Customer Reviews

The CAFE Book: Engaging All Students in Daily Literary Assessment and Instruction

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Surely, if you are reading this review, you are probably a fan or a devotee of this book: Daily Five, The, the book that provided a framework for literacy instruction that revolutionized classrooms across the country. After implementing "the Sisters" authentic literacy practices, teachers around the country asked, "What's next?" and the Sisters responded by writing "The Cafe Book". It's certainly a worthy partner of their first book.

Washingtonians Gail Boushey and Joan Moser are veteran master teachers, reflective, and insightful in their approach to the craft of education. This book provides the classroom tested, works in progress reading teaching that is happening in their classroom. The CAFE approach allows children to select literacy goals based on their reading needs (comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and expanding vocabulary), gives a framework for conferring with students, and offers tons of classroom tested tips and hints to make your reading teaching more successful.

The Sisters writing is very transparent, examples of actual "language" they use with the kids, and extremely user friendly. Unlike some other education books, which require hours of time, or a master's degree to understand, the Sisters make their books easily accessible, easily understandable, and easy to put into practice. Not only that, the lessons and ideas are mighty powerful indeed.

Don't worry. If you haven't implemented the Daily 5 into your classroom, the Cafe book can easily meet your needs as it provides yet another framework that can be adapted in your classroom. However, I can see the power of implementing both ideas into the room for true impact. If you are a newbie, I can't highly recommend enough "Daily 5". As a mentor with first year teachers, I've seen the impact of the framework on their daily reading block, and it's been quite amazing.

Not only is the book loaded with pictures, but it comes with a CD that is ready to be used, with copies of the forms they have in the book that can be printed out.

The Sisters are truly on the path of authentic, real life teaching practices. If you are a first year or twentieth year teacher like myself, in kindergarten or in fifth grade, this book will be an irreplaceable feature, and one that's frequently borrowed by colleagues after you brag about its impact, for years to come.

Yes, it's THAT good.

I ordered this book and "The Daily 5" on a whim about 2 weeks ago. I had not heard of "the sisters" before, but was intrigued by the premise of their books. Needless to say, I have yet to implement any of "the sisters'" strategies into my second grade classroom, but I am really excited to try it all out next year. Like others have said, the book is an easy read and chock-full of fabulous ideas for set-up, planning, management, and instruction. To put it plainly, their ideas make loads of sense and put individual student's literacy needs under the microscope. I recommend this book to anyone looking for fresh ideas on how to teach/encourage young readers to help themselves when reading.

The CAFE Book is great! Very easy to read and I love the honesty of the 2 sisters. They each share times in their career when they were disorganized and had no clue what they were doing.

The CAFE system is easy to understand and implement. They give you a daily teaching guide for the first 26 days of school. The record keeping system is simple and effective.

This book, along with The Daily Five, is the bulk of my reading instruction.

This companion book to the Daily 5 is a must have for elementary teachers. The CAFE book tells you how to weave the 5 components of reading into your daily instruction.
The book is easy to read but jammed pack with a lot of details on how to teach comprehension, accuracy (phonics and phonemic awareness), fluency and vocabulary. If you teach K-6, you have to read this book.

I read this book on line through another website and was able to implement this easy organizational system the next day! Our school's current reading strategies for best practices can be readily integrated in this approach as well as support learner's in creating and focusing on personal goals. Classroom teachers will also be able to effortlessly create better organzitional strategies and document student progress.

We hope to use this fabulous resource in our summer PD work to support all of our classroom teachers!

A must read for all educators, especially for those who teach reading!

I enjoyed The Daily Five by the same authors. This book is even better. I could start using their strategies right away. I will continue to use this style of literacy instruction. I have had several years of Literacy Collaborative training. To me this style of teaching is the next step.

The book shipped quickly and arrived in great shape.

The book itself is truly remarkable. I am implementing it in my first grade classroom this year and I am AMAZED! It was worth every moment of my summer that I spent reading it, planning for it, and now implementing it. If I can only recommend one professional development book it's this and it's partner book, "The Daily Five."

Students are engaged, I'm able to do so much more with them and I wish I had a tool like this years ago.

"The sisters" are truly amazing and have a gift.
This is a must read for any teacher - but get ready for a change in your thinking, teaching, and in your students' learning!

This book goes into building on the Daily Five, but instead of meeting with groups based on their reading level, you are instead, targeting strategies that they are weak on. It gives you all the basic strategies you should teach, and how to manage your classroom. This book is a really good extension of the Daily Five...

If you are looking to take your reading instruction to the next level and really differntiate for your students this book is what you are looking for. If you haven't already read their first book the Daily 5, you need to read that first to be able to put this book to use. The sisters took good reading instruction and broke it down to make it more managable for busy teachers. They have ready to print forms that you can use on the CD and the book is very easy to pick up and read and then try in your classroom.

After speaking with many educators, I was disappointed with The CAFE BOOK. While there are some practices I hope to incorporate into my daily teaching, overall it pales in comparison to the work of Debbie Miller's Reading for Meaning, Isabel Beck's Bringing Words to Life and all of the work done by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell. Save your money and instead read Fountas and Pinnell, in particular the "3-5 beige book" and the above mentioned titles. The CAFE BOOK diminishes the joy of balanced literacy and takes away the magic of teaching. Enjoy your children's curiosity, remember why you became a teacher in the first place and forget OVERANALYZING your students' data. Instead, read up on Balanced Literacy, Lucy Calkins, Stephanie Harvey, Irene Fountas, Gay Su Pinnell, and Isabel Beck. Reader's Workshop, Word Study, and Writer's Workshop really work when thoughtfully implemented using these resources. The Daily Five and the CAFE book just pollute the workshop model I know and love.