.

.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

CAFE on the Smartboard?

So for the last 3 years I have been trying to figure out a way to use the Daily 5 and the CAFE board on my SmartBoard, and after perusing Pinterest I came across this picture.  YES!

I tried to figure out where the pin originally came from but it took me back to Bing's image files and it was not listed among the choices.  If you know who originally came up with this idea please let me know so I can credit them.

Cool idea, but it only tracks the Daily 5 choices.  So I adapted it to look like this.  


I intentionally left the Read to Self portion off because we do that as a whole class, all at once, for the first round. The remaining rounds the students have a choice.  I know it deviates from the Sister's philosophy, but it just works better for me (and my kiddos who need silence to concentrate).  It also ensures that the strategies they are to be working on during that time are completed.

So how does it work?
The kids will all have a card with their picture on the bottom of the chart.  They drag their card to the column they want to work on, and then they chose a Daily and drag it to their card.  I always ask students to go to the CAFE board in the order of the letters C-A-F-E, so hopefully that will cut down on the, "Hey! He/She moved my choice" that takes place with all check-in-type SmartBoard situations.  The red lettered choices are marked with infinite cloners and everything else, with the exception of the student cards, is locked down. 
At the end of each round I will just close the board, not saving any changes and reopen it for the next round.  If you want to keep track of what they do for each round you could write the date and round number at the top of the board and then take a screen shot to save the information to your desktop.


The board resembles the one I have on display in the classroom, so the kids can cross reference it for ideas to work on and it cuts down on the sticky note waste use.  Now I love sticky notes as much as the next person, but after a few days of moving them around our CAFE board they'd fall on the floor and then I'd have to reluctantly... hand out a new one. Sticky notes in my room are a precious commodity and I'd rather save them for the kids to record their thinking on instead of carpeting my floor.  So this year I am going to give this a try. Wish me luck!

  

1 comment:

  1. Hi ! I just found your blog & nominated you for a Blog Award. I'd love for you to stop by to grab it, and visit. I can't wait to get a SmartBoard in my room...right now, it could be months, but I'm trying to be patient! :)

    Kelly
    First Grade Fairytales

    ReplyDelete