Last year I began using The Sisters’ (Gail Boushey and Joan Moser) process of teaching balanced literacy to my fourth grade students: Daily Five Reading and Literacy CAFE. Periodically I will post information, videos, or examples of how I am implementing this balanced literacy structure.

Daily Five Reading and Literacy CAFE

Daily Five Reading is just one more way to organize your balanced literacy instruction. It is very similar to what some people call “Reading Workshop” or “Reader’s Workshop”. Personally, I love how Daily Five Reading is structured around current reading and brain research and how it builds student independence. The Daily Five is a structure that helps students develop the daily habits of reading, writing, and working independently for a lifetime of literacy independence.

Daily Five consists of five components that students (ideally) practice daily:

• Read to Self,
• Read to Someone,
• Listen to Reading,
• Word Work,
• Work on Writing

If Daily Five Reading is the structure for students, Literacy CAFE is the structure of teaching reading strategies and assessing students. CAFE stands for:

• Comprehension,
• Accuracy,
• Fluency,
• Expanding Vocabulary.

Through mini-lessons taught each day, strategies are added to the CAFE board (see picture above) and referred back to as necessary.

Here is a quick video snapshot of my classroom. Students are engaged in Read to Self, Read to Someone, and Work on Writing. In this video students chose which component of Daily Five Reading they wanted to work on, so all three activities are going on simultaneously. Students on the computers are writing science presentations, while other students are actively reading.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Want to Know More?

Interested in learning more about The Daily Five Reading or the The Literacy CAFE? A good place to get more information about this wonderful balanced literacy structure is to visit The Daily Cafe or The Sisters’ website. Watch for more posts about Daily Five Reading and CAFE Literacy right here at BlueSofaMedia.com.

Throughout the year I give students homework assignments that include making small, foldable books. I call these books B3 (B threes) or Beanie Baby Books. (My former partner teacher came up with this name because it is the size of a book that a Beanie Baby would read.)

I use these books for all subjects (math, science, social studies, reading, writing) at one time or another. I like Beanie Baby Books because they open the door for kids to creatively demonstrate and share their learning in meaningful ways.  I will often add these books to our class library or we will give them to another class as a “learning gift”.  For example, my students just created Beanie Baby Books of our Read to Self behavior expectations.  A few primary classes at my school are trying Daily Five, so our books will give them another avenue to think about their own behavior expectations.  On top of that, my student authors are doing authentic work creating products for an audience outside my classroom!

Use this video to learn how to make a small foldable book. It is also a great idea to just let your students watch this video and learn how to make the Beanie Baby Book.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The uses for this type of book are limited only by your imagination. Below is just a sample of uses:

• Students create a dictionary of important concepts and vocabulary words on a particular subject or concept in math, science, social studies, etc.
• Have a student create a summary of a book or novel. Can they figure out how to make a meaningful and accurate summary in about 8 small pages?
• It makes a perfect word collector for an English Language Learner. A student can write the word and draw a picture of its meaning. (See the photo above)
• At the end of the week students use it to create a book of important learning from that week. Have the students keep these weekly summaries/reflections of their learning all year long.
• Students can illustrate the process of photosynthesis or mitosis or meiosis, etc.
• Students can write a comic book full or metaphors, similes, prepositions, verbs, etc.