IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

We have started doing a monthly writing prompt to help expose the children to different purposes for writing.  Last month was the first time we did this and this type of thinking and writing was very challenging.  Today we completed our second prompt.  Before the children had time to write I passed back their work from the previous time and had them read it again.  Then we had a discussion about ways that we could have made our writing better.  They came up with a lot of great ideas such as more description, neater writing, spelling, adding more words, and putting spaces between words.  We also talked about using these ideas each week on the writing section of the homework.  These discussions will continue as we start to write drafts and edit our stories for the author’s study.

Today, we had a special visitor come to our classroom! Our friend Kaelina’s mom came to read us a story, teach us a song about holding a crayon, and introduce us to Mat Man! We have been working hard learning about good handwriting and how to properly hold a pencil, so this was great reinforcement! We had the chance to practice our new pencil grip while drawing a self portrait that included the same parts of the body that Mat Man has! We are excited to continue to practice holding crayons and pencils and writing so that a reader can read our words!

Today, we were introduced to several different genres of music. We practiced moving our bodies to the different types and then describing each with adjectives. Our notes were as follows:

Reggae: soft, sorta jazzy, slow, chill

Polka: funny, kinda slow, kinda fast, loud, crazy, ooom pa pa

Jazz: fast, medium, calming, piano, upbeat, happy

We are looking forward to our field trip to the Rhythm Discovery Center this Wednesday!

We also have something new as part of our math routine. As you may know, our math workshop currently includes a time for number work, problem solving, and math games. We will begin a new portion of math workshop called “math boxes”. During math box time, our friends will have an independent time to work on building specific skills to support them as learners. This time is especially devoted to fact fluency and building efficiency as mathematicians. Today, friends practiced two different activities in their math boxes. They enjoyed them!

Tags: fluency, math, sound, story telling, story workshop