CAFE Book Study - Chapter One

I've decided to re-read "The CAFE Book" by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser.  It has been a few years since I initially read it and I was happy with how I implemented in into my class but I have come to realise that old habits are sneaking back in and mainly (confession time!!) it's because it is easier for me and not for the benefit of my students - I guess we can all relate to that at some stage of our career.  But I want to do what's right for my students so I'm going to spend this school holidays re-reading and refreshing my reading programme.  

The questions I am answering for each chapter come from the CAFE Book Study that appears on the 2 Sister's website.

Chapter 1 - Introduction: The Beginnings of the CAFE Menu Assessment System

Reflect on your current teaching practice.  How do you differentiate reading instruction for your students to ensure each child is receiving instruction at their level?

Reading instruction in my classroom is ability grouped according to instructional reading age.  While this makes choosing a text easy, it becomes difficult when there are a variety of needs within that one group.  For example, one student may need to work on fluency, another may need to work on decoding strategies and another might need to work on inferring or making connections.

What reading assessment do you currently use?  How do you use this assessment to inform your instruction and set student goals?
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The school requires that we use PM Benchmark kits for students reading under 8 years of age and PROBE for those reading above this.  We also have students complete the STAR reading test twice a year (middle and end - although I would love to just do it and the beginning and end of the year as the data would be more useful).  This data is used to form my ability groups based on their chronological reading age.  I also note down areas to focus on for each student, such as fluency, decoding, comprehension areas etc.  Students then have this information shared with them and set their own goals.  At the moment their reading goals tend to be around reading mileage rather than what they need to work on but as they gain more knowledge about the strategies that good readers use, this should change.

The CAFE Menu of strategies reflects the skills we've researched and used in our own classrooms.  Look through the strategies on the menu.  Reflect.

I would agree with the strategies on the menu.  They tie in with the work of Alison Davies and Sheena Cameron.  I have recently started doing shared reading with my class a lot more (other than the poem of the week) and this has helped build up the student's confidence with the strategies that good readers use.  I will post an example of a shared reading lesson at a later date.  As I have struggled to be able to fit all of these strategies into my teaching programme I have decided to come back and re-read this book to see what changes I can make to do better.

 
Pages 6-8 highlight the core elements of the CAFE system: the conferring notebook, the individual conferences, small-group instruction, and purposeful whole group instruction.  How does this compare to your current reading block?

I have a conferring notebook (confession time - I don't use it - eeekkkk) but due to the change in schools and expectations I haven't really used it this year, and do you know what?? I acutally miss it.  It had everything I needed to know about my students reading at the tip of my fingers, not having to flick through planning sheets to find what I was looking for.  The individual conferences therefore haven't been what I want them to be either but I do currently do small-group instruction and purposeful whole group instruction.  Yay two out of four!!

Good-fit books are essential to productive independent reading.  What can you do to get good-fit books in the hands of your students?  How do you define a "good-fit" book?

We use the "I-PICK" from the Daily 5 in our classroom.  Students are constantly being reminded about using the "I-PICK" strategy when choosing a book from the class library or school library.  Students are regularly offered feed-back from students when they feel a book is too hard for somebody and at this stage of they year I am confident that most of them can choose a book that they are able to read.  A "good-fit" book is one where the student can read most of the words, read fluently, understand what is being read and most importantly interests them.

 
The end of Chapter 1 discusses the concept of instructional fairness.  What does instructional fairness mean to you?

This is something I have really struggled with this year as I have such a wide range of reading abilities within my class (from 5 years to 15 years).  I try and see my lower ability students more than I would see my higher ability students because the higher ability students are already readers and they only need to see me once a week to guide them and make suggestions.  My lower ability readers I try and see everyday which can be a struggle to sit them all in.  I believe instructional fairness is about giving the instruction time to the students who need it most rather than giving all students equal time (which would get you no where and would be pretty hard to do).

On another note, the other day I was coming down the stairs to go out on duty at lunchtime and I caught this little guy reading.  Now this boy was not a reader at the beginning of the year and lunchtime for him was the best time of the day because he got to play football with his mates.  Well here he is reading in his lunchtime!!!!!  He's reading Wonder by R.J. Palacio.  It was our read-aloud novel for the term but I love how he has got a copy from the school library and is re-reading it to himself.  He is so proud of himself as he says it is the biggest book he has ever read.  Everyday he comes up to me an tells me how much he has read.  He is becoming a reader right in front of my eyes.  Super proud teacher!!!!
 

Creating Mathematical Inquiry Communities

I've been doing a lot of thinking about how to accelerate the achievement of the students in my class in mathematics.  A few years ago I listened to Zain Thompson speak about creating mathematical inquiry communites as a way to do this.   This year I have a class that ranges from curriculum level 1 to 4 and I believe that this would be the perfect model for accelerating most of these students.

