IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Today some of our friends made rain sticks out of some found materials with Miss Jeffrey! They loved being able to make the sounds whether it was fast or slow.

I worked with a small group today on drawing the sounds of rain. I showed them what some friends in Italy drew when they were asked to draw the sound of rain. Then I asked our friends to draw their ideas of what rain sounds like. What was fascinating was that they discussed the chhhhssshhhh sound a lot to go along with their drawing. I attached one of the sound drawings. This is Noah’s. He described that the drops are rain, and the arrows are the sounds ccchhhhssshhhh as they fall down on to the sidewalk. LOVE THEIR THINKING!

Today we had a wonderful day- a harvest and celebration! In th afternoon, our Butler Friends and Mr. Henderson led three small groups that harvested, prepared and cooked food for our class to share together. Miss Saks and friends created cinnamon muffins with eggs from the chickens, Miss Bickel and friends harvested and cooked brussels sprouts from our garden, and Mr. Henderson and Miss Weese and friends brewed lemon tea with fresh lemon balm from Mrs. Argus’ home garden!

One of the things we are focusing on as we begin this food/eating/garden project and experience is how food brings us together as a community. While enjoying our food together, we had discussions on friendship and how it felt to prepare for and have food prepared for us by friends. We talked about how it made us feel to enjoy food together and spend time with one another in this way. Friends said they felt…

special

yummy

fuzzy inside

important

happy

We will continue to investigate the ideas of harvest, feast, and community during our time together at school. We are looking forward to what conversations come from our big garden day Wednesday and our field trip to the orchard Friday!

Tags: chickens, community, friendship, garden, project

This morning, during word study, we were detectives!  Groups of kids were looking for sounds in words and different word endings in books.  We have been talking a lot about patterns in words and today we challenged the kids to find these things in books.  Our goal is to have them be able to apply their learning to real text and the hunt made an instant connection to this.

This afternoon, we had a special closing meeting with Miss Cegielski’s class.  We talked about friendship and practiced using “bug statements” together.  These are things that we use if someone is upset and needs to talk with their friends.  (ie: The first friend says, “It bugs me when you talk loudly because it makes me feel angry.  I would like you to stop.”  The second student replies with “I understand it bugs you when I talk loudly because it makes you feel angry.  I will stop.”)  We will be using these in our classroom to help us express our feelings.  Feel free to practice them at home!

Cameron and Sydney, from Miss Cegielski’s class are showing our friends how to use bug statements.

Hello again from the Butler Classroom! This week we were mainly focusing on our Teacher Research Questions and Projects. Teacher Research Projects are where teachers focus on a way to improve one aspect in their classroom. We look for a question that is specific to your own classroom as well as achievable in the few weeks we have left at the Lab School. We looked at different teacher research projects from Madison, WI. We were able to see how other teachers have incorporated their research projects into their classrooms. We all worked on forming our own questions that were specific enough, but also would lead us to discover an answer we might not have originally been looking for. On top of that, we discussed how to inventory books with our class. There are baskets that we put our books into that we labeled as sing-alongs, awards, wordless picture books, repetitive and interactive text, family, and go to books. This is important, because it organizes books into these categories so that our friends can find certain books that they want to read. It is also important to discuss it and decide it with a class, because we want them to feel that they have a say in their classroom setup. This creates a community and a sense of ownership and belonging into their environment.
Written by Lauren Neifert, Carly Glickman, and Rosalie Fidanze

This is a picture of the labels that we gave to our book baskets for our book inventory in the Butler Classroom.