The CAFE Book: Chapter 2

We will be continuing our book study this week by reflecting on Chapter 2 of The CAFE Book: Engaging ALL students in Daily Literacy Assessment & Instruction.

I continue to be inspired by Gail and Joan. They truly support Every Child, Every Day with tailored instruction that meets the needs of all students.  Chapter 2: The CAFE Notebook and Record-Keeping Forms walks us through setting up a conferring notebook. The 2 Sisters refer to the CAFE Notebook as the Pensieve. There is a cute story on page 16 that describes how the conferring notebook came to be called the Pensieve. It has something to do with Harry Potter. I have not been a fan of that genre of literature. I haven’t read the books nor have I seen the movies so I can't really make a connection. In a nutshell, the Pensieve is where the head wizard stores all of “his most important thinking and memories out of his brain” (p. 16). Pensieve is a fitting name for the notebook, because this is where the teacher keeps notes on all the important conversations they have with students to help move them forward as learners.

Gail and Joan recommend setting up the Pensieve in the following way:

Section 1: Teacher Notes

• Calendar to make appointments with students – keeping accountability
• Keeping Track Form to keep track of when you have met with students and ensure no one falls through the cracks
• Strategy Group Forms: used to create flexible groups of students that have similar goals.

Section 2: Data

• Fountas & Pinnell instructional reading levels
• Phonemic Awareness data and progress monitoring 

Section 3: Dividers/Tabs for each child

• CAFE Menu to note which strategies the child has mastered and is working on.
• Reading/Writing Conference Sheet to keep anecdotes on conversations the teacher has with students.

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Participating in this week's  book study is evidence of:

Domain 1: Planning & Preparing-

1c: Setting Instructional Outcomes

Domain 3: Instruction-

3d: Using Assessment in Instruction  

Domain 4: Professional Responsibilities -

4a: Reflecting on Teaching

4d: Participating in a Professional Community

4e: Growing and Developing Professionally    

Boushey, G. &  Moser, M. (2009) The CAFÉ Book: Engaging ALL students in Daily Assessment and Instruction.

The CAFE Book: Chapter 1

I am a Reading Specialist at an elementary school that consists of kindergarten through second grade students. I am helping teachers implement Daily 5 and CAFE. We are currently embarking on a book study that will take us through The CAFE Book. This week I am reading and reflecting on Chapter 1: Introduction: The beginnings of the CAFE Menu Assessment System. 

How do we (teachers) create “strategic, independent, thoughtful readers” (p. 11)

One of the ways we create strategic readers is by setting up our literacy blocks using The Daily 5 structure. Through The Daily 5 structure, teachers teach students the behaviors that support and build successful, independent readers. It is WHAT students are doing while the teacher is teaching. The second way to create independent readers is by using The CAFE system of assessment and instruction.

            Gail and Joan have taken the best research on effective teaching practices and have bundled them under The CAFE Book: Engaging ALL Students in Daily Assessment and Instruction (2009). There are three core elements of CAFE: record-keeping; students and teachers meeting for assessment, explicit instruction and goal-setting; and the teacher is planning effective whole-group, small-group and individual conferring lessons. The goal of CAFE is to meet “each student’s need with tailored instruction” (p 10).

            CAFE is strongly supported by research (p. 9). Gail and Joan have leaned on the top reading researchers in the field, like Richard Allington, Regie Routman and Michael Pressley, as they developed The CAFE system of assessment and instruction. The research says that students must spend their day with materials that they can read – “Good-Fit Books” (p. 9). Additionally the most effective classrooms are structured with “whole-class, small-group and side-by-side instruction” (p. 9). Not only does The CAFE incorporate this research into their system of assessment and instruction, they teach teachers how to implement the research effectively.

            I am in love with Gail and Joan and their contributions to quality instruction for all students. I’ve been to their Daily 5 and CAFE workshops (in sunny SoCal). I’ve taken their graduate class and seen them present at the ORA Institute in Portland. I’ve read and re-read Daily 5 and CAFE and follow The 2 Sisters on twitter (@gailandjoan) and on Facebook (The Daily CAFE). Finally, I have had the pleasure of presenting my own PD to colleagues. As teachers, we have to teach and develop a classroom structure that supports the love of reading. Daily 5 and CAFE are my answer to WHAT and HOW I teach students.

Participating in this book study is evidence of professional practice as defined by Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching. This week's participation is evidence of 

Domain 4: Professional Responsibilities -

• 4a: Reflecting on Teaching
• 4d: Participating in a Professional Community
• 4e: Growing and Developing Professionally

Boushey, G. &  Moser, M. (2009) The CAFÉ Book: Engaging ALL students in Daily Assessment and Instruction.

Visible Learning for Literacy

Chapter 1
This is my fourth online book club this summer. I am excited about this type of PD. I can learn at my own pace. I can have constructive and powerful conversations with people from around the world related to teaching reading. I can build new relationships with people who share the same professional interests as I do. The book club for Visible Learning for Literacy is on Facebook: The Literacy Teacher Book Club. We have ongoing conversations about how to improve student learning. Please feel free to join us.

Visible Learning for Literacy by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey and John Hattie focuses on implementing strategies that work to accelerate student learning. Chapter 1 lays the groundwork for visible learning for literacy. The main purpose of this book is to maximize the impact teachers have on student learning. There are three ways the authors say we can maximize our impact on student learning.

1. Levels of learning: Surface, deep, transfer. These points of learning require the student to process information in different ways. Knowing which teaching strategy works best at the different points of learning will maximize student learning. All teaching strategies have an effect size, but some strategies work better and are more powerful at different points of learning. For example, phonics instruction is better used at surface level learning instead of transfer level because students need basic knowledge and understanding of how print works before they can dig deep with comprehension.

