In our classroom, we will use the structure of CAFE to focus on reading comprehension strategies. During Daily Five, two of our whole class mini-lessons will focus on CAFE strategies. I will also meet with small strategy groups during our guided reading group time.
Our CAFE board shows the four strategies we will focus on- Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expanding Vocabulary. As we learn skills for each strategy, we will post them below. The most exciting part is that students will have the chance to declare the strategy they are working on. Taking ownership of comprehension strategies is an important part to becoming exceptional readers!
C omprehension: I understand what I read.
A ccurracy: I can read the words.
F luency: I can read like talking and I understand what I read.
E xtend Vocabulary: I can read, write, and find new words.
There are five major components to reading development and each of the components build off the knowledge of the previous component's knowledge set.
Reading Development
1. Phonemic Awareness is knowing how spoken language works. Young students need to have a strong understanding of spoken language before they can understand written language. Phonemically aware students know that sounds are the building blocks of our language.
What it looks like: learning a, b, c’s and the sounds each letter makes adding on to the knowledge over time learning rules.
2. Phonics involves teaching how to connect the sounds of English with letters or groups of letters and teaching them to blend the sounds of letters together to produce approximate pronunciations of unknown words.
What it looks like: blending and segmenting (making words, finding patterns, inventive spelling).
3. Fluency is the ability to read text with speed, accuracy and proper expression.
What it looks like: Fluent readers recognize words automatically, read aloud effortlessly and with expression, do not have to concentrate on decoding, and can focus on comprehension.
4. Building Vocabulary: building back ground knowledge or schema helps students to comprehend and create meaningful connections in what they are reading
5. Comprehension: questioning, inferring, determining important ideas, summarizing, predicting, visualizing helps students become purposeful, active readers