Daily Cafe

So it's been a while since I've posted. This first half of the year has been very busy(common core, daily five, CAFE, crazy kids, reading, RTI! etc.). I have absolutely loved implementing the Daily Cafe with my co-team member Mrs. Wyatt. I feel so connected to my students this year and they are becoming such amazing readers. They constantly come up to me and are like "Ms. Gibson I'm inferring this....." Or "look at this word I found, can we put it on our word collector?".  In addition to the Daily Cafe we have started book clubs in January. The clubs meet twice a week and when they are meeting, the students complete read to self with their books. Students select the book they want to read with their group. The children have gotten extremely good at summarizing, questioning, picking out parts from the text and analyzing them, and reflecting on their meetings.

With that being said here are positives about the Daily Cafe:

Students are becoming more fluent readers, more, accurate, and thinking critically.
Students love picking their own books to read.
They love the different rounds.
Their writing has become deep and thought provoking.
They are learning lots of new words.
The variety of genres being read have increased.
It has been amazing having flexible strategy groups and being able to confer one on one.
Students have grow close with their elbow buddy and most pairs work really well together.

Here are some of the negatives:
There isn't always time to fit in all the rounds.
Currently, I'm only doing three rounds a day for about 15-20 for a round.
Sometimes my mini lessons last longer than the 7-10 minutes the sisters usually do.


But obviously those who have started the Daily Cafe in their classroom can agree that the positives outweigh the negatives tremendously.


One last plus, our school just got 30 iPads!!!!!!!!!!!! So Mrs. Wyatt and I are slowly implementing them into our rounds. We have used the StoryKit app during Work on Writing time. They are creating stories with their elbow buddy.