IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

This week, we have been reading classic fables such as The Little Red Hen, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We have been comparing and contrasting the stories and also talking about how stories have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Today, we read Goldilococks and the Three Bears and sequenced pictures from the story on beginning, middle, end charts we made. Some friends in class even labeled their pictures and wrote sentences to describe each section of the story. I have also challenged the students to have a beginning, middle, and end to their stories in Writer’s Workshop and they have been doing a great job. On Monday, Journey wrote a story about learning to write a bike. On the first page, she wrote, ‘Age 4, riding with training wheels.’ On the second page, she wrote, ‘Age 5, no training wheels, but riding slow.’ On the last page, Journey wrote, “Age 6, riding with no training wheels and fast!” When you read at home with your child, try to see if you can identify the beginning, middle, and end of the story.

Angela's beginning, middle, end Goldilocks portrayal.

Lucas- “Mrs. Argus, I’m going to use 5 plus detail AND I’m going to do a beginning, middle, end in my story!”

 

Today while the children were in the Studio some of our friends started adding items to their puppets to enhance their features. As a whole they are so excited to be working on their puppets. When Mrs. Grotjan asked who wanted to work on their puppets today, almost every single one of the children put their hand on their hand (showing they wanted to work on their puppet)! That made me so happy to see their excitement and engagement with this topic of puppets.

During Writer’s Workshop today we read A Chair For My Mother. This story is about a family that is saving up coins to buy a comfy chair after they lost their furniture in a fire. One of the pages read that the neighbors and friends helped donate furniture to this family, and Malachi said, “They need to put a pom in their baskets!” I love the idea of filling buckets is spreading now to text that we are reading.

We read this book today because the author wrote this book after the fire actually happened to her family. This brought us into the topic of personal narratives. We will be exploring this idea of personal narratives more in the next week or so.

I tried importing pictures again, but I am having trouble again. I am going to contact someone to help me figure this out! SORRY!

Friends investigate the Alpha Sort!

Today, the kids were introduced to a new literacy station- The Alpha Sort. We started by talking about what we noticed about The Alpha Sort. Some friends noticed it had lots of little compartments. Cameron noticed it spun around. Zacharyah noticed it had letters. Hutton noticed those letters were in alphabetical order. We then talked about a basket of little objects that could be sorted. I explained each object needs a name- they are all nouns- things. We then looked through the basket and gave each item a name – a little guitar, an alarm clock, a chair, a barbie sweater, a baby doll. We then practiced sorting each item into what letter sound we heard at the beginning of the item. For example, baby doll went with the “B” in the Alpha Sort because baby starts with “B”. As friends investigated the Alpha Sort today, we noticed many things could have multiple names. Is it a clock or an alarm clock? A comb or a brush? Regan saw a mirror. She was excited to find it and said, “Mrs. Argus- a mirror!” Regan looked and saw her reflection. I said, “So where would you sort that, Regan? I see its a mirror, but I also see your reflection so you could sort it as Regan, couldn’t you?” Regan thought about it for a while and decided to sort it with the “M” category for mirror. I look forward to seeing what names our friends come up with for the other nouns in the basket.

"Mrs. Argus- a mirror!"- Regan

Lab Report September 2011

During our free choice time on Friday, Larry decided to use the unifix cubes to build the Great Wall of China. Leah had read a book about the Great Wall of China and knew that there were warriors, called the Terracotta Warriors, whose job it was to guard the wall. So with many other students’ help, Leah and Larry began setting up teddy bears around the wall, to represent the Terracotta Warriors.

Today, we did a Great Wall relocation, moving the wall to the block building area. Many warriors were lost along the way, so Heleria and Nailah helped re-set up the bears during free choice time. The wall lead to some great conversations today!

Heleria and Nailah use teddy bears as terracotta warriors to defend the Great Wall of China.