IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

This week, we have been working to identify the problem and solution in stories we are reading. As a class, we decided that stories are much more interesting when something happens to the characters that they have to overcome. To help us identify problems in a story, we have been reading books from the Curious George series and telling our own stories verbally.

Today, I challenged students to write their stories in a book for the class to read. They got to work using various materials to build their story and then transferred their thoughts into books! This was the first day they had been asked to use a book as a material, even though some have made this choice over the past few weeks.

The attention to detail in these stories was amazing! Each child came up with a very clear problem and used their character to solve it. Some problems included:
-A scary cheetah
-A broken water fountain
-A hurt butterfly
-A stolen car

Students offered created solutions to solve the problems they had created. I was proud of their hard work and their final products!

Isai, one of our friends, brings the paper (the weather section) often into school and really is interested in all things weather and geography related. Yesterday during the day our friends were talking about how much it was raining! It seems that weather has been popping up over and over.

Before school, Miss Jeffrey and I talked about doing a few things in our classroom to see if weather would be an area of interest for a project. Our question of the day was asking if everyone knew what weather was. Then I asked our friends if they could show weather using the beautiful materials. After lunch we asked our friends to share what weather was, and let me tell you it was quite the discussion! We had friends sharing their knowledge of rain, snow, wind. We had friends talking about weather being hot and cold. We had friends sharing their knowledge of tornados and hurricanes. Tomorrow we are going to talk some more about what they know and we shall see if their interest sustains!

Today we put up our hundreds chart, but there were missing numbers!! We played a game called Find the Missing Number where the children could come up and tell us one of the missing numbers. We also talked about counting by 10’s because a friend noticed that those numbers were colored brown! They were proud of themselves for knowing so many of the missing numbers, and so was I!

Today, during readers and math workshop, we were talking about finding “just right” books and numbers.

Yesterday, I told the story of the Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We talked about how Goldilocks was trying to find the porridge, chair, and bed that was just right for her. Today, I told the story of The Three Little Pigs and The Big Bad Wolf. We talked about how each pig built a house, but only one house was just right, because it was able to keep the wolf out.

Then we had our friend Hayes try on three different shirts…

The first shirt Hayes tried on was much to small. Students decided that this shirt would be just right for a baby but it wasn’t just right for Hayes.

This shirt was much too small

The second shirt Hayes tried on was much too big. Students decided that this shirt would be just right for “somone’s daddy” but not for Hayes.

This shirt was much too big.

Lastly, Hayes tried on the green shirt. Everyone agreed that this was the shirt that was just right for Hayes. The students really seemed to understand this visual of “just right.” They also seemed to understand that what is “just right” for one friend might not be what’s “just right” for another friend, but that’s ok.

This shirt was just right.

We used this to further our discussion about books, and then we came back to this conversation during math workshop when students were picking numbers to use in their story problem. I had included the numbers 8 and 5 in the story problem I put in their math notebooks for today. We talked about how, if you can solve the problem with those numbers in your head, those numbers are not just right for you. Similarly, if those numbers are so challenging that you don’t know where to begin solving that problem, those numbers aren’t just right for you either. The numbers are just right for you if you don’t know the answer automatically but you know what to do to solve it.

I then wrote different sets of numbers up on the board for students to choose from. I challenged them to pick the numbers that were “just right” for them.We will be continuing this “just right” conversation in all areas of our learning in the coming weeks.