IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

October 1- Picture Day- Uniforms not required. Make sure to turn in your picture order sheet this day or before.

October 3- Dow Work in the Garden Day- Please dress your child in washable work clothes. These do not need to be uniform clothes. We will be planting, weeding, tilling, and mulching outside with volunteers from DOW all day! Make sure to get lots of sleep the night before.

On Tuesday every student in the class received their very on composition notebook to be used as a shark journal. Today, students had an opportunity to decorate their shark journals, and then during free choice time, a few of our friends decided to do some shark research. They began reading through our collection of shark books and writing down the fact they looked up. Here is some of the things they have learned so far…

Sharks are fish. – Abel

All sharks are predators. They eat other animals. – Abel

Whale sharks are 40 feet long. – Madeline

Great white sharks eat whales. – Madeline

Sharks sense electric fields to help them catch their pray. – Madeline

Megamouth shark means giant yawner. – Olivia

The megaladon was the largest shark. It was probably 65 feet long. – Geneva

I’m excited to see what our research uncovers next week!

In addition to doing shark research, it seems that some of our friends have been taking their new found shark interest home with them. On Wednesday, Ben made a great white shark out of a box and then brought it in to school to share! What shark stories to you have from home?

Ben dresses up in his Great White shark costume!

This week, we began learning about the strategy of stretching out the sounds in words to help us read them. To help kids remember this strategy, we created an animal. His name is stretchy the snake. Stretchy has been showing kids how to start at the beginning of the word, make that sound, and then slowly make the sounds of each following letter or group of letters, until you reach end of the word.

Stretchy the Snake

Last week Ready Rooster showed us how to get our mouths ready for the beginning letter or sound in a word (and sneak peek, but promise not to tell your kids! Next week, Chunky Monkey is going to show us how to look for familiar chunks of letters within a word)!

Each child received a small slinky as a tool to help them stretch out the words in their books. They really seem to be getting the idea of it all! See if you child can show you how they stretch out their words at home!

Danielle uses her slinky to stretch out one of the words in her book!

Today is the day we finally figured out how long the whale shark is!

Thanks to the help of a couple friends who brought in measuring tapes today, we were able to measure the length of our pipe line. At the end of free choice time, all the students had a seat by our string of pipes, next to the wall. We investigated the measuring tapes and found out where the inches lines and feet lines were. After we had an understanding of our tool, we began to measure. Unfortunately, our measuring tape ran out when it reached twelve feet. Not to worry though, because we had a second twelve foot measuring tape. When this one ended, I asked the students how far we had measured so far if we had gone twelve feet and then twelve more feet. One student informed me that we had measured twenty-four feet of our pipe line. At the point, we were out of measuring tapes, so I asked the students how they thought we should measure the remaining pipes. Spencer told me that we could use the ruler now, so I got out a basket of rulers and laid them end to end until we reached the end of string of pipes. The students had been counting with me and we found out that our string of pipes was only thirty-one feet long. We continued to lay the rulers down, counting from thirty-one up to forty. By the time we reached forty feet, our rulers had made there way into the hallway and the kids were ecstatic! Who knew a whale shark could be so long! The students helped me lay duct tape down next to our pipes and rulers so that we could have a more permanent representation of our whale shark’s length. Needless to say, the kids were excited to have finally reached our goal of measuring the whale shark. There excitement spilled over into all the other ideas they had of what we should do next with our shark project! Now we’re thinking we need to begin some shark journals for all of our research, and I was told I need to contact a shark specialist to come and talk to us about sharks too! I’ll keep you updated! It’s sure to be great!

Our whole class sits along the length of our whale shark. Tyrese is standing at the very end to show how far the tape goes!

Today was a fun day in room 107!

Today was our second day with our Butler teachers in the classroom. For any of you who don’t know, students in the College of Education at Butler come to our school for some of their classes. One of those classes meets at the school multiple times a week, and the Butler students spend a full day of their week in our classrooms, working with the students! The Butler teachers in our classroom are Miss Lewis, Miss Girten, and Mr. Karmia. They are all ready doing some great work with the students! (I promise to put some pictures up next week…my camera was dead today.)

Mr. Karmia aided in our continued shark conversation today. We left off yesterday not sure how we would measure the length of a whale shark. Today we began using feet…of all kinds.

During free choice time, Abel and Jace chose to work with me in trying to measure our whale shark pipes to see if they are forty feet long yet. Jace said, “I think it’s 70 feet!” Abel decided to count it by walking next to the pipe line and counting how many steps he took with his feet. When finished, he stated, “It’s 40 feet. I counted my feet all the way down.”

The three of us decided that it might be helpful to have some other people measure the pipes too, so we asked Mr. Karmia if he would measure the string of pipes for us. He agreed and told us that the line of pipes was thirty-two of his feet. To this, Jace said, “We need to make it longer!” Abel said, “Maybe we need to try Aaliyah’s feet and Jace’s feet and then your feet.”

So Aaliyah measured the pipes and got 29 feet! Oh, the learning  that comes from differing answers!

Slightly perplexed, Abel said, “Maybe it’s because Aaliyah and I made our feet go like this (spreading his hands far apart), and Mr. Karmia made his feet go like this (putting his hands finger to wrist, signifying toe to heel).

So Abel and Aaliyah both measured the pipe line again, this time walking the way Mr. Karmia had the first time. Aaliyah got 43 feet and Abel got 47 feet.

Free choice time was ending around this time, so we decided to end our measuring for the day. However, before we began Story Workshop, I facilitated a whole class discussion on Abel, Jace, and Aaliyah’s findings.

I told them that we had been measuring the pipes, but that each person who measured it with their feet got a different answer. I questioned the group as to why this might be happening. Madeline suggested that maybe we were using the wrong kind of feet. She said a foot “could be our feet like a body part or it could be like a measuring feet.”

Chloe then replied, “Some people have big feet and some people have little feet. There are different sizes.”

Spencer said, “We need to use a ruler.” When I asked him what a ruler was, he said it is something that measures.

We spent the rest of our discussion time figuring out what a ruler looks like and what other materials we might be able to measure our pipes with. Madeline said that we needed to use a measuring tape, which is a “box with a measuring thing that comes out of it with lines and numbers on it.” Many students said they had one at home and that they would bring one in to school tomorrow. Who knows, maybe tomorrow will be the day we find out how long a whale share really is!