Random Late Night Idea

I need your help!  It is late, I'm fighting a headache, and I've had an idea.  I'm planning to implement the Daily 5 and CAFE next year.  I'm actually going to run a bit with the cafe` theme since I'm dealing with 6th graders.  I'd also like to incorporate a focus wall.  My question now is, how far do I carry the cafe/food theme?

My initial idea was to create a food that went with each genre - like Mystery Meatloaf.  However, I've got about 12 genres that I need to teach (or are involved in the 40 book challenge) and that might get tricky.

Now I'm wondering if I shouldn't just incorporate the CAFE board (and thereby the food theme) into my focus wall.  Maybe generate a food for each section of the focus wall?  Here are some ideas I played with in Paint. Can you help? (The pics are as big as I can make them to fit the blog. If you click them, they'll be full size.)

My original idea

After adding CAFE to the focus wall

Shrank Vocab. and added PIE

Added meal courses for the "School Name" Cafe

I think this will help with the buy-in from my 6th graders.  I can tie it to eating - you can't eat just one type of food. So when we read, we have to pay attention to all parts, even things we might not enjoy (like spelling, vocab.)  Our school name begins with a C, so it goes well with "cafe."

I'm stopping myself here, even though I've still got ideas like...

• Instead of using words like "pasta" should I get more specific? Perhaps, "Spaghetti Structures" is better?
• Should I not bother? Just keep the plain and simple focus wall?

Help! Please offer your input! (I know I've got lots of new visitors out there - this is a chance to introduce yourself! Please?)

Resources I Use: Scoop It (@scoopit)

Today I'd like to share a site I used this spring.  After EOG testing, my students do a nutrition poster project. (Yes, it is a paper poster, don't judge us.)  I needed a better way to organize the sites they could use for research. (This was a HUGE disaster last year. I ended up sitting with each group as they researched.)  After poking around, I found

Here is a video from ScoopIt that describes what they allow you to do.



I installed their tool into my browser then just visited the sites I wanted students to be able to use.  A few clicks and the pages showed up in my Scoop It site for the project.  Super simple for me and for my students.

They don't offer embedding, but there are a few different gadgets and widgets you can put on your site.  If you are looking for a simple way to collect content for your students, I encourage you to check this out!