IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Wyatt working on the wire letters for the word wall.

Today, after Reader’s Workshop, we created our letters for our word wall. Last week, the kids decided that we needed a way to organize our names on the giant magnetic board.  Reid suggested we make a word wall and have letters to organize where the words go.  Today, we finished our letters that are made out of wire.  It is just in time because next week we will be starting word study and we will be using our word wall to help us.  Check back next week to hear more about word study!

Kristien and Joseph are working together to make a letter for the word wall.

David made a Q for our word wall.

Over the past few days we have had checkers open as a morning choice.  The kids are really getting into playing games!  They are working together, helping each other, and taking turns constantly!  Not only does this game encourage teamwork, we are also thinking critically.  The kids have to come up with a strategy for the game and plan each move in order to win.  Take a look at a few of our friends playing checkers below!

Miles and Melina playing checkers

Selam, Shayla, and Joseph playing checkers

Oliver, Jonah, and Andrew playing checkers

Dorothy and Tylisha playing checkers on the ipad

Mr. Ward playing checkers with Tylisha and Dorothy.

Hello everyone,

My name is Mr. Ward and I will be student teaching in Mrs. Clark’s class this semester. I am really excited for this opportunity, experience, and of course getting to know all of the wonderful children. I am in my senior year at Butler, working to obtain my elementary and mild intervention teaching license. Other then teaching I enjoy all sports, (especially Butler basketball games) fishing, and going running. I look forward to meeting all of you. Thank you all for your time and allowing me the opportunity to work with your children.

Mr. Ward

We introduced something new into our Math Workshop today.  Each friend got a math notebook.  We will be using these math notebooks as a part of our problem solving portion of Math Workshop.  The notebooks have been in the basket all of last week and the kids were very excited today to finally get to use them!  The kids were able to take their notebook and go wherever they wanted in the room to solve their problem.  I am looking forward to using notebooks again this year as it is a great way to see each friend’s growth quickly!

William is using the legos to help him in his math notebook.

Townes is working in his math notebook.

Today we finalized our peace agreements for the classroom.  Our agreements have been a week in the making.  Last week, as I shared, we talked about what we wanted to learn at school and that turned into our hopes and dreams for the school year.  This week I asked the kids, “How do we make sure that every friend is able to reach their hopes and dreams?  What do we need to do?”  As a class we decided that we needed to come up with agreements. Together, we listed everything that we thought was important to do in a classroom (ie: be safe, share, take turns, etc.).  We then sorted them into three categories; friends, materials, and ourselves.  Today we made an agreement for each category.

1. Respect Our Materials

2. Respect Our Friends

3. Respect Ourselves

The kids were so happy about these three.  Jonah even said, “there are only three…that’s so easy to remember!  When I asked what we should call them Reid responded with, “peace agreements so we can remember to be peaceful in class!”  That says it all doesn’t it? 🙂