love these ladies!  They have taken me from a good teacher to a great one.  Because of them, I have met so many like-minded people who have functioned as my digital mentors.  I just hope that I can given back to other teachers out there.
As one of the few pioneers with extensive experience using The Daily Five and CAFE with intermediate level students, I get lots of emails about how to adapt Daily 5 and CAFE.  So today I am sharing two adapted CAFE Menus.  One is for students transitioning from "learning to read" to "reading to learn".  It has less accuracy and fluency standards and more comprehension standards.  I use it with fourth graders.  The second menu is one I created to use with fifth graders or advanced fourth graders.  This menu is completely comprehension.  I recently recalibrated both menus to reflect the Common Core standards.   
I'd love some feedback on them.  Please leave a comment below.

Meeting the Needs of Advanced Students

     As much as I love Daily Five, I do miss the guided reading groups from the past.  I felt I accomplished a lot when I got to see two or three groups each day.  There are times that I would like to meet with more than one group, but I haven't been able to get my head around how I could make that happen.  That is until I purchased this new book by Evan-Moor:

 (This book comes in several different grade levels.  

Click HERE and it will take you to Amazon for more information.)

     I am a big fan of Evan-Moor's learning game books.  They have books for Reading, Vocabulary, Science, Writing, Math, and Geography.  All the materials are in full color and ready to use, which makes the games extremely quick and easy to put together.  They are also one of the few publishers that have learning games for the upper elementary grades.  

     In addition to the learning games in this book, it has answer keys and, most importantly, short assessments for each game.  It was the assessments that really got me thinking.  My advanced students are very hard-working and conscientious.  They are willing and capable of playing a game independently, but just having them play a game unsupervised does not hold them accountable enough.  So, using this resource, I decided to assign them a game each day, have them complete the matching assessment, and check themselves using the answer key.  The short assessments will keep them accountable for learning and the self-checking component will make it less work for me. :)

     The end of the year is a great time to try out new strategies that you may want to adopt for the entire year next year.  It's especially important during the "doldrums" after high-stakes testing to keep students motivated for the rest of the year.  Changing things up a bit can breathe new life into you students.  

     What kinds of things are YOU trying out in the last few weeks of the year?  How do you use learning games in you classroom?  How do you keep students accountable for information learned through game play?  I'd love to hear from you!

T.E.E.R.

No, dear reader, I did not misspell the title of my post.  T.E.E.R. is an acronym to help my students reach new heights in answering open response questions about the main idea in non-fiction.
It all started with the book Close Reading of Informational Text by Sunday Cummins.

 

In this book Cummins gives a lot of great lessons for teaching students how to find the main idea in non-fiction.  She like to emphasize the strategy of synthesis, which she teaches by using a framed photograph.  Showing the students a framed photo she asks:  Of all the photos I own, why did I decide to frame this one?  Students start with the details in the picture and then use synthesis to help them understand the significance of these details.  This leads to why the picture was framed.

As I was reading this book, I did some synthesis of my own.  We have been learning about non-fiction text structures for the past two months.  I realized that knowing the text structure gives us a huge clue as to the main idea.  By adding the strategy of synthesis, we can understand the significance of the details in the text.  And, finally, we can show off all these strategies by using T.E.E.R.:

T = TTQA (turn the question around)

E = evidence from the text

E = explain why this evidence is significant

R = restate the TTQA

 I combined all of this information on a poster for my students showing how we start with a "mission", then use the text and a strategy to create a well-written open response.  Although I have talked about all these things before, I have never combined them with this kind of explicit teaching before.  The initial results have been outstanding!

What kind of skills can YOU combine together?

To conclude, no post would be great without a FREEBIE.  I created this worksheet to help my advanced students improve their sentence fluency.  I listed eight words that begin complex sentences.  These are words like although, after, if, since, and because.  Students fill in the rest of the sentence after the complex modifier.

