CAFE (actually, CRAFT) Board

Happy Saturday bloggy friends! I hope this counts as an anchor chart, because I'm linking it up in Ms. M's and my Anchor Chart Linky Party...it does, right??

Anyhow...I know it's getting late in the year, but I wanted to introduce the sisters' CAFE method to my ELL students. I almost said "ELL newcomers" but, at this point, many of my students don't seem like newcomers anymore! Their English skills are strengthening and this translates into all other areas (especially reading!). So it is actually the perfect time to introduce CAFE to my students!

Only, I wanted to alter it a bit to fit the needs of my 4th and 5th graders...

So our board has most of the conventional headers of a traditional CAFE Board. Comprehension is a must...

As well as Accuracy and Fluency...

I decided to take out "Expand Vocabulary" though, since that is a given in our newcomer ELL magnet class! I made two different headers instead.

I wanted one that would focus on Reader's Response, since we do a great deal of response to text in our Reader's Workshop.

So I made an R for Response to Text...

(I know that first strategy above sounds pretty basic for 4th and 5th grade, but it is something I must remind my ELL students of...plus I have three brand new students who are just beginning to speak English). I plan on adding other strategies to hone our skills in response to text...our next one this week will be "Use quotations from the text to support your answer".

I also made a T for Text Elements. This will be for text features and other aspects of books I would like to introduce or review with my students (I made it "elements" so I could keep this category broad and address any unfamiliar concepts to my students, as well as how to use these elements).

Altogether, the letters form the word CRAFT, as "we are developing our reader's craft"!

We have been using our CRAFT Board since Monday and it has been working very nicely so far. It has kept my Reader's Workshop mini-lessons focused and I love how the strategies stay up for students to refer to again and again.

(It's common for my ELL students to read plural words without the "s" so that was our first strategy under Fluency this week).

I am so happy with this board that I plan on doing the same for math, to help focus my math lessons a bit more. Or a lot more, actually.

Thanks for reading! I hope you will have a moment to check out the Anchor Charts Linky Party, or even join in if you would like!

Update! If you'd like to grab this file, please hop over to this post:

CRAFT Board Headers {free download}