Happy Anniversary—10 Website Treasures

Last night we celebrated the 243rd birthday of the USA with hamburgers, hot dogs, and fireworks. Today, in a quieter celebration, we are remembering that our new website launched a year ago. It was, and continues to be, a passion, labor of love, and important place to connect with you, our Daily 5/CAFE community.

The best thing about having a place like this is the immediacy with which we can share our newest thinking, learning, and wonders. Because we launched the Daily CAFE more than 13 years ago, you have been an audience to much of our reflection, revision, and growth.

We hope you are relaxing, recharging, and being renewed this summer. If you are like us, you are always feeding the professional development hunger within you. This is the perfect time to browse the vast resources on our website that you may not know about.

Here are 10 of our favorites. Grab an iced drink, and visit the ones that will help you achieve your teaching goals next year. Click on items of interest, and enjoy the luxury of time to go down every interesting rabbit hole related to them.

1. Tip of the Week archives—Find inspiration you missed or want to revisit here. Simply browse and click on the title of the week you’d like to see. 
2. Essential Elements—Although Daily 5, CAFE, and Math Daily 3 are flexible in many ways, a few elements are essential, non-negotiable keys to their integrity and success. These documents are intended to be used as tools to help you assess your knowledge and application of each element and its supporting behaviors. They are available for Daily 5, CAFE, and Math. 
3. Classroom Design—If you’ve begun to mentally organize and arrange your classroom for next year, we’ve got a wealth of ideas to make it a joy-filled, functional space.
4. Successful Schedules—Flexibility is one of Daily 5’s biggest strengths. Whether you have an uninterrupted block of time or your literacy instruction is divided up throughout the day, we have suggestions and sample schedules to help you fit it all in. 
5. Launching Support—Foundation Lessons, Launching Lessons, and a handy Launching Brief are available for each Daily 5 task. Start with Read to Self and Work on Writing, and launch the rest in the order you prefer. 
6. Interactive CAFE Menu—Out of the thousands of pages available, this might be my favorite. Click on any strategy and find everything you need to learn about it, teach it, assess it, and communicate it to parents. 
7. School/Home Communication—Whether you need to describe the structure of Daily 5 (which looks and feels very different from the traditional school many adults experienced) or want to communicate helpful information about strategies students are working on, we have all kinds of parent support. 
8. Book Lovers, Rejoice—You’ll find wonderful ideas for books you have (and discover books you want to have) if you look at the Brief Focus Lessons, Lit Lessons, and Book Looks sections of the website.
9. Accountability—I Can Bookmarks, promise cards, personalized CAFE menus, and a handy desk holder help students remember what they are working on. The conferring notebook and CCPensieve keep us accountable for just-in-time instruction and progress monitoring. 
10. Got math on your mind?—We’ve got everything you need to understand, prepare, teach, and support Math Daily 3. 

We love learning from you! Do you have something to share that would benefit our community? Submit an article. Check out this page for submission guidelines. 

So, thanks for celebrating this anniversary with us. Here’s to many more years of journeying together.