Sunday, October 28, 2012

Daily Cafe Conference in Chicago!

We had so much fun in Chicago last weekend attending the Daily Cafe conference!  I haven't had a chance to post yet so here's our weekend in pictures...with some funny details along the way.  


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I was in shock when I got into our Toyota Yaris rental car and saw the dashboard empty behind the steering wheel!  The speedometer was in the middle of the dashboard.  That was so strange!  And about 20 minutes into the trip I realized there was no cruise control.  I was very sad about that considering I had a 7 hour drive each way!  
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STOPE HOUP
I thought this was a different language and then realized it was really just store hours with some missing letters!! 

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The 2 Sisters were going to be in this room!  This was the night before the conference started.  We were so excited just to see the sign on the door so we had to take pictures.  
They are famous after all!  :)  
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Me hanging out in front of the School of Rock!  My kiddos are Rock Stars this year so I had to pose in front of this shop.  
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Hinsdale was an adorable town. We caught the train here into the city.  It was such a cute little town.  And the weather was beautiful!
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Chicago...one of my favorite cities!  
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This is my teaching friend Christina posing in front of The Bean in Millenium Park.  It is so much fun to take pictures here! 
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Me at Millenium Park.  I had absolutely no trouble sitting up there either!  :)
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Our deep dish pizza experience!  It was yummy, but we both decided we like our hometown Ohio pizza better!!
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We had to get Best Friend bracelets to commemorate our special weekend!  We had told our kiddos that we were tight and BFF's now so the bracelet was a necessity!  
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Chicago at night.  
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This is Christina and I posing after the conference with The 2 Sisters!!  We got our picture taken with them and their autographs!  I told them they were like Rock Stars in the teaching world!  I'm sure they already knew that though.  The conference was great and was totally worth being exhausted this past week after lots of driving and not much sleep.  :)


For attending the conference we got a year long subscription to The 2 Sister's website here.  I would highly recommend purchasing this if you are able to.  It is definitely worth it for all of the resources available.  

Something The Sisters highly recommend is one on one conferencing during their reading block.  Christina and I chatted all the way home about how to make this work in our classrooms.  While at the conference they shared their newest creation called Pensieve.  

This program is amazing!  I use my iPad while I read with each student one on one for about 5 minutes.  It's been an eye opening experience to see how beneficial it is to meet with students individually even for a short time.  My kiddos who have a hard time staying on task for any length of time in a reading group are really benefiting from this.  

The Sisters shared that research has shown that kiddos can only stay on task with higher level learning for however many minutes they are old.  So if a kiddo is 6 years old they will be able to attend to higher level learning for about 5-8 minutes at most.  

Last week I began meeting with my reading groups for the first 8-10 minutes of a Daily Five round and then I met with students individually for the next 10 minutes.  The Pensieve program allows you to set up your meetings whether they are one on one or small groups and then you can type notes and give your kiddos a rating for how they're doing.  

I am totally in love with it!  :)  

This was the biggest thing I learned from the conference.  Overall, the Daily Cafe conference was great.  So was our shopping time in downtown Chicago!  It's always exciting to be around so many teachers.  And it was so cool to meet The 2 Sisters!  :)

I highly recommend the opportunity if ever get the chance!  

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