The TAB Transformation: A Long Work in Progress.

Transforming my room into a TAB classroom has been a lot of work. I am very grateful that I have had a couple diligent 5th graders who come in twice a week to help me make posters for each center and organize materials. This past week I have been setting up for my STEAM Showcase, which is an art show for my third through fifth graders at both elementary schools. It is also a lot of work, so a lot of my TAB creation has been done by my fifth graders.

I did introduce some choice-based lessons to my kindergarten and first grade students, this week. The students loved the idea of being in charge of what materials they used to complete their assignment. The assignment I chose to experiment with was an extension to the book, "The Day The Crayons Quit" by Drew Daywalt. If you have never read that book it is a hilarious story told by crayons about their complaints of how their owner uses them. It is a great character building story and perfect for an art room.

My students are hard at work while choosing where to sit and which material to use.

Back to my lesson. After we read the book, I had the first students write letters to the crayons to convince them to come back and to draw a picture showing why they needed that color. I allowed my students to choose from the following art supplies: crayons, colored pencils and markers. For my kindergartners, I had them draw a picture of a crayon but they had to practice their 3-dimensional shape drawing skills. They also had to give the crayon a people-like expression and some clothes. I gave the kindergartners the same material choices. Overall I found the choice-based lesson to be beneficial. In my next post I am going to talk about flexible seating and the classroom environment. The way the choices worked, students got comfortable and were sprawled all over the room. It limited behavior issues and allowed students to perform in a comfortable environment.

I think with this small taste of TAB/choice-based curriculum, it is just leaving me hungry for more. I am looking forward to when I can jump into my new TAB curriculum, full-forced.

If you have any suggestions or would like to know the other ways I used "The Day the Crayons Quit" please contact me through Twitter or the comment section below!