CAFE Reading - The Downlow!

You may have seen the Superhero CAFE Menu on the bulletin board over our library corner in the classroom. I thought you might like a bit of a quick run-down on how we use the menu in the classroom and what we're doing with it at the moment.

A system of accountability in reading instruction, CAFE was created in tandem with the Daily Five by 'The Two Sisters' - Gail Boushey and Joan Moser. CAFE stands for Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency and Expanding Vocabulary, and there are strategies under each menu heading to work on these aspects of reading. 46A is currently split into five groups, and they meet with me at least once a week to read aloud and work on the booklet for the novel they are studying. Each group has a focus strategy that they are working on - currently, some are working on inference, some are working on sight word recognition, some are working on taking note of punctuation and others are working on 'backing up and re-reading' when something hasn't made sense the first time they read.

There are times that groups combine or we work together on a strategy, especially if it is practised or explicitly taught using a particularly unusual activity that lots of students want to participate in (for example, our 'fishing expedition' last week!). All practise of the strategies is good practise!

What exactly do we read? This round, all students are reading books from Australian and New Zealand authors from either 3-4 or 5-6 level of the Premier's Reading Challenge. Our current literary fare includes Puppy Place: Pugsley (Ellen Miles), Our Australian Girl: Meet Nellie (Penny Matthews), Weir Do (Anh Do), Mission Fox: Snake Escape (Justin D'ath) and Andy Roid: The Superhuman Secret (Felice Arena). I have had feedback that some students have liked them so much they have finished reading them in their own time and can now read aloud with greater enjoyment the second time around!

Here is a video of the creators of CAFE talking about its benefits. They talk a lot about assessment - in my mind, this dovetails quite well with the Montessori concept of 'observation', as they are mostly talking about embedded tasks to check mastery, without having to implement 'test conditions'.

They have also put out a book which supports the system - I have it on my kindle so I'm really sorry I can't lend it out but if you are interested you can preview it here.

Hope this sheds some light on the process!

Bye for now,
Ang.