IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Today was a fun day in room 107!

Today was our second day with our Butler teachers in the classroom. For any of you who don’t know, students in the College of Education at Butler come to our school for some of their classes. One of those classes meets at the school multiple times a week, and the Butler students spend a full day of their week in our classrooms, working with the students! The Butler teachers in our classroom are Miss Lewis, Miss Girten, and Mr. Karmia. They are all ready doing some great work with the students! (I promise to put some pictures up next week…my camera was dead today.)

Mr. Karmia aided in our continued shark conversation today. We left off yesterday not sure how we would measure the length of a whale shark. Today we began using feet…of all kinds.

During free choice time, Abel and Jace chose to work with me in trying to measure our whale shark pipes to see if they are forty feet long yet. Jace said, “I think it’s 70 feet!” Abel decided to count it by walking next to the pipe line and counting how many steps he took with his feet. When finished, he stated, “It’s 40 feet. I counted my feet all the way down.”

The three of us decided that it might be helpful to have some other people measure the pipes too, so we asked Mr. Karmia if he would measure the string of pipes for us. He agreed and told us that the line of pipes was thirty-two of his feet. To this, Jace said, “We need to make it longer!” Abel said, “Maybe we need to try Aaliyah’s feet and Jace’s feet and then your feet.”

So Aaliyah measured the pipes and got 29 feet! Oh, the learning  that comes from differing answers!

Slightly perplexed, Abel said, “Maybe it’s because Aaliyah and I made our feet go like this (spreading his hands far apart), and Mr. Karmia made his feet go like this (putting his hands finger to wrist, signifying toe to heel).

So Abel and Aaliyah both measured the pipe line again, this time walking the way Mr. Karmia had the first time. Aaliyah got 43 feet and Abel got 47 feet.

Free choice time was ending around this time, so we decided to end our measuring for the day. However, before we began Story Workshop, I facilitated a whole class discussion on Abel, Jace, and Aaliyah’s findings.

I told them that we had been measuring the pipes, but that each person who measured it with their feet got a different answer. I questioned the group as to why this might be happening. Madeline suggested that maybe we were using the wrong kind of feet. She said a foot “could be our feet like a body part or it could be like a measuring feet.”

Chloe then replied, “Some people have big feet and some people have little feet. There are different sizes.”

Spencer said, “We need to use a ruler.” When I asked him what a ruler was, he said it is something that measures.

We spent the rest of our discussion time figuring out what a ruler looks like and what other materials we might be able to measure our pipes with. Madeline said that we needed to use a measuring tape, which is a “box with a measuring thing that comes out of it with lines and numbers on it.” Many students said they had one at home and that they would bring one in to school tomorrow. Who knows, maybe tomorrow will be the day we find out how long a whale share really is!

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