Learning Log 13

Chapter 6 – The Café Book

Reflect on your current whole-group instruction time.  How much of your day will be spent teaching whole group?  How long do you think one lesson is from start to finish?  How much of the lesson will you be teaching and how much of the lesson are students doing?

Approximately a quarter to half of my day will be spent teaching whole group.  One of my lessons is about fifty minutes from start to finish.  I will be teaching the first fifteen to twenty minutes of the lesson and the students will be doing the rest of the lesson with my guidance.

Whole group CAFÉ lessons are driven by assessments, one-on-one conferring, and small-group observations (p. 89).  The goal is to plan whole-group lessons around skills and strategies that a majority of our students need assistance with.  What strategies do you find will be most beneficial for whole-group instruction in your classroom?

The strategies that find will be the most beneficial for whole-group instruction in my classroom are:  check for understanding, back up and reread, cross checking, reread text, tune into interesting words, and make a picture or image.  The check for understanding, the make a picture or image, and the back up and reread strategies will assist my students in developing better comprehension in the texts that they read now and through the years to come.  Cross checking will help them to working on gaining increased accuracy in their reading.  Students will benefit from reread text as it will aid them in achieving more fluency.  Vocabulary development can be increased by the tune into interesting words strategy as students look for words that they do not know, and they use context clues to find meaning for the word, which they will record in a journal and provide a picture to help them to remember the meaning of the word.   

Review the whole-class lesson elements (p. 95-97).  How can you integrate these elements into your future teaching practice?  What adaptations need to be made?

The elements for whole-group instruction that the authors provide are:  identify what will be taught, teach the strategy, have students practice with partners, select a student to record and illustrate the strategy to be placed on the CAFÉ menu, review the strategy, encourage practice during independent reading, post the strategy after independent practice, and connect new strategies with the menu continually (Boushey & Moser, 2009).  I think these elements will be central to my literacy instruction, and I want to investigate the Daily Five that the authors have created as both this method and CAFÉ will help me to provide the best literacy instruction to my students that I possibly can.  Adaptations that I would need to make will depend upon where I am teaching and the curriculum design that is in place there. 

How has reading CAFÉ affected the way you think about literacy instruction?

After reading CAFÉ, I now realize how literacy instruction needs to be comprised of authentic learning activities, tailoring instruction to individual needs is crucial, and providing whole-group and small-group instruction that will be beneficial to all.  I have often wondered before reading CAFÉ how I would be able to provide literacy instruction and assessing literacy for my students as there is only so much time in the school day.  CAFÉ provides a way for teachers to assess students as often as needed for each, and it offers me with a way to keep accurate records that will help me in keeping up those records.

Reference

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