IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Today was a great finish to our first week of school! It was another really good day with the children doing such a good job of being engaged with the various workshops. I really noticed their stories today that they were telling during story workshop. What I love about story workshop is that it allows all children to be successful using whatever material they feel is appropriate for them and their needs. We really want them to feel successful as storytellers before we focus on the writing of stories. Today I heard some creative stories and saw the children using vocabulary like “Come here my story” and “My story is about…” not only with me but with others which is fantastic! I really look forward to seeing them grow as storytellers and and writers this year!

On Wednesday, one of our friends noticed there was a clear plastic jar sitting on top of the block area. They were very intrigued and wanted to know what the objects were inside! We talked about how this jar is the Estimation Jar and it will be used each week to practice our estimation skills. This week, I placed wooden wheels inside the jar. The kids were encouraged not to open the jar and count, rather guess how many are inside. Messi shared with the class a wonderful explanation of estimation:Estimation is figuring out how many without counting. After our discussion and Messi’s explanation, friends were encouraged to write their name and estimation on a card and pin it up to the wall. We have been anxiously watching more and more guesses pop up! Today at the end of the day, we sat down and talked about each estimation. We will practice making reasonable estimations and learning when some are not so reasonable. After we talked, we counted. What did we find? We discovered that there were 45 wheels in the jar- really close to Beatrice’s estimation of 49! Very exciting! The kids are excited to see what inside the jar next week.

The estimation jar. Can you tell how many wheels are inside?

Tags: arithmetic, collaboration, curious

On Tuesday we introduced a game called The Real Me to the class. The game goes like this: one person is blindfolded in the middle of the circle. I spin that friend around and when we stop,they have to point to a friend. The friend in the middle then says an animal, and the friend that was pointed to has to make that animal noise. The friend in the middle then has to guess who made that sound. It has been a great way to get to know each other’s names and have some fun at the end of the day.

One thing that I have noticed this week is some pretty incredible buildings and structures being made by our friends. I wanted to attach some of them just so you could see their creativity.

Today we spent a little bit of time talking about our hopes and dreams for our school year.  This was a building conversation that came from our strengths and what we want to learn at school over the next few months. It was wonderful to see some hopes and dreams so I thought I would share a few.

Reid- My hope is for all of us to work together and build a contraption.

Melina- I hope I will always have a nice time and everyday will be a fun day at school.

Jermaine- My dream is that I can read and write about cars.

Raki- I hope that it’s never the last day of school.

In the next few days we will be looking at our hopes and dreams and creating them using clay.  Check back next week to see our progress :).

This week, we established a list of classroom agreements!

Students came up with ideas of things they could agree to do to help us have a peaceful environment where all students could do their best learning. The list we decided upon was:

1) I agree to be kind to everyone

2) I agree to be respectful

3) I agree to be peacful

4) I agree to treat our classroom/school with care

5) I agree to treat others the way I want to be treated

These are all things we have been referring back to this week! Feel free to talk to your child about these agreements at home!

Other exciting news…we began doing share time today. Seth shared what it looks like to be a good reader at the end of readers workshop. Salih shared what it looks like to be mathematician, and Aidan, Geneva, and John shared stories they created.

Seth shows us what great readers look like

Lastly, we began working with clay today. During our first free choice time, Ellie, Jaeda, and Davi learned how to use the clay and clay tools. During our second free choice time, those students were able to begin teaching other students how to use the clay. They did a wonderful job! Eventually, we will use clay during story workshop.

Our clay experts!