Each year I make time to do the Café Dewey activity with my upper elementary students. A fun way to reinforce all the hard work the students have been doing the previous weeks learning about catalog searching and finding books on the shelves. This year’s students haven’t done it yet and have been looking forward to it. I talk about all the materials needed in a previous blog here.

I have so much fun getting everything ready! Students enjoy dressing up as the waiters/waitresses and chefs.

I start off by welcoming the class to the new Café Dewey! It is so new, “that I am short staffed and need some help.” I pick a chef to sit at the computer to whip up some call numbers and a waitress to take orders and find “food” on the shelves. I remind the ‘customers’ that the staff members are still training on the job and the customers need lots of patience and they should behave as if they were at a real restaurant with their parents. It helps to keep the overly silliness down. I seat the customers and help the waitresses or waiters with their aprons and ties (it’s an upscale café); the chefs have chef hats and aprons too. Our classes are small, no more than 10 students per class, so I usually don’t have a sous chef. Waiters give the customers their menus, then take their order. They write down a subject from the menu. Usually only one subject from each person to save time. They write it down on the ‘guest check’ (copied on bright red and blue paper) and then hand it over to the chef. The chef does a catalog search to find the call numbers for the subjects. Once all the subjects have been found, the chef says loudly, “Order up, Blue” or “Order up, Red” depending on which kitchen they are working from.

The wait-staff search the shelves and then serve the customers by putting the books on a tray. Meanwhile, the customers have been doing word searches, crossword puzzles and mazes while they wait for their order. Once the customers have a chance to enjoy their ‘meal’ the waiter will ask if they would like their meal ‘to go” (to check it out), if not they bus the table and put everything into the big black tub. The waiters then give the customers 1 piece of chocolate as a thank you for coming to the new Café Dewey! I put 1 Hershey’s Kiss for each customer on a Thank You tray (see below).

 

 

 

 

That’s usually the student’s favorite part, eating the chocolate! They are so surprised I am actually giving them chocolate in the library, they all ask if they can really it it now. I check with the classroom teacher before hand to make sure no one has food allergies, if they do, I find an alternative candy that is safe for that student. We usually have time to switch places and do it all over again (except for the candy part “only 1 per customer”!) Wait-staff and chefs become customers and vice versa! The students can’t wait to do it again! I will have to do a fast food type activity to save time, similarly to the one mentioned here as McDewey.