IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

This week, we have been exploring some fun new concepts in readers and math workshop, as well as diving deeper into our story workshop process!

In readers workshop this week, we are talking about making connections while we read. Monday and Tuesday we talked about text to self connections. These are connections that we make between a book and our own lives. I challenged students to try and make text to self connections during their independent reading. We discussed how these connections can help us remember our stories as well as make our reading more meaningful. Kynden read a book called “Stop, Pot, Stop,” about a child who makes a pop corn with his grandma. She connected this to how sometimes she and her mom make popcorn together at home.

Today, we introduced text to text connections. This is when we connect one book we are reading to another book we’ve read or heard before. Geneva read a library book about ponies today and connected it to another book she has about ponies at home.

In math workshop this week, we have begun exploring multiplication. I have been so excited and impressed to see how naturally the students have taken to this new form of mathematics. Today’s math journal problem read, “We have 3 chickens at our school. If each chicken lays 5 eggs a week, how many eggs will they lay all together?” The kids did great thinking as they solved this problem. Some drew pictures, some worked with manipulatives, and others drew tables and graphs. All in all, students seem to have a great understanding of basic multiplication. Try finding some multiplication problems you could do at home with your kids. For example, “There are four people in our family and we’re each going to eat 5 chicken nuggets for dinner tonight. How many chicken nuggets will we eat all together?”I bet you’ll be impressed!

In story workshop this week, we have been talking about how to be accountable for our story writing process. We have a new tool in our classroom. It is a story cycle poster. Each child has a clothes pin with their name on it. As part of our cleaning up process at the end of story workshop. Students are now expected to clip their name on which part of the story writing process they will be starting at the beginning of the day tomorrow. That way we can make sure we’re not just writing books without planning or planning books with out writing anything. We can constantly be moving forward in the story writing cycle.

Students can clip their name to whichever part of the story writing cycle they will be reading for tomorrow.

Olivia is reaching the end of cycle. She has been working on a book, entitled “The Business Trip” for many days now. After finishing her second draft and receiving a critique from her peers, Olivia began working on her final/published draft. She is excited about going back and making the changes her friends suggested and having a hard cover on her book! We can’t wait until it’s finished!

Olivia sits in the share chair to read her completed second draft to her peers.

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