CAFE start-up

Well, it's about time I started sharing some Cafe ideas! Here's a lesson I've used to introduce the concept of the Cafe menu with my first graders. (Before teaching the lesson, I've collected a bunch of paper menus from various restaurants.)

After reading aloud A Crazy Day at the Critter Cafe by Barbara Odanaka, I hand out the restaurant menus and have children "read" through them. I ask them to find words they know, foods they'd like to eat, and things they'd never want to try! After they've explored for a bit, I ask them to pick something from the menu that they would order if we went to that restaurant. Naturally, items come from all parts of the menu (appetizers, main dishes, beverages, and desserts.) Children share their choices out loud, and I write them into columns on chart paper under appetizers, main dishes, beverages, and desserts. I draw attention to how everyone chose different things depending on what they wanted, needed, and/or liked.

I then reference our Cafe board (or my CAMP board, as the case may be.) We talk about how this is also a "menu" that is going to help us with our reading. I explain comprehension as a "main dish" in making sense our of what we read. It's the biggest part of our menu. Accuracy is like an appetizer, because accuracy is what we need before we can understand what we read. Making reading fluent is like the beverages many of us have chosen; it helps our reading go down smoothly (just like a big glass of water helps our dinner go down smoothly!) Lastly, Practicing Vocabulary is like dessert. It's very important in making reading more exciting!

In the next lesson, I've reviewed the concept of our menu. Then, we've talked about the restaurant menus and how everyone needed/wanted different things. We talk about how this is just like our CAMP menu; everyone needs to work on different parts of their reading.

This seemed to help my first graders grasp the concept of how we'd be using the menu throughout the year! What's your favorite way to introduce the Cafe menu?

~Komos :)