Teacher uses students' descriptive writing to make PB&J sandwiches with hilarious accuracy
That's one way to teach the importance of descriptive writing.
Teacher's messy descriptive writing lesson goes viral
Descriptive writing is important, even if you have no plans to become a bestselling novelist. When you're tasked with writing instructions for a new employee or even for the babysitter while you take a much needed night out, having a firm grasp of descriptive writing comes in handy. It only takes one time reading Amelia Bedelia to see why accurately describing things can make things a little easier.
Kay Sloan is a first and second grade looping teacher, meaning she stays with the same students through both grades. Recently she gave the kids a descriptive writing assignment where they needed to tell her how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. To demonstrate how well they did on their descriptive writing, Sloan used their assignment as directions. But instead of inferring what the students meant and filling in the blanks with her own knowledge, she made the sandwiches as literally as possible following the descriptions given.
Peanut Butter And Jelly GIF by EvaGiphy
It was immediately clear to the students that she was making the sandwich wrong. The first paper must've read to get bread, put jelly on one side and peanut butter on the other side because Sloan takes an unopened loaf of bread, globs jelly on top of the plastic wrapping then flips the unopened loaf over to smear peanut butter on the other side. Shouts and giggles can be heard while the teacher tries to keep it together.
In a later clip she's smearing the sandwich fillings on her arms as the kids squeal in the background. At this point it's probably safe to say that the children likely think their teacher as essentially lost her mind. Surely there's a student watching this occur wondering if they should go get another adult.
journey of allen strange nicksplat GIFGiphy
Of course she explains what she's doing before she starts just slopping jelly all over the nearest desk but it still doesn't stop her students from being confused. One paper simply says "you get bread. You get peanut butter and you get jelly." There were no further instructions so she stood with all the ingredients in her arms asking if she succeeded in making a sandwich.
While still sporting her peanut butter and jelly covered arms, she brings home the lesson, "so we just did a whole lesson on adding detail to our writing. Do we understand why you have to have detail? Did anybody ever mention a plate or a knife? Did we even use these? All I did was exactly what you told me to do. So do we see how important it is to include all of the correct steps?"
@kay_sloan MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE LESSON AS A TEACHER🥪🥜🪼 #informativewriting #descriptivewriting #writinglesson #teachertok #pbandj #teachersoftiktok #elementaryteacher #elementaryschool #firstgradeteacher #primaryschoolteacher #justteacherthings #teacherlife ♬ original sound - kay_sloan
That's certainly one way to get a lesson to stick, quite literally. Commenters love the teacher's dedication to the lesson, with one writing, "THIS. IS. A. TEACHER. They truly don’t pay you enough."
Another praises, "Honey you taught the heck out of that lesson!! They’ll never forget the details that are necessary for descriptive writing!!"
"Descriptive writing! They’ll Remeber this for sure!!! Success!" someone else says.
Episode 14 Terri Mackleberry GIF by The SimpsonsGiphy
"Imagine those kids going home and trying to explain this to their parents," another commenter laughs.
"I work in management at an assembly plant. We did this same exercise to demonstrate the importance of details in each job instruction sheet. A room full of adults all had these same reactions lmao" someone else chimes in.
"This is actually a great way to teach kids about writing code. Computers are just electronic Amelia Bedelia," one person shares.