Guided Reading And CAFE

It was my goal this year to implement as much as the Daily 5 and CAFE as possible into my Writing, Core, Guided Reading Groups this year. As it turns out the only time that I have been able to do this is during my intervention time. I have a group of 12 students during this time, they are my same 12 that I have for guided reading groups. During this time I have been able to start with a CAFE mini-lesson. Sometimes there is an application activity for the lesson, depending on how many times we have worked on that skill. Then they are able to go to the Daily 4. 

First of all, I do Daily 4 not 5. I do not have an extensive listening library so I do not have a listen to reading center. We do Work on Writing on Monday. On Tuesday we do Word Work. This is the kids favorite. Wednesday is Read to self. Friday is Buddy Read. We do not have interventions on Thursday due to Spanish. 

While the kids are doing the Daily 4 I am conferring with students. I use the conferring forms from CAFE by the Sisters. I have found that setting up the initial conferences and determining goal areas was extremely difficult. Now that I have goal areas for all my students and we are both more used to the process it is going better. I do need to work on the teaching section of the conference. Usually we just review the skill they will be working on, however I do see the usefulness of also teaching during this time or modeling. 

Now guided reading groups in the morning. I have 40 minutes to work with two different groups. I have 6 students in each group. These students are a mix of both third grade classes. I have been doing more and more research on these. It seems the possibilities are endless on the way that I can set this up in my classroom. A couple things I have noticed and want to change are:

1. I would like to do the conferring section of the CAFE during guided reading groups. I could use the time in the afternoon for writing conferences. 

2. The core skill that we teach whole group when we have our own classes, needs to be the focus of my instruction with my guided reading group.

3. I still want to work on Comprehension, Fluency, Accuracy and Expand Vocabulary skills in guided reading groups along with the core skills I must focus on.

4. I have noticed that some guided reading groups read silently to themselves rather than as a group. This may be something that I try. 

There are many blogs and resources that I have found on my google quest to learn more information. However, the most helpful blog that I found was this one:

http://mandys-tips-4-teachers.blogspot.com/search/label/Guided%20Reading

I clicked on the labels for guided reading and was blown away by this site. I will be using this as a help to get this up and running in my room. I know that I will not use it as is, but I have found this the most helpful of all. 

Olweus Bully Prevention Program-Class Meetings

Our school has implemented the Olweus Bully Prevention Program. Our main reason of course is to keep our students safe and prevent them from being bullied. Our high school started this program last year and the elementary is in their first year of work with it.
One of the components of this program is class meetings with our students. These serve as a way to get our students involved, invested, talking and discussing. So far I have had two class meetings with my class.
Our first class meeting was to set up the ground rules for our class meetings. We brainstormed and made rules for our meetings. We used the rules from the book provided but also discussed each one so the students understood.
Our second class meeting involved discussing the results of the survey our students took about bullying. Each student participated in the survey and answered questions about being bullied and bullying other students. We had an awesome conversation about the fact that 9 students are being bullied and no one is doing the bullying. Because of this conversation I felt we needed to talk more about what bullying behavior is. Students made posters of what bullying behavior looks like, sounds like, acts like.
Here are some of the posters they made!

The title is supposed to be "Bullying Behavior is..."
We talked today about bullying behaviors and calling someone a bully. We talked about how calling them a bully can be mean and hurtful. However, we can talk about how they are acting like a bully and showing bullying behaviors.
This was supposed to be a 30 minute class meeting which has turned into an hour long meeting, including the poster. I still have 4 groups left to finish their posters!