reading QU

My Creative Nightmare

Case Study

Brianna is excited to try out a lesson that will foster creativity among her first grade students while they are learning language skills. The lesson creates a great deal of noise and confusion that she didn’t expect, and she is left without a backup plan.

I am assigned to a small suburban school with mostly Caucasian, middle-class student population. My first week of school in September was exciting and fulfilling. I helped my cooperating teacher, Ms. Dalstrom, and the students when they needed an extra hand. I listened attentively while my cooperating teacher led lessons, and I observed her carefully. All the while I was thinking of all the creative, hands-on activities I have learned to do in my college classes. Most of the lessons I had observed so far were based on the many workbooks and textbooks that this first grade had to use.

I was thrilled when Ms. Dalstrom said,” Brianna, let’s get you started right away. Why don’t you prepare a language lesson for Monday?” I was glad it was Friday so I would have the whole weekend to prepare. After hours of work, I was finally satisfied that I had ready an exciting, creative lesson.

Monday morning rolled around and I began with a flannel board story of Jack and the Bean Stalk. My objective was to have the children listen to the story and retell it using pop-out puppets from their books to build language skills and an understanding of story structure. The flannel board story was great! The children were amused by my homemade characters, and they seemed to appreciate my knack for storytelling. After I read the story, I asked the class who could tell me what happened first, next, and last. The group was eager to answer, and they were on the money each time, so I knew their comprehension was good.

Then came my wonderful creative activity. I had the children punch out characters from the back of their workbooks. Then I assigned them to groups of four. Each person would have a chance to play each one of the four characters: Jack, the giant, Jack’s mother, and the giant’s wife. The children got into their groups, and the noise began to grow. I expected it to be a rather loud activity since all the children would be play acting, but I was unprepared for how loud it got. This was not a busy hum but a loud roar. I tried to circulate in and out of each group. The groups I listened to weren’t retelling the story; they were making up their own stories. Some of the groups were arguing about what character each person was going to play. Some of the children refused to participate because they couldn’t be Jack. No one wanted to be the giant.

The room continued to grow uncomfortably loud. As I was desperately trying to think about how I could get the children quieter and more engaged, my cooperating teacher whispered,” Brianna, do you have a backup plan for this lesson?” I hadn’t thought of anything else for the children to do. In my mind, I had envisioned them intensely acting out the story for the whole time period.

Ms. Dalstrom suggested that the children could now begin to review the story sequence. I had no other plans myself, so I told the children,” Put your puppets away and go back to your seats now. Get out your workbooks and begin to color in what happened first in the story, next, and last.” The children reluctantly put the puppets away and moved slowly back to their own desks.

I felt defeated. What happened to my activity? I put a lot of thought into it, but you couldn’t tell from the results. The storytelling went well, but not my creative follow-up. What could I have done differently?

Questions to Ponder

1. What do you know about classroom management that helps you to analyze the sources of Brianna’s problem? How do routines, signals, the classroom environment, and communicating expected behavior relate to this case?

2. What are appropriate expectations for first graders’ behavior? What do you know about their cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development that could help you plan creative lessons? Refer to the Levine and Munsch textbook.

3. What short-term solution would you suggest when a lesson doesn’t go as expected? How would you adapt Brianna’s lesson? What long-term solutions do you think would help her students?

4. To what extent are worksheets and textbooks appropriate in first grade? How can you develop creative thinking when you are required to use such textbooks and worksheets?