Literacy Menus

One of the projects I have been working on while I am gearing up for the new school year is my literacy menus. While I know that I will adapt and adjust as needed, I am planning on jumping right in and trying out the concept.

For reading I am using The CAFE menu, although I decided to just call it Reading Menu since the acronym does not end up being the same in Spanish and so that it complements the writing menu title better. I highly recommend The CAFE Book to learn more about the reading menu. I already created the poster headers for the menu, as well as each individual strategy that I will add on to the wall visual as the year progresses and they are introduced through mini-lessons. This is one place where I strayed from the book, I am pre-making the visuals rather than having students write them on sentence strips. When I was reading the book I got the idea of also creating a writing menu.

I am using our state writing rubric and guide to revision as the basis of my writing menu. It was easier to translate to Spanish because the state already provides the rubric in English and Spanish. Because part of my plan is for students to become more familiar with the state's rubric, I decided to stick closely to the language they use when introducing concepts. In the conventions area, there is not always a direct translation since the rules are not always the same between the two languages.

Below is my rough draft writing menu in English and Spanish. I may end up changing some of the wording, but at least I have a starting point. I will be introducing most of these concepts with Jeff Anderson's ideas/format. While I want to stay closely aligned to the writing rubric language, I may alter it at times if the current language does not fit the mini-lessons I see necessary to move my writers forward.

Writing Menu Handout