Learning Log 10

Chapter 3 – The Café Book

Establishing the Literacy Café in the classroom is the topic that Boushey and Moser discuss in this chapter.  Often, before the school year starts, teachers begin their preparations for the Café by creating the bulletin board (Literacy Café Menu) and selecting which strategies to introduce the students to first.  The Menu contains a column with the headings for the types of Café strategies:  Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expand Vocabulary.  Under these headings, there are brief definitions:  Comprehension-“I understand what I read;” Accuracy-“I can read the words;” Fluency-“I can read accurately, with expression, and understand what I read;” and Expand Vocabulary-“I know, find, and use interesting words (Boushey & Moser, 2009).”  The menu remains empty of strategies until the first day of school when a strategy will be placed on it after it has been introduced to the students, usually during the first read-aloud, and then gradually add more strategies during whole-class lessons for the rest of the first week of school.  The Café system then moves into individual conferences where students will be assessed in order to tailor their reading instruction using seven steps:  “assess the individual student, discuss findings with students, set goal and identify strategies with student, student declares goal on menu and in notebook, teacher fills out individual Reading Conference form, teacher fills out Strategy Groups, and instruction (Boushey & Moser, 2009).” 

I like how the authors lay out a step-by-step plan for setting up and instructing students on how to use the Literacy Café Menu.  As a future educator, it will be important for me to be able to instruct my students in making use of the tools that are available to them to enable them to develop higher functioning cognitive skills in order for them to become successful readers and learners.      

Reference

Boushey, G. & Moser, J. (2009). The café book. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers.

Learning Log 9

Chapter 2 -- The Cafe Book

Boushey and Moser, the authors of the Café Book, inform the reader of their trials and tribulations of maintaining student records, especially anecdotal notes.  They experimented with different organization strategies over many years before settling for their current method of keeping student records:  the Conferring Notebook.  They also make reference to this notebook as their “pensieve,” and as such, the notebook should be a reflection of the personality of the teacher that is using it, which will make it easy to identify what it is and who belongs to.  This notebook contains assessment data, daily observations, and their teaching and learning (Boushey & Moser, 2009).  The notebook has two sections:  teacher notes and student individualized progress.  The teacher notes section contains a calendar for making appointments with each student, a form for keeping track of meetings with each student, and a strategy groups form for creating student instructional groups that are flexible and have similar goals.  Each student has their own subsection in Section 2 containing a CAFÉ Menu, a Reading Conference form, and a Writing Conference form for each of the students.  The teachers can keep track of their students’ strengths, weaknesses, and goals at the top of the Reading and Writing Conference forms as well. 

The organization of the Conferring Notebook appears to be straightforward, and I can see where it will be a crucial piece to literacy instruction in the classroom and in showing proof of learning when asked by administration and parents as the information is in one place.  Organization is an important part of being a professional and in classroom management because if we want our students to develop organizational skills, then we must model it for them.

Reference

Boushey, G. & Moser, J. (2009). The café book. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers.