LITERACY IN MY CLASSROOM

Using the CAFE and Daily Five Program

• Focus: Introducing a new café strategy and/or revising previously taught strategy.

• I use online stories on the Interactive White Board (using Oxford Owl or similar resources) or Big Books, to model the strategy.

Whole class CAFÉ – 15 minutes

Read to Self – 15 minutes

• Students read ‘Just Right Books’ that they have selected from the Classroom library. During Reading Conferences I monitor students’ book choices.

• During this time I hold small (10 min) Reading Strategy Groups. The focus has been determined during the previous week’s Guided Reading sessions. During this time students are introduced to their new reading goal, and are explicitly taught the strategy that they need to work on and are given the opportunity to practise it. They are given a book mark with their goal on it.

Word Work Rotations – 30minutes

Activities include: Spelling investigations Comprehension activities Guided Reading texts Listen to reading (using iPad, MP3 or CD player) VCOP tasks (focusing on Vocabulary, Connectives, Openers

& Punctuation) All activities are differentiated to cater for the ability levels

and needs of individual students) During this time I hold guided reading sessions. Every week

students have an explicit strategy to work on and this is documented and used to group students according to common area of need.

What My Daily 5 Rotations look like

Work on Writing- 50 minutesStructure: Whole Class Introduction. Share modelled writing with whole class. Individual writing for approximately 20 minutes.

Interactive writing groups held regularly to support individual writing needs.

Writing conferences are used to determine individual writing goals and future strategy groups.

Strategy groups are held to explicitly teach strategies and give student the opportunity to practise goals.

Whole Class Share time to reflect on and consolidate learning as well as celebrate achievements.

Interactive Writing in my class

Journal WritingFocus: Using connectives ‘and’ & ‘because’Model: I model and students add to construct a sentence. Magnetic letters are used to support spelling. Independent: Students complete own work with modelled work nearby for support.

My Reflection

Positive Minus Interesting

• Student learning is goal – orientated

• All tasks a differentiated

• Reading strategies a explicitly taught

• Student are able to articulate their goals

• Students work in both similar ability and mixed ability groups.

• Can be tricky to fit all in each morning

• Haven’t yet found a system to cater for Writing tasks in the Daily 5. However this year (2012) I have started with small comprehension responses after independently reading their guided reading books.

• I would like to allow student choice over Daily 5 and ownership of learning.

• Reading goals on bookmarks ensure students are reminded of what their reading goals are.