I was soooooo lucky to get to attend the Daily 5 and CAFE training in Tacoma, Washington this year with the Two Sisters. My frugal self did not spend the money for the tickets, but my super kind principal had bought tickets and then couldn't attend so she gave little ole' ME her tickets!! I was so excited to attend this training. I had heard of Daily 5/Cafe/Two Sisters before, had seen a bit of their work in some of my colleagues rooms, but I had NO idea how popular this model had become. I live in Tacoma (the city of the convention), but was so surprised when I learned that people had flew in from all over the country, no, make that the world, to attend this conference. We had people from Hawaii, Nebraska, Maine, Colorado, Georgia, Canada, even New Zealand! Knowing that all these great teachers had flown in just to attend this conference let me know that what I was about to experience was special.
Ten minutes in, I was hooked! The Sisters were not only experienced teachers filled with really sound advice on how to improve literacy instruction in the classroom, but they were funny! I love funny. Especially in teaching, when things can sometimes just get so darn hard and complicated, the only way to survive is to laugh at the crazy. They shared stories from their classrooms, spoke so fondly of their students and teachers they had worked with. I left the training with an understanding of the model and an excitement to get started learning more about it and implementing elements into my classroom.
The basic premise of Daily 5/CAFE is that to make students become better readers, they need to spend the majority of their literacy block ACTUALLY reading real books. I am so on board with this. I taught at a small, private school for a number of years and we had no reading curriculum. We taught many kids how to read by teaching them the phonics and comprehension strategies they needed, but allowed them to read what they wanted. No boring basal readers. No colored reading groups. And it worked! However, we had ten kids to a class. As I was listening I was on board with the idea, but skeptical that it could be implemented in a class of 25+. It seemed though that as soon as this popped into my head, they had the answer. They knew that to really get kids reading, teachers needed to spend the first part of the year focusing on teaching them how to read independently and build their stamina. Once you spend the first month and a half building their independence and stamina, then you can start meeting with students in small groups or one-on-one and giving them individualized reading instruction that they need to become better readers.
The books give much greater detail on HOW to do this and what EXACTLY it looks like in a classroom. I've read the CAFE book and really enjoyed it. It explains how to implement the model in your room and, my favorite part, has sample lessons in the back for all the comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and vocabulary standards. I've ordered the new Daily 5 book and plan on reading that before school starts too. Their website also has TONS of videos and articles to support the model.
So I learned a lot from the workshop and book; more than a typical professional development workshop. I felt a community between literacy teachers. I had a plan and was ready to implement, but I just can't share about this conference without sharing what I think made it stand out above every professional development workshop I've attended, and Lord knows I and every other teacher out there has attended hundreds if not thousands of professional development workshops. It all started in the first 10 minutes when the Sisters explained they weren't providing lunch because they do lunch. . . differently. I thought, "Weird, what could that possible mean?!" Well, about 30 minutes later we all found out.
The sisters were talking about this great book, Dex: Heart of a Hero. It focuses on this little dog who wants to a superhero, but everyone tells him he can't because he's too small. Well, he buckles down and trains hard and then ends up becoming a famous and very helpful hero. The Sisters encouraged us to read it aloud to our students when talking about stamina. Just as I went to write down the title and author, they announced that everyone was getting a FREE copy of the book!! What?! My colleagues and I were so excited! They had volunteers pass out books to each of the probably 1000+ teachers in the room.
"How cool!" we all thought. Little did we know how cool it actually was. Over the next two days we got so much swag! Great books and tools that actually will help in the classroom. Many workshops give you a pen or, yes, ANOTHER tote bag, but this workshop gave us a ton of really useful things. We seriously felt like we were on the Oprah show by the end of it all. Look at all this stuff!
We got 4 really great books. We got chimes to use as a quiet signal, dry erase colored pencils (What?! I didn't even know they made those!) and a small white board, a timer, toys to help children focus and check for understanding, post-it notes, and tools to help kids track lines in their books. All this swag has got to be worth doing lunch on your own right?! They also gave use these really high-quality workbooks, notebooks, and STYLUS pens. Yep, that's right! Not just any ole' ink pen, but an ink pen that can also be used on tablets and phones. Super cool!
Long story short, (that was really long!), I really enjoyed the conference and walked away with useful things I am planning on implementing in my room this year.
Of course, after the workshop I just HAD to start a project; making a cute CAFE board and Daily 5 signage. Here's a SNEAK PEEK! I'm hoping to get this project finished by next Friday
