“E” is for Ellen
Countless
Peace Corps Volunteers are talented
and energetic teachers, bringing years of classroom experience to Macedonia. I am not one of
them, and if I have a skill as a teacher it is that I
will do things like sit up late at night sewing the
bindings on tiny “books” while watching such
high quality movies as the made-for-tv Hillary
Duff vehicle Beauty and the Briefcase.
Last
spring, frustrated that none of my third
graders knew the English alphabet and that it
could take five minutes to get through a simple
round of Hangman as they recited their ABCs until reaching the desired letter, I took Dr. Suess’s
ABC book a little too much to heart and decided
to run an after-school activity for students who
wanted to make their own alphabet books. My
school’s director allowed me to repeatedly take
sheets of paper from the printer, which I then
cut in half, counted out, folded, and sewed up
along the binding.
Starting
with about ten students, we would read
a page from Dr. Suess’s book, write the letter on
the board, and then proceed to shout out every
word beginning with that letter. My students, it
turns out, have a wider vocabulary than is suggested by their English books, extending to words
like “crazy” and “zombie.” I wrote the words on
the blackboard in the hope that my students
wouldn’t all draw the same thing (an apple for
“A”). On each page of their books my students
wrote a letter of the alphabet, a sentence using a
word beginning with that letter, and a picture to
go with that letter.
By
the time we wrapped up the project at the
end of the school year nearly all of my students
were making alphabet books – 37 in all – and I
had to run the activity four days a week, splitting
students up by what letter they were on. I’ll be
doing the project again this year, with a few key
changes: the big one being to better split the students so that one student doesn’t end up on “L”
while another is on “C,” to make sure everyone
is writing the alphabet in the correct order, and
to head off (or, okay, maybe to encourage) word
choices like “Teacher Ellen” for “E.” (Thanks, Ardit!)
Apart
from making the books, this project is an
easy one that doesn’t require a lot of planning
on your part. Just show up with some markers
and a copy of a book, any book, about the English
alphabet, and your kids will go wild. It’s an easy
way to structure a month or two of after-school
activities for your third or fourth grade students,
and at end each of your students has his or her
own book to show for it.