IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

During our morning meeting today Malachi shared that he went to the Children’s Musueum to see the Geckos yesterday after school.  He told us that the geckos he saw did not have webbed feet (we learned this week that geckos in the desert have webbed feet so that they do not sink into the sand).  Then Ashu said that maybe those geckos that do not have webbed feet live in the jungle and they need “not webbed” feet so they can climb up the treeet easier.

We talked about how maybe we will do some research next week on which geckos have webbed feet and which geckos do not have webbed feet.

Researchers here we become!

This week we celebrated the arrival of our four new Butler teachers!

For any parents who don’t know, we have a very close partnership with Butler University. Students who are in Butler’s College of Education meet at our school for some of their classes. For those classes, they then spend one whole day a week in our classrooms. This is a great opportunity for them to get experience trying different teaching strategies and it is a great opportunity for us to have more educators in the room working with our kids!

On Monday, our four new Butler teachers spent their first day with us. They will be spending most every Monday in the classroom teaching and caring for the kids in our school community. Feel free to say hello and introduce yourself if you’re ever in the room the same time they are. They are all wonderful!

Miss Schaar spent time reading with Spencer on Monday.

Miss Denny built blocks with Aidan and DayTwon.

Miss Winsemann worked with Chloe, Kynden, Olivia, and Geneva during story workshop.

And Miss Orech explored beautiful water color pencils with Jaeda, Ben, Ellie, and Abel.

In other new this week, we have been reviewing some of the animal reading strategies that help us remember how to read tricky words. We have spent time reviewing Ready Rooster, Stretchy Snake, Chunky Monkey, and Flippy Dolphin, all of which are on the reading strategies flyer I sent home this week.

In math workshop, we have been continuing our exploration of measurement within the context of problem solving this week. The kids loved Mouse Town (which is now done and displayed above our cubbies! Check it out next time you are at school), but many of them have expressed an excitement to be solving math problems in our math journals again!
It’s a great day when your students are asking for more math problems to solve.

In writers workshop we have been continuing to talk about details in our writing. It is my hope that conversation about details this week will be good preparation for our dialogue about adjectives and synonyms next week! Stay tuned to hear more!

Studying deserts and lizards this week has been really interesting because it has peaked some new creativity with the materials around the room.  For example, today with the sand, Zakeyah made this awesome “lizard” that was buried underneath the sand.  Before there was definitely a lot of play and creative uses with it, but this was such a creative way to use the sand and the tools already there!  I was so impressed!

Studying words and the concept of “beefing” up our writing has really helped our friends make their writing even more creative!  They are using adjectives left and right which is so fun to see!

We will be celebrating our published work from our Authors Study next Wednesday, February 13 from 6-7.  The kids are so excited to share their work with you!

A couple of weeks ago, I had a great discussion with the children about why they were not doing final drafts anymore, and there were so many great responses during this open discussion.  Some friends discussed that they work so hard on their rough drafts that they cannot imagine doing another copy.  I asked the friends if there was anything that we could do to help support thtem, and there were not many suggestions.

The next day I offered that if they wanted to do a published/final draft, we could type it out and then they could focus on the illustrations.  Boy, did that spark an interest!  Since that conversation, we have friends doing final drafts left and right.  I have to say too the quality of their work has increased because they are so excited to have a typed out final draft to share with others.

Heaven today while reading me her story shared that she is going to do another final draft after the one she started today because she loves this story so much.

I am proud for multiple reasons:  that we can have open conversations about their work, that they are really wanting to elevate their own work, and they are excited to work on all parts of the writing process-planning, writing, publishing.