Tried it Tuesday - Reading Conferences

I'm so excited to join Holly in her very first of a series of linky parties:

With this linky, you share any"thing" that you have tried, either personal or professionally, and how it worked for you. It could have been a success or a complete flop. For my very first "Tried it", I want to share about CAFE and how I've made it work in a non-traditional setting.

For those of you who are not familiar with CAFE, it's from the sisters (Gail Boushey and Joan Moser) who created Daily 5. This is a companion program.

Daily 5 lays out what students should be doing while the teacher is working with other students. CAFE is the guideline for the teacher's instruction. It stands for Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expanding Vocabulary. Under each heading, there are a list of strategies that students can use to help them gain mastery. The whole point is that the teacher holds individual conferences with students where they read a book ON THEIR LEVEL and work on the different strategies. Each students has a goal and works toward mastering one skill at a time. There's so much more to it, and I highly recommend getting a copy of the book to learn more. The program is fantastic!

Anyway, when we started this last year, I was quite pregnant and did my best to jump in wholeheartedly, but let's face it. Trying something new when you're going out on maternity leave in a few months doesn't really work that well. I came back in February and tried to get it really going again, but then it was a huge push toward preparing for tests. We sort of made it work, but most of my intentions stayed just that. Intentions.

At the end of the year, I learned that I would be moving to Title I as the reading specialist for grades 3-5. I put my CAFE board together and made my little gigantic notebook for conferences. For most of the year, it just sat there. I was meeting with students, but most of it was being done in a small group setting, and I just didn't have much to write. After Christmas, I decided it was time to get serious. I threw out the old sheet and made things as simple as possible for myself. Then I made it pretty! You can download the form for FREE here! Just please make sure to leave me some positive feedback.

With this sheet, I just quickly fill in what the student is reading, what we've been working on, and what I feel we need to focus on for next time. If I meet with them for a running record, I quickly jot down what letter I'm reading with them, their accuracy percentage and number of correctly answered comprehension questions. Then I put if they are instructional, independent, or frustrational. That way I have a quick reference to look at when it's time to retest them. I wish that I had kept up with this more throughout the year because it's helped a lot. I can see an exact date when I last met with each student and decide quickly who I need to read with and who can wait a little longer.

If you're not doing individual conferences with your kids, I challenge you to give it a try. I know it's easier to just meet with them in a small group, but you really can accomplish most of these meetings in about 5 minutes and quickly move from one kid to another. The only time it takes me longer is when I'm doing running records. Still I can get through most of those in about 15 minutes!

Now go check out Holly's blog for more ideas that teachers are trying out. See if any catch your eye!

Then go and Follow my blog with Bloglovin. All the cool kids are doing it! ;-)

Daily 5 a little late

We're almost halfway through the year, and I'm just getting started on Daily 5. Since I'm the Title I reading specialist now, I wasn't quite sure of the best way to do this. Actually, I didn't think I could. I've been doing lessons and activities that are for the entire group and working that way. Now that I've been at this job for a few months, though, I decided it was time to try it out. 

So today I had my students come in and find books that were on their reading level (or one above or below). They grabbed 1-3 since I don't have them for long, and most of them were really excited to put together a book bag. We don't have any nice bags or baskets yet, but I (well, actually my wonderful para) just labeled gallon size Ziploc bags and put them in containers based on their group. Then I can pull out each container at the beginning and let them find their bag.

My plan is that I'll do read to self, work on writing, and word work as my centers (since my classes are so small and time is limited), and I'll try them 2 or 3 times a day. Then I want to do whole group lessons to review the new skills they're working on or to work on test-taking strategies. I'm about to lose my para for a few weeks because she's having surgery, so I'll be on my own for a little while. I think this system will help with that, though. Then when she comes back, I'm going to have her help me either pull kids or help with the word work station.

What do you do for word work with the upper grade students? I have kids ranging from level I-Q that I see, and they are from grades 3-5. I was thinking prefixes and suffixes for my higher 4th and 5th grade students. Then for my lower ones, I want them to practice a LOT of decoding strategies. Any recommendations?

