IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

So…when I went into school this morning our dear friend Crystal Speeder was not doing very well so I decided to let it go because I did not want to make it worse. A few friends asked about Crystal Speeder, but the newness of today kept their minds off of our friend. Fare thee well Crystal Speeder!

We welcomed three new friends in our class today! Noah, Sarah, and Danielle did such an amazing job just jumping in and joining us in the various parts of the day! I was so proud of them, and I was so proud of our friends for being so supportive and welcoming to our new friends!

Today we began something new we will do each day. Sometimes it takes a while at the bathroom in the morning so we have begun doing our Morning Message in the hallway. I already wrote the message today, and it included three words that will be on our Word Wall: is, you, we The children wrote in one of the journals you provided. It is called the Morning Message. Not all of the children got it all done, but we will do this every morning so we will see a progression from each child with their writing! They seemed to really enjoy this time and it helped make the bathroom time go quicker.

Today we also introduced math notebooks. These math notebooks will be something the children will do four days out of the week. Today I put a simple addition problem because I wanted the children to get the procedures of how we are going to do it each day. We have been talking about the various tools we can use to help us solve problems so the math notebook is somewhere where we can write down the strategy we used to solve the problem. We will begin differentiating the problems once we get the procedures down (which will be soon because the children did awesome today!!) I look forward to showing you the progress of each child with their problem solving!

During the past two weeks we have been focusing on building our classroom community.  One of the ways we do that is through our daily Morning Meeting.  Morning Meeting consists of four parts: Greeting, Share, Activity, and Message.  The goal of morning meeting is to start our day off in a positive way.  Today our greeting was called “What’s the News?”  Students ask each other what their news is and then everyone has a chance to share something they did over the weekend.  We heard about the State Fair, a Cubs game, playing outside, and so many other exciting activities.  It is so great to see the children listening to one another and wanting to get to know their friends better.  Our activities are fun songs or games where we can practice teamwork.   Our message explains what we will be doing that day for example, today the kids were pumped to learn that we are taking care of the chickens this week!

Friends sitting in our morning meeting circle

Sydney and Donovan greeting each other

Chairo and CJ playing “Double Double This This”

Paiton and Himiko using teamwork to play the game

Feeding the chickens

Saying hello to the chickens

This morning, at the beginning of Readers Workshop, I read the book, The Littlest Acorn. It is a beautiful story about an acorn to runs into a tall pine tree, a brightly colored daisy, and a sweet smelling rose. With each encounter, the little acorn notices how different he is from the other plants and wonders what might be special about him. In the end we learn that the Little Acorn grows up into a strong, tall tree.

After reading the book, I sent students out for their independent reading time. After they read independently, all students returned to the rug for share time. Today, Abel shared his reading. He read some of his book, Grumpy Bird. When Abel was done, I asked him what he did to help him read his books today. He said that he looked at the pictures and the words. This lead into a discussion about differences in our reading and our books. All of last week, we talked about how good readers can read books by looking at the pictures. However, today, Abel showed us that good readers can look at the words in their books too.

This week, I am going to begin putting books into your children’s reading bags. Some of the books will be based on your child’s interests. Others will be based on their reading needs. The conversation today was great because it affirmed students that when that happens, some of us will have books with lots of pictures. Some of us will have books with pictures and words, and some of us will have books with lots of words and few to no pictures. All of those things are different, but just like the story about the Little Acorn, we know that different isn’t bad. We’re all different and that ok!

Abel reading Grumpy Bird in the share chair!

We introduced something new into our Math Workshop today.  Each friend got a math notebook.  We will be using these math notebooks as a part of our problem solving portion of Math Workshop.  The notebooks have been in the basket all of last week and the kids were very excited today to finally get to use them!  The kids were able to take their notebook and go wherever they wanted in the room to solve their problem.  I am looking forward to using notebooks again this year as it is a great way to see each friend’s growth quickly!

William is using the legos to help him in his math notebook.

Townes is working in his math notebook.

Each day at the end of Story Workshop, we have share time. Sometimes, friends are asked to act out their story, sometimes they read from a book they have written in. Friends are usually invited to share if they have done something that our other friends can learn from or they have been working particularly hard on a piece. Today, Ayden and J’Den were invited to share. Each boy took their turn sitting in our rocking chair and reading their story aloud to our friends. After the story, the author can call on two friends to give compliments or suggestions (if the story isn’t finished and the author would like some). We are practicing giving authentic compliments that are specific. Practice giving compliments at home- it feels good!

J’Den reads his story about the carnival he went to on Friday.