IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Maxwell creating his strategy poster.

Over the past few weeks we have been talking a lot about using different strategies to solve our math problems.  In Math Workshop, we encourage kids to solve the problems the way that it makes sense to them.  We want them to build their own knowledge and come to an understanding on their own terms.  It is our belief that when kids build their own knowledge they can see not only how numbers work, but WHY they work that way.  Today, at the end of Math Workshop, we talked about the number line as a possible strategy to use to solve a problem.  Maxwell created an example of a number line on a poster that we will hang in the room as a reminder for all of the kids.  As we gain more strategies we will create more posters to help us in the room!

Melina enjoying her cupcake

In our classroom, we celebrate our birthdays by making cupcakes for the class.  We bake them at the end of the month and any student who had a birthday is welcomed to help.  This month, Maxwell and Kayla had a chance to make cupcakes to celebrate.  Here are a few pictures from this afternoon’s fun.

Wyatt is enjoying his cupcake.

Townes is really enjoying his cupcake.

Our finished word wall

It might be hard to see from this picture, but this week we put up our word wall!  The wire letters that the kids completed last week look wonderful against the black.  I can already tell this is going to be a useful tool in our classroom.  Today, during Story Workshop, a friend asked me, “Mrs. Clark, how do you spell Melina’s name?”  I simply referred her to the word wall where she could take down Melina’s name and use it to help her and then put it back up (the word wall is magnetic).  As we progress in word study, this wall will fill up even more.  Check out a few close ups of letters below!

A

Q

Wyatt, Ruth, Oliver, and Townes are playing rhyming bingo.

This week we started our word study after Reader’s Workshop.  Our word study this year will be focusing on patterns and what we notice in words.  These conversations, books, and games will help the children progress in reading and writing.   Over the next week we will be focusing on rhyming.  Rhyming is the beginning of playing with words.  Hearing sound similarities and differences can help make the connection between the letters and how they make up a word.  Today, in class, we played rhyming bingo.  The kids were so excited about it!  They were not only rhyming words on the board, but shouting out others word in addition to the ones they saw!

Townes is working on the hundreds chart in the math boxes.

Today, during Math Workshop, we added another section to our time.  As I have shared in previous posts, we have a problem solving piece with our math notebooks.  The notebooks are a daily part of our math workshop as well as today’s math boxes.  The math boxes have different pieces in them that help the kids with number work.  Number work is noticing patterns in numbers, building numbers, decomposing numbers, and really just the basics of numbers.  When students have a strong concept of this they can easily complete more advanced addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems mentally.  The two pieces in today’s math boxes were hundreds charts with numbers missing for the students to fill in and number tiles that the students had to put in order.  As the year progresses we will have more activities in the boxes.

Wyatt is working on his hundreds chart in his math box.

Andrew is putting his math tiles in numerical order.