So for all those who have read "The Daily Five" and "Cafe" I know you would be as excited as I was to go to one of their workshops. I decided only to go to the Cafe workshop because I thought that would be more beneficial. My principal would only pay for one of them. It was one of the best workshops I've ever been to. If you are a teacher/literacy coach/ principal you should definitely go to one of their workshops. I learned so much about how to implement "Cafe" and how to teach reading. I read the book before I went to the workshop but was very nervous about using it in my class. But after the workshop it seemed like perfect sense to make this work in my class. They provided many research based reasons explaining why "Cafe" works.
If you aren't familiar with "Cafe" it stands for Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expanding Vocabulary. You would teach the students specific strategies and practice them as a group. Then you assess all of your students to see what kind of instruction they need. Afterwards you and your students discuss their assessment results and have students pick a "Cafe" strategy to work on during independent reading time and practicing it until they have mastered the skill. The sisters did a wonderful job explaining touch points. Touch points are what they use to assess each conference they have with a child. There are four levels: 1-below standard, 2-approaching standard, 3- meets standard, and 4- exceeds standard. If a child gets 3s or 4s for five or more conferences then they are ready to add a new goal to work on. This method really works because teachers are catering their instruction to each individual student based on their needs. I could go on and on about why I love their ideas! So if you have any questions please feel free to ask. :)
Another wonderful thing about the workshop is you get tons of free stuff. BOOKS, classroom materials, and a year subscription to their website which is super useful!
Keep a look out for my next post which will be about my first week of using Daily 5 and CAFE. :)
