IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Our first week back from Fall Break is going very well. It’s feels good to all be together again!

On Monday and Wednesday this week, our Butler teachers were with us. They are providing amazing opportunities for the students in our classroom to get one-on-one and small group support. Other exciting changes in our classroom are that we have a new student, Zakeyah! She joined our class on Tuesday. We have started using book bags during our Readers’ Workshop. Each student has their own bag with books just right for him/her. They were a big hit!

One of our four Butler teachers, Miss Gaisser, works with a group of students during math workshop.

A final change in our classroom is that we have brand new literacy stations. Students have spent the past three days working with letters, acting out their favorite Mo Willems stories, and writing messages to each other! It has been a great start to our first week back!

Jermaine puts a letter he wrote in a friend's message center mailbox during literacy stations.

Today was such a beautiful fall day for our study trip Clowes!  The children did such a nice job of listening to the tour guides at Clowes, and they learned and saw so much of Clowes today.  We saw and discussed the “three sheets” posters of the Clowes Hall performances, we had a discussion in the main lobby of Clowes, and then we went into the theater.  In the theater we sat in the chairs and talked about what we saw.  We went on the stage and learned about the shell that was up for the orchestra.  Then we went backstage and saw the behind the scenes stage area.  After we went backstage we had the honor of riding the orchestra pit down to the basement of Clowes, and boy, it was quite the exciting part of our trip.  The children seemed quite excited for this part of the tour!  After we were done riding the pit, we went and had snack in the green room followed by a trip to the dressing room (where the bright bulbs were surrounding the mirrors).  Once we were finished with that part we went outside and did observational drawings of the outside of Clowes.  It was a fun filled and educational trip that I know will help us prepare for our own puppet shows!

I want to give a special thanks to all of the volunteers that were able to make it today!  I hope you all had a good time!

Friends working on their observational drawings of Clowes Hall!

As we were going down in the pit!

As we are walking into the theater!

This is when we first arrived at Clowes...

We are well into the swing of things with our Recycling Project!  Before break we had come up with lots of questions about recycling.  So far we have been reading TONS of books on recycling.  In addition, the kids have decided that they want to start a recycling program at our school.  We are starting in our classroom to try and work it out.  In the upcoming weeks our hope is to finalize our school wide plan and bring an expert in to talk to us.  There might even be a field trip in the works to visit a recycling plant!

Today a few students had a chance to reuse some of our recycled materials.  They made art creations out of things that our class had already recycled.

J'Nayla and Tylisha worked together to build a bird house out of our recycled materials.

Wyatt and Reid worked together to build a bird nest out of our recycled materials.

Reid built a bird bath and Harper built a mailbox out of our recycled materials.

We had an exciting afternoon at school today.  A special visitor came to us and talked about bullying.  Ronald McDonald!!  Mr. McDonald did a magic act and had a short game to talk about how to deal with bullies.  The kids loved the time with him.  It was constant laughter and from my perspective a great way to hear about bullying!

Today was another day filled with hard work, engagement, and enthusiasm!

Besides writer’s workshop, math workshop, and reader’s workshop today we also went to a presentation hosted by Ronald McDonald.  The whole presentation was about being a good friend and what to do when you are faced with a bully-go tell a teacher or ask a friend to help.  Ronald McDonald was very enthusiastic, and the children just LOVED him and the show.

Mrs. Grotjan continued to work on the puppet stage with the class during our Studio time…we are getting close to being done with it!

Today we spoke about our field trip to Clowes coming up tomorrow.  The children became so excited when I told them that we would be the only ones in the theater…you should have seen their smiles!  We talked about how we are going to use what we see and learn about tomorrow to help us prepare for our show.

Ronald McDonald!

Look at that letter "H"!

Some of our friends making a letter "x"