IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Today we had an excellent day! The students worked as a team all day long.  We had a very focused, relaxing yoga class to set the tone in the morning.  We accomplished everything we needed to in Reader’s, Story and Math Workshop.  We spent time observing and taking care of the chickens because today was our class’s last day! We also earned all of our positive points which meant we earned a Popsicle Party to end our day.  Take a look at all the fun we had! Hope you have a great weekend!

Chickens!

A New Math Game: Number Burglar!

Popsicle Party!

As we have been building our classroom community, the students have been thinking about their hopes and dreams for the school year.  Many students want to read chapter books, learn more about math, or even become scientists.  We have spent a lot of time discussing, sketching, and creating our hopes and dreams with clay.  After many drafts and a lot of perseverance the students finished their final sculptures today! We then discussed how we were going to reach our hopes and dreams and Madeline said “I think we need some hope and dream agreements.”  We worked together last week to create our classroom agreements and the students came up with: Take care of yourself, Take care of our friends, and Take care of our materials.  They made beautiful illustrations to demonstrate our agreement and we all signed it when we finished! Check back soon to see the finished hope and dream sculptures.  .  . we’ll be sending them to the kiln soon!

Our class is full of amazing authors who have been working hard in Story Workshop.  During Story Workshop, we use materials to help us tell stories and then we write our stories down in books.  I have been blown away by the creativity in our classroom! Students have been building their stories using blocks, natural materials, story stones, and story people.  Sometimes building our stories can be so engaging that we forget to write down our stories as well.  Today, I worked with Michael and Jermaine to make a list to help us stay on track during story workshop.  The list they created helped them so much today that they wanted to share it with the entire class.  It was great to see them take ownership in their work and work together to share what they learned with the class.  Check out pictures of our materials and our sharing time today below!

De’Onna uses shells, rocks, and blocks to tell her story.

Daysia tells a story about friends using the story people.

Isabella uses story stones to write a story called “The Hair Appointment.”

Jermaine and Michael work together to write a list of Story Workshop expectations.

The boys sharing their hard work with the class!

Today in Reader’s Workshop I told the story Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  We discussed how Goldilocks kept trying to find things that were “just right” for her.  We realized that as readers, we also need to find “just right” books.  The students had so many great strategies for figuring out if their books were “just right” for them: “You can look at the title and see if you think you’ll like it” “You can see how many words are hard for you. . . 4 or 5 means its too hard” “You can make sure that you are understanding your story.” After we read David shared that he found a just right book in his book bag because he understood it and there were only a few tricky words.  I am so proud of our progress in Reader’s Workshop.  The students are already reading independently for about 15-20 minutes.  We will keep working on finding “just right” books all week!

During the past two weeks we have been focusing on building our classroom community.  One of the ways we do that is through our daily Morning Meeting.  Morning Meeting consists of four parts: Greeting, Share, Activity, and Message.  The goal of morning meeting is to start our day off in a positive way.  Today our greeting was called “What’s the News?”  Students ask each other what their news is and then everyone has a chance to share something they did over the weekend.  We heard about the State Fair, a Cubs game, playing outside, and so many other exciting activities.  It is so great to see the children listening to one another and wanting to get to know their friends better.  Our activities are fun songs or games where we can practice teamwork.   Our message explains what we will be doing that day for example, today the kids were pumped to learn that we are taking care of the chickens this week!

Friends sitting in our morning meeting circle

Sydney and Donovan greeting each other

Chairo and CJ playing “Double Double This This”

Paiton and Himiko using teamwork to play the game

Feeding the chickens

Saying hello to the chickens