What I'm doing for Christmas

We've been busy in my Title I class recently, and even though I'm missing out on all the fun crafts and activities that I did/would do as a classroom teacher, I've still been able to fit in some fun literacy centers.

I've also had the pleasure of pushing into the same 3rd grade class every day for the past week and a half to work with them on Daily 5/CAFE lessons. That's been so much fun to me! I got to help train on all of that this summer, but I never got a good opportunity to do it since we only piloted it last year and I was out on maternity leave for part of that time. Tomorrow will be my last day to push in though, but I think we're going to do two activities with the Polar Express for those two days. We're already working on Read to Self for Daily 5, and they will hopefully be able to start Read to Someone next week. In CAFE, we added Activate Prior Knowledge (where I taught them my favorite word: schema!), Check for Understanding, Find Good Fit Books (with IPICK), and Use the Pictures. Today We're going to do Back up and Reread. They're so excited about it!

Now back to Christmas:

I said I've been doing literacy centers, and it's been so much fun. The kids remember the format for most of the centers from my Thanksgiving pack that we did. So there's less set up and explaining required. I just focus on the new centers to talk them through. Fifth grade has already started them, and I'm noticing some improvement. 3rd and 4th will start either today or next week.

With my younger kids, I focused on the book The Great Christmas Crisis by Kim Norman.

If you remember this post, she was the author we had come visit back in early November. Anyway, I created a packet based on the book.

It had two little activities that I used as centers (one for sequencing and one game using words from the book). There's also a cute writing activity that I may let them do tomorrow. I'll even let them color and decorate their elves if they finish the writing! Here's a sample of that.

I have also completed my winter literacy centers. These are the same format as the Christmas ones, just without the Polar Express sequencing. 4 comprehension centers and 4 word-knowledge.

What are you doing in your class right now? Or are you allowed to do Christmas-y activities?

Manic Monday freebie

I'm so excited to link up for my first Manic Monday! I haven't created any new freebies since the Dolch site words, but there are a few that I made this summer and thought were worth sharing since I switched over to this blog. I teach in Virginia, which is one of the few states that chose to NOT participate in the Common Core Standards. This means that I don't get to share in all the great resources that have been posted all over TpT. My school is also fully implementing CAFE and Daily 5 this year, and since I'm the reading specialist for grades 3-5, I wanted to create a resource that would help my teachers match our state standards (the SOLs) to each CAFE strategy. 

Enjoy!

Tell me something good linky

I'm back! This week has been crazy. Tuesday night was Back to School Night, so I was at school until 8:00. Then during school I have begun giving running records to any students who failed the SOLs (Standards of Learning) or were below grade level on their word lists. I've given the first running record to all of 3rd and 4th grade, and today I need to start 5th. Then I have to go back and retest the students who were at frustrational. Thank God that Fountas & Pinnell assessments are pretty short!

So far, I've identified 9 kids in 3rd grade and way too many in 4th. This stresses me out because my numbers should get smaller as the kids get older. Right now, my 4th grade list could easily be 14 kids...craziness!! Oh, and did I mention their levels range from G to Q (Q's failed the SOLs, so I have to pull them until they show improvement)? Today the focus is on 5th grade.

Okay, enough focus on the stresses. I think it's perfect timing for this linky party that Jennifer from Rowdy in First Grade is hosting.

My Something Good From School: 

I have almost finished giving at least one running record to all of my "at-risk" kids! Now I'm just going back and giving another one to students who were at a frustrational level. One of the reasons this has gone so smoothly is because my wonderful parapro has been helping me. I trained her on giving running records (and taking lots of notes), and she's pulling half of the kids. Then all I have to do is grade it!

Also, we have started fully implementing Daily 5 and CAFE, and from walking around the school, I have seen a lot of great instruction and practicing!

My Something Good From Home:  

My sweet little boy, Keagan, can now sit himself up, pull up, and get around very well. He's still not officially crawling, but he sometimes army crawls. His preferred method is still the rolling pin, but I think he will be crawling any day now! Oh, and we lowered his bed this week to stay safe!

Another big plus is that we get to go to the beach this weekend! It's going to be a little cooler, but it will be nice to get away and relax for a little while.

Go link up!