IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

This Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, our very own Lucas, Beatrice, and Ruth will be performing in The Wiz at Warren Central High School. As they make their stage debut, we would love to support them as a community. If your family is able, come out to the show! Tickets are $10 for adults and $8 for students. We would love to see you there.

I know you have all heard, but next Tuesday we are going to The Children’s Museum to help with a mysterious leak!  We are going to use our science skills to help solve the mystery.  In preparation for this, we have been talking a lot about different science tools and terms that we will be using.  So far this week, we have talked about magnifying glasses and pipets!  These are both important tools that we will be using.  For example, we used the magnifying glasses to observe the mysterious stain that the Children’s Museum sent us.  We made predictions and connections as to what we thought it might be.

The tools are new to us, but we also added a new concept today: density.  This morning, Mr. Ward set out a jar filled with maple syrup, water, and oil and asked the kids what they noticed.   Oliver responded with, “The maple syrup is heavier so it sinks to the bottom. The water is lighter than the syrup so it’s on top and the oil is the lightest so it sits on top!”  This began a conversation about density! This is a harder topic to truly explore, but over the next few days we will be looking at density and what it means to us as scientists.

Mr. Ward is holding our jar with the maple syrup, water, and oil. Do you notice the same thing that Oliver noticed?

Ruth is doing her Xtra Math on the computer.

Last Friday we added a new math component to our math workshop.  As part of our day each student will be getting on the website called Xtramath.org.  This is a website that works on math facts and developing the fluency of math facts.  The kids get on the website once a day and it tracks what they did the day before and adds on to that.  Today we sent a paper home explaining how the kids can work on their math facts from home.  It’s free so please be sure to take full advantage of it!

Today we learned a new game called “Will It Fit?” in Math Workshop.  The kids had to roll two dice and create a number and make it fit in the puzzle.  This game makes the kids think about number order and distance.  It was a favorite today!

This week in Reader’s Workshop we have talked a lot about retelling stories using the different story elements (characters, setting, problem, supporting details, and solution.)  On Monday Mr. Ward introduced the the retelling glove and each finger had a story element on it to remember.  On Tuesday, we gave the kids bookmarks to use during their independent reading time to help them.  They were a hit!  They have been using them for two days now.  (If you look below you can see Jonah’s in his lap.)

Jonah and Reid working together to retell the Diary of a Wimpy Kid Story Elements.

In Story Workshop this week we have started an author study on Todd Parr.  Over the past few days we have been talking about things that we notice in his books.  For example, Todd Parr always writes a note to his readers at the end of each books.  Today we added that to our list to help us remember his writing.  For the rest of the week we will be learning more about Mr. Parr’s own personal life.  Be on the look out in the next few weeks.  Starting next week the kids are going to be able to pick an author they want to study with an eventual goal that they will create a piece of writing with the same style.