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!

Lately, we have been learning about Project Approach and its three phases. As a class we experienced first hand what it is like to be a part of this learning process. We started phase one simply by defining what a shape is, in our own words. We made a miniature booklet describing shapes and where we see them in our daily lives. Next we explored our own environment and studied the shapes around Butler Campus. This brought us to the transition between phase one and two, creating a web with the class. Following the creation of the web we separated into groups based on our interests. We continued our investigations through fieldwork, interviews, and experiments to further our understanding of shapes and their functions in society. Continuing on to phase three we created panels with our groups to share and celebrate amongst each other. We discovered the power a child can hold in his or her learning by being their own driving force in their exploration of inquiry. This experience was crucial to our understanding of the project approach and provided us with knowledge for our future teaching!
Written By: Leah Bry, Gabby Powell, and Ellie Pochyly

Hello again from the Butler Classroom! This week we were mainly focusing on our Teacher Research Questions and Projects. Teacher Research Projects are where teachers focus on a way to improve one aspect in their classroom. We look for a question that is specific to your own classroom as well as achievable in the few weeks we have left at the Lab School. We looked at different teacher research projects from Madison, WI. We were able to see how other teachers have incorporated their research projects into their classrooms. We all worked on forming our own questions that were specific enough, but also would lead us to discover an answer we might not have originally been looking for. On top of that, we discussed how to inventory books with our class. There are baskets that we put our books into that we labeled as sing-alongs, awards, wordless picture books, repetitive and interactive text, family, and go to books. This is important, because it organizes books into these categories so that our friends can find certain books that they want to read. It is also important to discuss it and decide it with a class, because we want them to feel that they have a say in their classroom setup. This creates a community and a sense of ownership and belonging into their environment.
Written by Lauren Neifert, Carly Glickman, and Rosalie Fidanze

This is a picture of the labels that we gave to our book baskets for our book inventory in the Butler Classroom.

Yesterday, one of our Block A students, Miss Weese, led an experience on the senses. She and a small group of students harvested basil and peppers from our garden and then created a dip to enjoy! The whole class got to taste the dip and talked about how it connected to their five senses.

It tasted like Basil!  Regan

It tasted sweet! Addie

I think it smelled like cheese. Dylan

Its a different kind of smell- cheese and watery. Amiah

I hear the dipping. Addie

I heard the sounds of people crunching. And I heard a scrape when I dipped the pepper! Tajanaye

I think it feels good to make your own food. That way you can grow big and strong. J’Den

I also wanted to share something we have been spending a lot of time on during Reader’s Workshop- reading strategies. The past two weeks, we have been working on Ready Rooster (getting ready for the first sound in the word) and Stretchy Snake (stretching the word for all the sounds you hear). This week, we have been working with Chunky Monkey (finding word parts that are friendly to you and chunking them as you read). Mr. Henderson created this amazing and funny video on blabberize.com with a monkey talking with his voice. We have been projecting it on the big screen and having the kids do chunking activities with the Chunky Monkey. The kids LOVE it!

Tags: garden, project, reading

From this fall’s Butler friends, hello! We’ve started off the semester learning about different kinds of assessment, experiencing components of the Reggio Emilia approach, and getting our first look inside the classrooms. Assessment-wise, we are fast becoming rather assessment wise. Through observations, we are starting to understand the teacher-side (particularly teacher language) of performing effective and appropriate assessments like “running records” and “concepts about print.” From there, we are diving into the unique Reggio Emilia style hands first. Just yesterday, we were discussing (and playing with, of course) clay, wire, and their versatility as teaching tools. For the last three weeks, we have spent our Wednesdays in the classrooms, where we conference with students, track specific students’ growth through our own assessments, and do whatever else the teachers would like us to do. Going forward, we will soon be creating provocations or “things” intentionally placed in our rooms to “provoke” and “invite” students’ attention and questions. For example, Ms. Cegielski’s students want to be more like scientists. So, the future-scientists’ provocation will be magnifying glasses and different objects to examine with their new science tool. We are super excited and can’t wait to see how the semester unfolds!
Written by Katie Rimmel and Chelsea Carroll