A Crayon's Point of View

The Day the Crayons Quit

           

            My students loved hearing The Day the Crayons Quit read aloud.  They also thoroughly enjoyed the short video from the books illustrator, Oliver Jeffers, and how he goes about his daily work as a picture book writer and illustrator.  The video led to some interesting forms of brainstorming.  For the first time I allowed my fourth graders to brainstorm by first drawing their picture.  They also had the option to work in the same way as Jeffers, and write their piece and draw their picture at the same time.  Many kids chose to brainstorm via drawing, and then were able to quickly write a letter from a crayon’s point of view.  A few students really liked another form of brainstorming that Oliver Jeffers discusses in his video – walking around with a notepad in hand to jot down ideas based on the world around them.  Others stuck to more traditional brainstorming methods such as quick notes, spider webs, lists, and short sentence outlining.  When I collected the papers, I also collected their brainstorming notes.  It is very interesting to look at the brainstorming and their letters side by side to see how they work through the entire writing process. 

           

            On Monday I will hand back the graded and edited drafts so the students can use their chosen crayon color to write their final copy and produce an illustration.  With it still being pretty early in the year I am mostly looking for ideas and staying on topic when it comes to grading their written work.  However, since we did a letter writing mini lesson earlier in the week when we wrote thank you letters to a student’s parent for adopting our class (donating) to our fundraiser earlier this month, I will also be grading to make sure they follow the guidelines for writing a letter.  The format of the letter will be a small portion of the grade, because I still want them to be working mainly on ideas, staying on topic, and writing coherently. 

           

            Once the students finish their final draft and illustration page, I will put all of their work in a binder that will be available in the class library for them to read during read to self time.  I will also take some time to share their writing and illustrations in a read aloud.  Before doing this I will ask to see if any students are uncomfortable with their work being read aloud.  If anyone doesn’t want me to read their page then I will just skip over it during the read aloud.  I am pondering even letting the students read their own pages of the book if they want.  If I choose to do this the students would have the option to have me read it for them or they could choose to not have their work read aloud at all. 

Looking Back and Ahead

           

            Monday will be the start of my second week having control of everything within the classroom.  The first week went over well, and the students didn’t seem to miss a beat transitioning to me teaching everything instead of just the subjects I had been teaching.  Going into the week my biggest concern for a subject was math.  I have always loved math personally, but had found it somewhat difficult to teach.  In previous field placements it was weird to me that a subject I understood so well was so difficult to teach.  When I reflected on my previous math teaching experiences I began to wonder if it was harder to teach because I understood it so well.  When I learned math concepts I usually picked them up quickly no matter how they were taught to me.  Now when I teach math I like to make sure I take some extra time in my planning to think about concepts that might be harder to grasp.  Within my math lessons I try to plan for teaching the same concepts in multiple ways, so each student has a chance to learn and completely understand the material.  My first week of having complete control of the math planning and teaching seemed to go over well, and we got through all of the material I had planned for, as well as some supplemental teaching methods for most topics.  I am glad I was able to teach the math lessons using multiple teaching practices. 

           

            As I look ahead to my next week, I see the student teaching experience going by so fast.  THERE ARE ONLY FIVE WEEKS LEFT!  I cannot believe it is going by this quickly.  While I am very excited to start my search for a career in the elementary education field I do not know how I will feel when it is over.  I know my education at Albion College has done an amazing job preparing me to have my own classroom, I am just not ready to say goodbye to my students.  So far the student teaching experience has been so rewarding and extremely reassuring that elementary education is the perfect career choice for me.  When it is over I am certain I will cry as the students leave for Thanksgiving Break.  I will have to make sure I come back to visit them when I have the chance (I have already talked to my mentor teacher about this, and she has assured me that she would love to have me visit when I can).  I will also be hoping my mentor takes a couple days off here and there (which is not very like her, as she does not take much, if any of her vacation/sick time) so I can be their substitute teacher.  I am ready to finish earning my teaching certificate, but I am not ready to leave my classroom.  I want to continue to watch these children grow throughout the year.  When I have my own class and teach all year, I know I will feel the same as summer approaches and they continue to the next grade – I will be proud of how they grew throughout the year having me as their teacher, but I will be sad to not see them every weekday morning.  Luckily when I have my own classroom my students – other than the ones that move – will remain in the same district so I will still be able to keep tabs on them, and if I am not teaching the final grade of their elementary schooling I will still be able to see them in the hallways.  With all that being said, I could not be happier with my decision to pursue a career in elementary education.  I want to make a difference in the lives of our youth and I can see almost no better way to do that than to be a teacher they can learn from and view as a positive role model.