IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

This week, in addition to working with elapsed time, we have been starting to learn how to tell time to the half hour! Once students made the connection that each number at the clock need to be counted in increments of 5, the half hour time came easily!

We made our big clock on the floor and talked about why the minute hand on the 6 meant half hour. Then, we build times using our bodies as the hands! Students loved having the opportunity to become the hands of the clock and really grasped the concept quickly!

We have been making our daily schedule with clocks to represent to times using plates and students have enjoyed making the clocks, so today, each child had the chance to make their own clock. They turned out great and we will be using the in the coming days to help us with a game!

In order to make deeper connections with our yoga and movement study, we have engaged in a couple experiences this week about the skeletal system during class time. Students are very interested in the parts of their body and have showed this through their enthusiasm toward this work.

The first experience was one focused on the spine. We used pipe cleaners and straws to explore what life would be like if our spine was one long bone instead of a number of vertebrate.

We second experience involved paper towel rolls and heavy books. We stacked objects on top of the paper towel rolls to demonstrate how strong bones are based on their shape!

Finally, we have started am ongoing experiment about what makes our bones hard. Using chicken bones, we are trying to determine what will happen when we soak the bones in vinegar. Check back later this week to see our findings!

We have started to learn how to tell time in Room 108! Our class was so excited to learn this concept and have grasped it quickly! We started by building a big clock together and talking about the observations we made about it. Students immediately noticed that certain numbers were across the clock face from one another. Yesterday, we talked about the hands of the clock and practiced moving the hands while reading a fun story called What Time is it Mr. Crocodile? Today, we learned a new math game!

During this game, students work with a partner to roll two dice, add the number, and fill in the corresponding time on the clock. This reinforces what we have learned about the clock face and the hands of the clock. We also started to talk about elapsed time using more complex time problems in our journals.

Encourage your children to read analog clocks at home to tell you what time it is– they will be happy to share their knowledge!

On Monday, December 3^rd, the Block A students shared their final Teacher Research Projects. The teacher research project was a hands-on way for the Block A students to experience classroom life.  Butler professors, Lab School faculty, friends, and family were all invited to attend this event. This event was the culmination of a semester’s work of research. Each student had the opportunity to showcase his/her accomplishments from the semester. We spent ten weeks in the classrooms collecting data and observing our students to try to answer our questions.

Throughout the course of the semester, we had to complete a variety of tasks as teachers in the classroom. These included: read alouds, conferencing, small group instruction, and a math/literature lesson. When we first started administering these tasks, questions started to form. Each Block A student came up with a different and thought-provoking question. These questions were unique to individual classrooms and focused on our own educational philosophies.

A lot of time and effort was put into the Teacher Research Projects, and the end results really showed it. We are very proud of our fellow classmates and friends. These projects were completed with professionalism and presented with confidence. We can not wait to see what Block B has in store!

Written by: Kara Saks, Sam Karmia, and Sara McDonald

This week during reader’s workshop, we have been learning what it means to compare and contrast two books. On Monday, we read the story Cinderella and followed it with the funny spin off story Chickenrella! Students noticed a lot that the stories had in common, as well as things that were different about the two stories. We had a conversation about the importance of finding similarities and differences in stories and students applied this new skill to their independent reading!

Today, we read the story The Gingerbread Man and The Stinky Cheese Man. We created a concept map that visually showed how these stories compared and in what ways they are different. I was amazing by some of the noticing that students made. Tomorrow, we will create a different kind of map that compares the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty and the story What Really Happened to Humpty?