IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Veronika Lewis and Ally Wessels
Blog about Miss Estridge and Mrs. Bucher’s classes 10/31/12

Today was a great and busy day! There were multiple instances of discovery today during math workshop. One of the students observing the one hundreds chart before math workshop shouted out “Ooh Miss. Estridge, I noticed something new”. Of course we were all eager to see what was found. She noticed that as you go down the number chart in the same column, the number goes up by ten and has the same number in the second digit every time. For example, she pointed out how after 9 it goes, 19, 29, 39, 49, etc. “There’s always a 9!” After that student made this discovery, so many other students started to notice a pattern and math workshop journals working with tens today went a lot faster for many of them due to their newly learned knowledge. Miss Estridge afterwards let them explore the pattern by coming up to the chart and asking for proof of their knowledge. “What is 47 plus 10?” Ms. Estridge said, and the class IMMEDIATELY answered “57” in unison. Miss Estridge exclaimed, “How do you know that so fast?” “That’s when the children explained the pattern to Miss Estridge and took on the teacher role, proud of their new findings.

Before story workshop, both Mrs. Bucher and Ms. Estridge’s classes discussed the effect of critiquing and how to make each other’s final products better using each other’s knowledge. One student in Miss Estridge’s class went up to another to ask for a critique. He was making a comic book and so far had done huge drawings with minimal written words on the pages. His critique was to make it look more like a comic book by making pictures smaller, and boxing them up. The fact the kids were comfortable enough to approach each other for help and ideas at such a young age made this an exciting event of the day. They understood the idea of critiquing really well!
Mrs. Bucher’s class discussed current events which are beneficial when learning to teach real world experiences. Since hurricane Sandy has been such an apparent topic in the news recently Mrs. Booker decided to bring it up to her class and see what some of their responses would be when posed with the question “How would you help them?”. Multiple ideas were given about raising money. One student said, “We can use the money in my piggy bank to fly out there and help them.” Another boy said to buy tools to rebuild and fix things. The Butler School 60 is so generous and full of amazing ideas to attempt to solve real world problems.
We fed the chickens today in Miss Estridge’s class! What a fun experience. The special part of chicken week for Miss Estridge’s class today was that a child suggested doing observational research or drawings of the chickens, their coup, and eggs during the feeding time. This was such a wonderful idea that multiple children chose to partake in this. The fact they wanted to explore chickens beyond just feeding them was awesome. The kids also collected two eggs today and since it was the last day of the month, they were used to bake cupcakes for the class! There were two children’s birthdays in October so at the end of the month, today, they were celebrated. These two kids got to partake in the making of these cupcakes and learned about experimentation and recipe in the kitchen. Awesome real life exploration for them!

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