2. There are Standards of Influences on students that impact student learning across the board.

Teacher credibility (.90).  The extent to which students trust the teacher.

Teacher/Student Relationships (.72). The extent to which the teacher develops a rapport with students by setting fair expectations and holding students accountable in an equitable way.

Teacher Expectations (43).  The extent to which teachers set high expectations and rigor that stretches students within their reach.

These standards of influences support a classroom culture where students are comfortable taking risks with their learning. When students feel liked by their teacher, the teacher sets clear expectations and are trustworthy students can thrive.

3. There are Global Factors that impact student learning. These factors include the challenge level of the work with feedback, self-efficacy or confidence of the learner and teacher clarity of the learning targets.  These factors are important because they focus on the learner and how they perceive the tasks, what is expected of them and their confidence level. They should be taken into account for every learning situation in a classroom.

In conclusion, teachers have choices (33). We have choices to implement sound instructional routines and procedures that are proven to accelerate learning in one school year or more. We have choices to create a classroom culture that students feel safe in. We have choices to “extend students’ learning in deep ways and facilitate the transfer of their learning…” (33). Making the best choices for my students will help them grow and learn throughout the school year.

Who's Doing the Work? Chapter 5

What is Independent Reading?

Independent reading is when students sit and read to themselves for extended periods of time with a self-selected text. The history of independent reading has been centered on acronyms like DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) and SSR (Silent Sustained Reading) and the current trend Daily 5. These independent reading initiatives have 2 things in common: “(1) some element of choice and (2) extended time to read” (105). Sometimes the trend has been for teachers to sit and read a favorite book to be good reading models to students. Sometimes the trend has been for teachers get “lots” of work done when students are busy reading. While these are occurring, students start getting rowdy after a short time and the session falls apart. The teacher didn’t get any work done and students didn’t get much reading completed, either. As a result, teachers would add an accountability piece by assigning students to reflect on their reading, write a summary or record their reading for the day by jotting down the title and pages read. I have been guilty of applying these practices over the years because I didn’t know any better or because it was the latest trend. Like I said in my Guided Reading post, I don’t think I was damaging students, but I was doing students a huge disservice. I was not treating Independent reading like an instructional context that leads to lifelong readers. I wasn’t instilling in my students how to “dig into a new text for their purposes” or allowing them to “discover their power and the power of books” (103).

Who’s Doing the Work?

The authors of this book want teachers to help students become lifelong readers through the Next Generation Independent Reading. During NG Independent Reading, students are “reading a lot of authentic texts for meaning and pleasure…” (106). They are “practice(ing) integrating (the) skills and strategies using self-selected text that match…their reading interest and their abilities” (103). Next Generation Independent Reading is the final stage along the gradual release of responsibility model. Students have seen the strategies modeled and have practiced them during Read Aloud and Shared Reading. They have used the strategies independently while being guided by the teacher during Guided Reading. Now is time for them to be released and read for the sake of reading.

During Next Generation Guided Reading, the teacher and students have specific jobs:

Teacher is…	Students are…
·         Conferring with students o   Connecting o   Conversing o   Coaching o   Celebrating ·         Taking anecdotal notes: what and how students are reading ·         Observing students individually and whole class	·         Self-selecting texts ·         May be reading more than 1 book at a time ·         Selecting text across a range of levels depending on the reading purpose ·         Articulating the tricky spots and how they resolved the problem ·         Spending most of the time actually reading

Misconceptions about Independent Reading

Here are a few misconceptions about Independent Reading that stood out to me. They stood out to me because I think I have been guilty of hosting these misconceptions throughout my years of teaching.

1. Limiting student text selection to a reading level. Coming to the understanding that assigning a student a reading level is not beneficial to them has been a big deal for me. I fell into the trap and limited students to a specific reading level. I would say “You are only a level M. You can read from this tub.”  This has “ultimately rob(bed) students of reading energy” (117). The past few years I have seen a surge of articles and posts on Twitter, Facebook and blogs I follow about reading levels. The bottom line: Reading levels are meant for teachers use only. When teachers assign reading levels to students they limit a student’s ability to pick a “just right” book. We are teaching students that they are only allowed to read what we tell them to read. In addition, students cannot go to a library or book store and choose a book from their “reading level shelf”.  The author’s say that teachers should let students pick several books and to be working on them simultaneously. The analogy they use spoke to me: “On a given airplane ride, we are likely to have a novel, a research article and a magazine in our carry-on” because at any given time we will spend some of the time reading each depending the brain’s stamina (117). This analogy spoke to me because the same reading materials can be found in my carry-on bag. If adults can have an ongoing reading list and juggle several books at one time, why can’t students?
2. Practice makes perfect. The more you read the better you get, right? Michael Gladwell (2008) certainly sold me on the 10,000 hour rule in Outliers. If you do something for 10,000 hours you are destined to be exceptional. So… I’ve been operating under the assumption that all I have to do is to get students to read an abundance of text and they will become great readers with lifelong learning habits. However, the authors argue that “better practice leads to more progress” (118). They continue by saying if a student is reading tons of hours at a superficial level then they have only practiced getting better at reading superficially. Okay, maybe I should modify my practice makes perfect motto. Monitoring student independent reading to make sure it aligns with the skills and strategies students have learned during Read Aloud, Shared Reading and Guided Reading is the power. Understanding how student integrate print and meaning and ensuring they are engaging in an abundance of meaningful reading will lead to greatness. 

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