Central Lee Elementary Celebrates Its “Literacy CAFE”

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At our Chicago workshop, Pam Barclift, a literacy coach in Iowa, shared how she made the CAFE Menu three dimensional for teachers. Resources are organized to make CAFE instruction materials readily available to everyone who uses CAFE in their classrooms. We asked her to share with you. 

Pam Barclift, Literacy Coach

After a mini makeover, I invited our K–5 teachers to “taste” a new addition to my coaching room: the Literacy CAFE.

Appetizers and drinks greeted the teachers upon arrival, and I briefly introduced the new Literacy CAFE. This official opening of the Literacy CAFE gave teachers the opportunity to “taste” menu items from the CAFE bins along one wall of the room.

Each part of the CAFE Menu is represented on one of four sections of shelving. Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expand Vocabulary lettering and descriptors are framed above the shelf section containing bins for each of the CAFE strategies. The shelving and corresponding labeling of strategies was intentionally done to reflect the look of CAFE boards used in classrooms.

The bins are each labeled with color-coded strategy cards for easy location, and library cards provide a quick and easy self-check-out of materials within the bins by teachers as they plan lessons.

Inside each bin, teachers can find and use the following CAFE resources (found on the interactive menu at www.thedailycafe.com) for each CAFE strategy:

  • Ready Reference Guides
  • Parent Pipelines
  • Brief Focus Lessons
  • “I Can” Bookmarks
  • Assessing Student Learning Guides
  • A list of online videos of lessons to see the instruction of the strategy in action. (These are found on www.TheDailyCAFE.com.)

In addition, some bins contain

  • books for teaching the strategy as depicted in the Brief Focus Lessons;
  • additional articles/research relevant to teacher understanding of the strategy;
  • CAFE bookmarks with adapted lower elementary language when needed; and
  • lessons and ideas developed by the teachers in the school that reinforce the strategy (not in every bin, but added as lesson ideas are shared)

In addition to the CAFE shelving, alphabetically labeled tubs are also in an area of the Literacy CAFE. In these tubs, teachers can find and check out CAFE Lit Lessons and corresponding books. The Lit Lessons are available on the Daily CAFE website, and are ready references for teachers to use in teaching multiple CAFE strategies with one book.

The best thing about our living, interactive CAFE Menu is that it continually grows because we add to it each week as new articles, videos, and printables come available on the Daily CAFE website.

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