 

Masterful Mini-Lessons

So when life gives you lemons...
This was a particularly tough week for me professionally.  I had a big term paper due in my Master's class.  At the same time I realized I had to make a major "course correction" in Math.  The students were just not getting the material and I knew that they wouldn't be ready for the test I scheduled on Friday.  So I spent several days scrambling to get more (and different) material to teach the topic in a new way and to fill an additional week of instruction.
At the same time I realized that I am unhappy with the quality of my reading and writing mini-lessons.  I am way too task-oriented.  I do too much telling them what to do and not nearly enough time showing them how to do it.
Squeezed in between all the professional reading I have do to for my Master's, I am also reading Lucy Culkins' A Guide to the Writing Workshop Grades 3-5.  This book is a breath of fresh air.  Her words really resonate with me.  It is not about doing more, it is about setting up our instruction and instructional time purposefully, and choosing our instructional language carefully.  I find myself actually quoting from the book when I conference with my students! Her book really gets you into the heads of intermediate grade students.  I realized, reading her book, how I could "beef up" my mini-lessons in both Reading and Writing.  So I created some scaffolding to get me started: a template to help me develop my lessons with care and thought.  I hope it is useful to you.  Please leave a comment if it is.

Students with Poor Comprehension

Helping Students Who Lack Comprehension During Individual Conferring

It has happened to every intermediate grade teacher.  That dreaded moment when you sit down with one of your little friends... and it's obvious that he/she is not comprehending.  Your heart just sinks.  It is certainly a difficult moment and your response can either turn this student around or lead to years of problems.  But at that moment, all you feel like is a deer in the headlights.  There are so many things you could do, but which is right?
1.  Be honest... and proactive.  Say, "It looks like you are missing a lot of the important information in this book. Let's see if we can figure out what the problem is.  Are you willing to help me out or should be put aside this book for a later time?"  I know this sounds heartless, but we just can't have kids continue to read a book they are not comprehending- no matter how popular it is, no matter how much they want to read it.  The child needs to know that, if you can't figure out what the problem is and fix it together, reading this book is just not an option right now.
2.  Check the books reading level against the child's.  If the level is too high for the child, be brave and tell them they can't read it...YET.  Go over to the bin that had the book and help them find a lower level alternative.  This is why it is best to arrange your classroom library thematically, rather than by level.  I put the child's independent level on the top of my conferring page so I always know it.
3.  If the level is right, do a 1 minute fluency check.  Have the child start at the top of the page and read for one minute.  While they are reading, listen for their prosody (expression and use of punctuation).  After they are done, count the words.  I keep a piece of paper in my pensieve with all of the wpm goals for different reading levels.  If they read too slowly or with lack of prosody, go back to step 2.
4.  If the level and fluency are OK, back up and reread.  Find the part of the book where the child had good comprehension.  Mark it with a stickee.  Have the child read from there.  Make sure they commit to reading differently the second time, otherwise they will get the same result.  This means they have to verbalize a strategy.  Model if they need encouragement and write it on the stickee.  Here's the important part:  Check back with them at the end of the time period to see if comprehension has improved AND...
5.  Have the child put a second stickee when they finished and hand it to you.  Congratulations, teacher!  You now have homework.  Your homework is to figure out why this child is loosing comprehension.  Read the story (preferably from the beginning) with a critical eye and see if you can come up with one strategy the child can do to improve their comprehension.  At this point, the strategy will probably need to involve writing something down since just thinking wasn't enough. With one child, I found that the book had six completely different main characters.  I had to write them down, along with a little blurb, to remember them all!  I suggested she do the same. Once she did, she came to the conclusion on her own that the book was too hard.  Another little friend of mine was having a hard time with a historical fiction book set at the time of the Revolutionary War.  I realized he needed a better understanding of this time period to understand the events of the book.  I suggested he take a break from the book and read "If You Lived During the Revolutionary War". He did and, when he went back to the book, he found his comprehension much improved.
6.  Whether you are able to come up with some specific strategy or not, plan on meeting briefly every day with this child until their issues are resolved with this book or they choose a better book.  How do you manage this brief, but intense, support?  Have your regular reading group go to your group spot and read their choice book while they wait for you.  Do a brief check in with your targetted child.  Find out what page they are on and have them summarize the book so far.  Also have them commit to a strategy.  If all seems well, send them off to read.  Run your small group.  Check in with your targetted child once more, either during their reading or at the end of the reading time. Doing this will force them to become a more active reader because you are raising the level of accountability.  With most children, I find three days in a row is enough.  After that, gradually reduce the level of your support.
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Read to Someone

