IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

As I reflect about the sad news that occurred today, I am reminded about how thankful I am to be here teaching and guiding the children at the Lab School. Thank you for all of your support. Thank you for caring for each student in this class and school. Thank you for all that you do to celebrate the amazing things that are happening here.

I know that everyone is going to be hugging their little one a little closer tonight.

Today was Mr. Henderson’s last day! We threw him a little party, with cards, gifts, and some treats. We also drew portraits of him which were awesome. We will definately miss him.

There were many other great parts to our day as well… we read the Polar Express and the kids had quite the surprise when they went to put on their coats for recess- bells were inside their pockets! It remains a mystery who put them inside and everyone was so excited about them. It was truly a great day. Your children are the best.

Addie’s Ear Book

Today we had something exciting happen- a friend finished a final draft! Addie and I worked together for several days to figure out exactly how she wanted her book published and what the final details would be. This is a story Addie has been working on for two weeks now, during our unit on critique, revision, final drafts, and sharing sound stories. After finalizing her published copy, I asked Addie where we could display the book in our classroom, as an example of exemplary work. Immediately, Addie took her book to our classroom library, found an open shelf, and placed it on a display easel. Addie exuded excitement, pride, and confidence as she did this. As Addie walked back from placing her book, she was surrounded by a chorous of “Good job, Addie!” and high-fives. Such a proud moment for our entire class.

It was so interesting today watching Miss Jeffrey lead Reader’s Workshop today because there was such a great discussion on whether or not this certain book Miss Jeffrey read was non-fiction or fiction. She read two books about space-one was fiction and one was non-fiction. Then they compared the two books. Niall explained that one book was non-fiction because cats cannot go into space, and the other book was fiction because it gave us information. Isaac then interjected saying that the space book with a cat in it was non-fiction because it gave us information about space just like the other one. There was no resolution to the discussion, but it was a great example of children being able to state their opinion and know that there might be some agreeing and some disagreeing, but that there are valid points to all.

We did our second writing prompt today. We asked the children to write about a time they taught someone something. We only did it with half of the friends, but I was really impressed with how the children worked. There was a lot more writing and depth to these prompts compared to the first one. I look forward to seeing how they continue to progress throughout the year!

Miss Jeffrey led a great discussion about how to make friends feel better if you know they are upset or lonely, and there were some great ideas like make a picture, visit Maggie’s Joke Box, play with them, help them. We ended the day with the Friendship Meeting again, and so many friends were celebrated for their interactions with each other.

For the past two weeks, we have been comparing and contrasting books during readers workshop. We started by comparing and contrasting fairy tales. This week, we have been comparing and contrasting fiction and non-fiction (now called informational texts) books on the same topic. For example, today we read an informational text about T Rex, and we also read “How do Dinosaurs say I Love You?” by Jane Yolen. It’s been great to see the kids think critically about the books they are reading. One of the things we discussing while creating a venn diagram today was that informational texts teach us something and fictional books, although they can teach us a lot, usually have more of a story feel.

At the end of readers workshop today, Tyrese shared a book he had read called “We Go Out.” After Tyrese finished reading the book, I asked the rest of the students if they thought the book was a fiction book or an informational text. One child concluded that because it wasn’t teaching us anything, it must be fictional. Another child concluded that because it had pictures that were taken with a camera, it must be informational.

Tyrese reads “We go out” during readers workshop share time.

I thought this was an interesting perspective on their part! Most informational texts do have pictures taken with a camera, and most fictional books do have illustrations. But is that the case all the time? Or is that the perspective of the students in our class? In an effort to broaden that perspective, I challenged the students to take a paper, clipboard, and pencil to recess and take a survey of what their peers thought. We shared our findings after lunch and realized that we had very mixed responses from other students. So, during math workshop, we talked about how we could conduct a second survey so that our data would be more clear, one way or another. We narrowed what had been four different questions during the recess survey, down to two questions. The questions are…

1. Do fiction books ever have real pictures that you take with a camera?

2. Do informational books (non-fiction) ever have pictures that you draw?

We intend to ask other classes these two questions tomorrow. We also would like to send home surveys for students to give to their families over the weekend. It might even be fun for students to go on a hunt for books in their home that break the norm.

So excited about this inquiry based learning that is taking over readers workshop! Thanks for sharing in our learning with us!