In our classroom, we will use the structure of CAFE to focus on reading comprehension strategies.  During Daily Five, two of our whole class mini-lessons will focus on CAFE strategies.  I will also meet with small strategy groups and individual students when I finish meeting with guided reading groups.

Our CAFE board shows the four strategies we will focus on- Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expanding Vocabulary.  As we learn skills for each strategy, we will post them below.  The most exciting part is that students will have the chance to declare the strategy they are working on.  Taking ownership of comprehension strategies is an important part to becoming exceptional readers!

This is our CAFE board.  You will declare which strategy you are working on by putting a sticky note on the cactus page below your strategy.  We will make a list of skill cards for each strategy as we learn them and display them underneath each strategy!

 

Here are the skills we will work on this year:

 

Your TICKET to teaching comprehension!

Into the Book *A great site with activites and lesson plans for comprehension strategies.	Comprehension Strategy Book List *A list of picture books you can use to illustrate and model comprehension strategies.
Comprehension Bookmarks *My comprehension bookmarks for students to use so they have their skills in front of them at all times!	Scholastic Comprehension Cheat Sheet *A quick guide for several comprehension strategies.
Reading Rocket *A great website full of printables and information on teaching reading comprehension.	Elementary Reading *Thank you, Baltimore Public Schools, for sharing this wealth of information on reading comprehension!

A Photo Tour of my Pensieve

I got this great binder from Zazzle!

Inside my pensieve is my calendar on the left where I can schedule conferences.  The piece of paper on the right is where I keep track of who has had reading and writing conferences.

Next are graphic organizers (just incase!) and a quick refrence sheet from The Sisters with comprehension "hold ups" and possible CAFE related solutions.

Next are my group lesson plans.

After the group lesson plans, are the individual student dividers.  Each divider is numbered... so that I don't have to re-type names on them each year!

The first document in each student section is a personal copy of the CAFE menu.  This is handy and a quick refrence during conferences.

The pages in green are the reading conference sheets.  Each student has several copies of this in their section.

After the green reading conference sheets, there are purple writing conference sheets.  This way all of my "literacy" related documentation is in one handy place!

The last thing in each section is a writing menu that I designed, which is very similar to the CAFE menu for reading.

Don't try and implement this without reading the book by The Sisters!