My Love-Hate Relationship With Read to Someone (And a Freebie)

     True confession time.  As much as I love Daily Five, I dread the day I introduce Read to Someone.  A big part of it is the age of the children I teach.  Younger children may love to read together and I'm sure it really works.  Older students are much more social.  They are starting to test the absolute authority of teachers and their friends become much more important.  Put two upper elementary students together and I guarantee they will be talking about things other than reading.  
     They are also hyper-aware of reading levels, no matter how well you disguise it.  Poor readers are embarrassed by their books.  They don't want to be seen with "baby books".  Intermediate level books are also longer, so the idea of "I read- you read" doesn't work because it does serious damage to comprehension.
     So how do I overcome my natural aversion to Read to Someone?  Here are a few tips and tricks I have learned.  I hope they will be helpful if you teach fourth grade and up and want to use The Daily Five. 
1.  Save RTS for last.  I save it for when the kids start to get a bit antsy with the typical choices, like around holiday time.  That makes it all the more special.  Because I make a big deal about it, I also tell them that it is a privilege.  If they can't do it well, they will lose it.  
     I tell my students (and it's the truth) that I check in and confer with partners much more often than "singles", so they better be on their "A" game! When I confer with partners I usually act like a coach for one or more of them, telling them what to say to their partner.  I will write those down on stickees for them to refer to later.
2.  Take a lot more time to model RTS.  Intermediate teachers are lucky in that we probably don't have to spend much time on the foundational skills that primary  grade teachers have to teach, such as "good fit" books, and the three different ways to read a book.  Even with Read to Self, intermediates develop stamina much more quickly.  So use that gift of extra time and spend it on Read to Someone.
     What you will need to model is the conversation part.  This is where sentence starters come in.  Copy them on a sheet or post them on the wall.  A "fishbowl" is a good way to model this.  This is where two kids do the modeling and you provide the "color" commentary.

3.  At first, assign reading material and a specific task.   Assignments can be from the basal, a chapter from your read aloud book, a webpage, or Time for Kids.  Shorter is usually better.  Tasks can be marking or writing on stickees or filling in a traditional worksheet.  Make sure students know what to do when they are done.  What? Assignments?  Isn't this what we are trying to get away from?  Yes, but assignments help you determine how successful your partnerships are.  Be consist with the rule that if they are not learning, you will separate them with a silent signal.  Remember the privilege part?  No learning- no privilege!  Try it again later in the year.
4.  Rename Read to Someone "Read with a Coach".  I know it's just semantics, but kids take their job much more seriously when you tell them they are a "coach" rather than just "someone".  Since most kids have had a sports coach in their lives, have them brainstorm what a coach does and how they do it. I have designed some Coaching Cards for this purpose.  Click the link for the freebie!
5.  Partners need to commit to reading the same book...and each have their own copy.  As I previously stated, "I read-you read" with two different books does not work with chapter books, which are too small to share.  Each child needs his/her own book and needs to be following along.  What happens if, a ways into the book, one person doesn't want to keep it up any more?  They are welcomed to separate.  The person who wants to keep reading can continue with that book or pick another.
6.  Variety is the spice of life.  Read to Self is really the best for intermediates.  That's what they should be doing the most of.  If you find a student is always picking Read with a Coach, try to determine why.  If a certain book is really popular, involve others and form a book club that meets a few days a week.  Bring in Listening to Reading, if you haven't already, for low level students to "save face" and read a more challenging and intersting book.
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