Ready for the most memorable day of the year?! Transform your classroom into a café for the day with the Learning Café resource and watch your student excitement and engagement abound! Below I’m telling you all the details and resources I use to make this day a success.
What Grades is this for?
The full resource can be edited to be used for 1st-5th grade, but is BEST intended for use in 2nd-3rd grade classrooms. A separate, smaller version of the resource has been made for 6-12th grade classrooms.
Never done a Classroom Transformation?
Not to fear, little is essential to make this theme come to life! It’s a great theme to use if you’re new transformations or just need something low prep.
What is a Classroom Transformation, you ask?
Essentially it’s a tool educators use to boost the engagement amongst students WHILE continuing in high rigor and learning activities! The classroom evolves into an imaginary world with their theme of choice, and all the learning activities for the day take on said theme.
This creates buy in with students and an eagerness to learn while enjoying the fun of the theme.
What is Needed?
Let’s cut to the chase, there are some key components to truly “transform” the classroom. But as stated above, the list for this theme is minimal. There are some I’ll classify as “must have” and many that will be “optional.” You can always add on more optional items as you redo your transformation in years to come!
Must Have Items:
- Themed Slides or Whiteboard Display
- Café or Jazz Music in the background
- Apron for the Teacher (Amazon Linked)
- Coffee Shop Treat (more explained below)
- Café Themed Activities
All the Slides and Activities you need are provided in the Learning Café Resource!
Optional Items:
- Student Aprons (Amazon Linked)
- Coffee Shop Backdrop (Amazon Linked)
- Tablecloths (Dollar Tree)
- Café Awning (Made of Butcher Paper)
- Trays, towels, other décor (Dollar Tree and Wal-Mart)
- Coffee for the Teacher (might be a must have for some 😉
What Activities will Students Do?
From the moment students arrive at the door to the end of the day, they are baristas in training completing a variety of coffee shop themed tasks! Here is an outline of what your day could look like:
- Morning Work-Design a Latte Cup: students create a cup however they choose! Display around your café or vote on your class favorite if desired.
- Grammar-Edit the Menu: baristas look for spelling, punctuation, and usage mistakes.
- Writing-Earn Your Iced Latte: students learn basic facts about coffee and use them to create a poem. After finishing their poem with the expected elements, students enjoy an “iced latte” of chocolate milk, ice, and whipped cream. Have a poetry slam to hear their wonderful creations!
- Math-Unlock the Cash Box: A four-step mission to solve the clues to find the key! Students solve story problems and decode a riddle using math skills.
- Reading-Text Feature Level Up Training: Students must use an online article and text features about coffee to answer questions.
- Bonus Reading Activity-Make the Recipe: Students listen to the story “Jalapeno Bagels” by Natasha Wing. Afterwards, they use the clues from the directions to complete the recipe! They will need to refer back to the text (close reading) to find all the answers needed.
- Science–Order Up: Baristas are divided into teams with familiar science vocabulary. They receive a customer order on the screen and must select the correct pastry (aka vocab word) to complete the order!
- Social Studies–Add to the Menu: In this economics activity, students design a new product for the menu and market it to others. Have the class do a Gallery Walk to see everyone’s ideas and then submit votes on the item that would perform best on the menu.
Want to See it in Action?!
I decided to film this day in class with my students so you can get a more in depth understanding of how this day works! Click the image below to watch the Café Day YouTube video!
When Should I do this Day?
Though there is no perfect time, I recommend saving this as something special to use near the end of the year. Personally, I loved doing this because it gave me something to look forward to and it fits in with National Poetry Month in April.
Additionally, it would also be ideal for right before Spring Break to keep students engaged as their excitement for break builds!
How Long do the Activities Take?
As you might have noticed, there are a LOT of activities included! These will definitely last you MORE than one day depending on how many of them you want to do.
In my 2nd grade class, we used all the activities over 2 full days. If you are wanting to incorporate elements of your regular curriculum into your day, you might be able to stretch it out even longer.
Ready to Start Planning?
Everything you need is included in the Learning Café resource for you! Activity descriptions and additional information is explained in the product as well. Have questions? I’m happy to answer them for you! Leave them in a comment below and I’ll get back to you.
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I love this idea! When creating this lesson plan, did you find it hard to meet the standards and achieve your learning goals for the week? Do you have any recommendations on certain lesson topics to incorporate this into?
Thank you, Alexis! I honestly did not find it hard to meet the standards at all! We stuck with concepts students had learned and used the theme to review, extend, and enrich those concepts. I typically paired math with counting money, writing with our poetry unit, grammar with editing skills, and reading with text features (reading articles on coffee.) Science and Social Studies changed depending on whatever unit we were in. We did a review game for those topics, so I just changed the vocab to match our unit!