The Girl With the Brown Crayon

The Girl with the Brown Crayon covers important topics that cannot be learned in any college course but they can be acknowledged through experience. When reading the Girl with the Brown Crayon it gave me new insight on how Kindergartners can think. While I was reading I could not believe the topics that Paley gets her Kindergartners to discuss through the stories by the author Leo Lionni. For example they discuss topics such as race, identity, gender, and essential human needs to create and to belong. As Paley begins to discuss Reeny you begin to realize what type of child she is right off the get go. She does not take the teachers suggestions but she has a form of self-identity that most people do not come across until they are much older.

While reading the book I noticed that the children talked a lot about being accepted and the need to belong. When I was younger I always felt that I needed to belong and be in the “in crowd.” I felt like I needed to become like everyone else to fit in. In the book the story about Tico made me realize that all those years of trying to fit in was not me and I was different from everyone else, even if everyone else did not accept this. (Text to Self)

In addition, while I was reading I noticed that many of the issues that the Kindergartners were discussing were related to the world. For example race. In the first story that Reeny reads by the author Leo Lionni, she identifies herself with Fredrick the mouse. She realizes that Fredrick and her are the same color. Even before reading this story she and another boy Cory are coloring. She explains to Cory that she cannot use a marker to color in her skin in the picture because it is to dark. She shows him by putting her hand up the paper. Cory also puts his hand up to the brown marker and says that it is also to dark for him as well. I thought this was a great example of how even Kindergartners realize that there is something different about their skin color, but they do not make judgments about any of their classmates because they are different. This is not like our world today. We need to think more like Kindergartners in the fact that they realize they are different races, but do not linger on the fact that they are of a different race. There is something to be taught here by the Kindergartners and we should follow more in their example. (Text to World)

One part of the book that I found interesting was the part when they were going to write a letter to Mr. Lionni. This reminded me of story that I read when I was in school. We would go through the story and on each page there would be a letter written from a character with a story on it. After we had finished reading the story we would then write letters to our pen pals. Our teacher was very nervous about us writing to a pen pal because she was worried that they might not write back. This is just how the teacher Mrs. Paley felt. She wasn’t sure what to think about Leo Lionni and what he would write back, if he would write back. (Text to Text, and Text to Self)

So far I have found this book to be enlightening and it has also made me think about the way children think in a whole new light. It made me realize that just because these children are only in Kindergarten it does not mean they can not handle a challenge. It also made me think about my childhood and even my adult life and look back and reexamine everything. It has changed my way of thinking about topics such as being accepted into a group or feeling like you belong. It has also given me some examples of how to introduce important topics such as race, and gender into young children so that they understand the importance of knowing that your race or gender does not matter and that you can be whatever you aim to be.

How Do Teacher's Assess Student's learning?

It is a difficult task to assess students learning in language arts. There are many different ways to assess students learning. One way is through observations. The observations may be informal or formal. Informal observations happen when the teacher spontaneously watches the student and is attentive to the behavior and comments that the student makes. A formal observation happens when the teacher plans a specific time to focus on particular students and makes anecdotal notes about their involvement in literacy events and other language arts activities. The main focus is on what the student's do as they use oral and written language. Another way to assess student's learning is through anecdotal notes. This means that teacher's write brief notes as they observe the students. The notes that are most wanted are notes that describe specific events, rather than notes that evaluate. Another option for teachers are conferences. This is where students talk to their teachers so that they teachers can monitor their progress in language art activities. There are also checklists that can be used. The teacher will have a checklist in front of them as they observes students, and check off what the students know. Portfolios are another option for teachers. They keep documentation of the students work. Lastly for assigning grades teachers may use assignment checklists and/or rubrics.

During Tuesday Experience, I saw the teacher interacting with the students and observing them. She would take mental notes and then later in the day write down certain information about the specific child. She also had to do reading testing. She took each student and had them read a story independently to her. While I was there I also took students aside and had them read the story Alvin's Home to me. The teacher asked me how each student did and asked if the children were chunking words or still sounding out each syllable. She was always very positive with the children. They also filled out workbook pages as a form of assessment to see what they had learned. I did not see a lot of different forms of assessment but as I am there for a longer period of time i hope to see her incorporate different kinds of assessment into her lessons.