Monday, September 16, 2013

Getting Ready for CAFE

I'm getting ready to begin CAFE and my first job is to get the CAFE board ready. Since I'll have 14 classes 1st-5th I didn't want to do one board for everyone since I'll be introducing different strategies with different groups. I also wanted to make sure that each group has ownership to the board by making the strategy cards. So, enter trifold boards. I was excited to find black ones at Staples but not happy with the price which was about $9! Then one day while wandering through Hobby Lobby I found not only black ones but blue, red, purple and other colors as well! And the great news was that they were $3.99. Still not a cheap project but much better than the first option. Right next to the boards was beautiful colors of Duct tape. I left there ready to work! I decided on using one color board for each grade level. Here's a few pictures of the process.
These are the colors I chose.  I'll be adding 4th grade next week so I'll be back to pick up another color for the new group.

I brought in a cutting board to make the process a little easier. I cut the tape in half for the vertical lines.

This is the finished product. I used the Elison cutter for CAFE and printed out the column headers. 
If you look to the right you'll see a brown board. That's where I'm storing my boards. They fold up nicely to fit in that box.

The New Year Begins!

The Reading Room is up and running! I ended up buying some plastic shelves and managed to fit all the baskets in the room. It was music to my ears to hear a parent walk by my room right before school started and comment to their child that my room must be the reading room. Yes, I'm sending the right message. Here are a few pictures of my set up.
The Reading Wagon-a refurbished $11 thrift store find.
I'll digress for a moment and show the original wagon.
And the finished product. The kids love it!


Favorite Author Baskets and more

Beanie Babies to reinforce decoding and comprehension strategies.

Books on the shelves are for my younger students.

My new plastic shelves.

Jack is a good listener for my young readers.