CAFE: Check for Understanding

This year I decided to embark on the journey that is known as the Daily 5/CAFE.  I had heard about it years ago but this was the year I was going to finally jump right in and try it out.  No one on my campus was using it, so I really had no one to turn to for support.  Fortunately, several teachers are going to be using this model in their classrooms next year so I'm glad to know that I can be a resource for them if they get to the point where they just want to pull their hair out!  It's an absolutely awesome model to allow for small group instruction but it takes a lot of time up front to train your students to be able to work independently while you work with small groups.  If you don't put in the time for the first 6 weeks of school, than Daily 5 is never going to work for the remainder of the school year.  I look forward to refining certain aspects of the Daily 5/CAFE and continuing with it next year.  I'll post more about it over the summer as I start to create my posters and various handouts to use with my class.  My flashdrive crashed earlier this year and I lost EVERYTHING!  So, it'll be back to the drawing board this summer to re-create certain documents. :-(

One of the first components of CAFE that I introduced with my class is Check for Understanding, which fits under the C (comprehension) in CAFE.  The expectations of this strategy are to read a section of text, stop and retell to a partner or yourself what just happened.  When we start out using this strategy, I stop every 1/2 page when we read our weekly story so students can practice check for understanding with one aother.  I noticed pretty early in the year that some students can naturally retell what they just read, while others aren't sure of where to even start.  Above is the anchor chart that I posted for my class to use.  When a partner is struggling with their retell, their peer can ask them "coaching or time?" and if they say coaching, then they can  use the questions on our anchor chart to help guide the retell.  If their partner can't tell them anything, than they would have to back up and reread that section of the text and then check for understanding again.

During our early days of using the Daily 5, many students started with a CAFE goal of reading 1/2 a page and then checking for understanding.  Students that couldn't retell 1/2 of a page, went down to doing it every paragraph.  On the other hand, students who could easily retell 1/2 of a page moved up to reading an entire page and then checking for understanding.  I would say that with three weeks left to go before the school year ends, 90% of my class can read at least an entire page and retell all of the key points.   At the start of the year, I only had 3 out of 25 students that were able to do that.