What is typical in an inquiry-based mathematics classroom?  Students who actively drive their learning, communicate mathematically, think critically, question, collaborate and support each other.

This teaching approach is culturally responsive and supports students to work together to solve mathematical problems, accelerating achievement for the students involved.

These are the inital steps I will be taking and developing from there.

Starting with one problem (may move to more than one problem at later stage).
The class is split into two groups that are mixed ability - the teacher spends half the time with each group.
No learning intentions are shared but can be discussed at the end of the lesson.

1.  Students solve the problem individually - they are given thinking time and may represent their thinking in any way.  If they are finished early they can come up with a different strategy.  The teacher anticipates the students solutions.

2.  Students then share their strategies with group members.  As a group they decide on one solution to become the group strategy.  They must explain, question and justify until each member of the group can understand and explain the strategy.  The teacher spends this time monitoring the group with limited input.

3.  Students rehearse their explanantion and check that everyone in the group can explain the solution.  The teacher then selects particular students to present their solution strategies (simplest strategy to begin and sequence until the most difficult).

4.  One student from each group share their group strategy with the bigger group.  It is not just a show and tell, they must actively question, explain and justify their thinking. 

5.  Have a whole group discussion after the strategies have been shared.  Can they make connections, see any patterns, reflect on learning and identify next steps.

My first step before attempting this is to spend time developing groups and how they work.  I may use the waka analogy - if one person stops paddling, you go round in circles and go off course so everyone in the group has to be on board with the strategy.
 
Here is the BES Exemplar with the mathematics communication and participation framework phases that I will be working through with my class and ground rules for talk examples.  It is good reading and a must if you are interested in using this approach in your class.

Other readings that relate to this:
Learning to "friendly argue" in a mathematical inquiry
Video resource from NZmaths
Effective pedagogy in mathematics

WALT's and LO's - What are your thoughts?

In education today, we are constanlty being asked to share with our students the learning outcomes and WALT's for what they are learning.  We are even expected to have the students write these into their books.

If I think back to when I was in school, we never had this and yet we still knew what we were learning.

I believe if students are inspired by what they are learning, they automatically know the relevance and purpose.  I wonder if giving students WALT's and LO's in writing that we are stifling the creativity of our students.  I also think it places a ceiling on the students learning. 

We spend (waste) far too much time sharing these at the beginning of every lesson and for what purpose?  For the students to be able to parrot it back without actually getting any meaning from it.  And who said that what we have shared with them is what they are actually learning.  That may be what the teacher wants them to learn but each student brings their own prior knowledge and beliefs to a task and this impacts on what they take away and learn.
This page from Teaching Notes from the Front Line by Debra Kidd backs this up and calculates the time wasted.

So, I have been thinking, are we doing this for our students or as a way of providing evidence of what we are teaching.  Where has the trust gone????

Self-Assessment

I have been doing a lot of thinking about how to engage my learners in their own learning and how to get them to become independent, self-directed learners.

For years the students in my class have been independent and self-directed.  At the beginning of the year I moved to a new school and found that the school's assessment expectations were slightly different  to what I was used to and I had to change the way I had previously done things. In order to fit things in I ended up dropping the amount of self-assessment in my programme.  There was still aspects of it appearing but not as much as I would have liked.  This has had an impact on my expectations of my students and where I would expect them to be.  So things need to change!!

I began by reading a book "Self Assessment for Self Starters" by Merrick Brewer to reinspire me and to remind me of some of the things that I had previoulsy done.

Self assessment allows students to take more risks, develop greater confidence, interact with their peers and to take control of their learning.

So after reading the book and going through things I had previously done, I decided to start with my mathematics programme.  We are currently working on Algebra. I gave the students questions at each curriculum level to answer (some had Level 1, 2 and 3 and others Level 2, 3 and 4).  I then marked them and highlighted the questions the students got wrong with pink for think and the questions that were correct, Gold (yellow) for Go (this is a change from what I previously did which was "Glow" - yellow highlighter and "Grow" - green highlighter - but the pink and yellow are the ones we are required to use).

I then gave the students a sheet with the expectations on them and the students had to highlight what they got correct and what they need to work on.

The students then decided what they needed to work on the most and opted into workshops that I will be holding.
This allows students to personalise their own learning.
Students then set a smart goal for the unit.  This was glued into their new learning journal with the math test beside it.
To say that they have met a goal they have to meet the Fast Finshers '3 steps to success' (I will post about this at a later date).

At this stage, students are excited (but we haven't started the workshops yet - so that may change).