Janice Such
October 25, 2013
Anyone who knows me will confirm that I was born without a sense of direction. Since I love to explore new places and have to go to others, I have learned to compensate by using various resources (digital and print, along with living, breathing humans). When I plan a road trip (whether ten miles or a thousand miles long), I set my GPS and, fearing a technology glitch, print out driving directions. Of course, there is the occasional dead-end street and dreaded detour that derail me, but that is why I have a cell phone listing the numbers of people with good directional sense on speed dial. Pride never prevents me from stopping to ask for directions, which every gas station clerk along Route 66 can verify.
Before I acquired navigational tools and strategies, I often felt flustered, frustrated, and embarrassed about my failure to find the way. I think this is how many of our older struggling readers feel. By the time they hit third grade, they recognize that it is easy for them to get lost, not on the road but in the text. Reading is just plain harder for them than it is for others. While they struggle, they see classmates happily cruising from one reading level to the next, easily grasping interesting concepts from nonfiction and devouring the most popular fiction works for their age group. Unlike successful readers, they encounter roadblocks in the form of challenges with comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and limited vocabulary. They can get lost and frustrated trying to circumvent the roadblocks to their reading goals.
But there is hope, not in the form of a map per se, but rather from the CAFE Menu. Recognizing that each reader has individual needs, the CAFE Menu helps to pinpoint the unique area where each student needs support. The menu is for all readers, but it wisely takes into account that each one is different. With its personalized focus, it offers each member of the classroom community of readers—the skilled, the less skilled, and the struggling—a vital opportunity to deepen comprehension, read with greater accuracy, develop fluency, and expand vocabulary.
Just as I can identify routes that are likely to confuse me on a road trip, students can often pick out areas where they need help with reading. If they hesitate, the teacher is there to help them identify possible areas of challenge. When students select a goal from the CAFE Menu, they set their course for a particular destination. The strategies that readers acquire (individually, in small groups, and as a whole class) create their own navigational grid of sorts, leading them to where they need to go and telling them how to get there.
As readers practice and develop skills in each of the designated areas on the CAFE Menu, they become more self-assured navigators of the written word. Conferring with the teacher, their personal literacy guide, readies them for their journey and reassures them along the way. Students learn that there are others who share their same reading goals; they need only to glance at the classroom CAFE board adorned with their classmates' names to realize that they are not alone. Reading plenty of "just-right" text gives them the confidence and practice they need. Through CAFE, they can find their way and reach their specific reading goals. What an exciting road trip!