IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

As if our week has not been good enough, it got better today!  This morning, Reid noticed a lot of empty containers in our recycling bins.  He asked the question, “Can we make instruments with these?”  So a small group of kids created instruments during our free exploration time.  They were so excited to reuse some of our recyclable materials!

The group forming their band

So at the same time as our lovely band was going on, we had another group writing about angry birds!  Last week, Wyatt started to write about angry birds and asked to hear the sounds on the IPad.  This spurred a group of boys to write about this topic in their writing.  Below is a picture of the group writing their stories and using the IPad to help guide them.

Aidan explains his thinking.

Our class created hundreds chart.

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

 

 

One of the things the kids like to do in the morning is read the morning message and count our positive points. It has become a ritual for many friends in our room once they have gotten unpacked and settled in. Today, Aidan did something really special. He counted our positive points, and counted 74. Then, without prompting, he walked right over to our hundreds chart, found the number74 and proceeded to count up to 100. He then announced to me, “Mrs. Argus, we only need 26 more positive points until 100!” I asked him how he discovered his conclusion. He then articulately talked me through his thinking process and how he came to use our hundreds chart. Aidan’s discovery was so special that he then shared it during the sharing portion of our morning meeting. The class brainstormed other ways we could use the hundreds chart to problem solve. What a neat discovery, Aidan!

 

Friends present, "How Bella Lost Her Moo!"

 

For the past couple weeks, some of our friends have been reading a story called How Bella Lost Her Moo. It has lots of different animal parts that are fun to read and the kids decided they each wanted to read a seprate part when we would read in a group. One day, a friend suggested, “We should do this as a play!” The rest of the friends loved the idea and we began to prepare to present it to our class. We made puppets out of paper bags and practiced reciting our lines clearly and with emotion. Today, our friends presented the play to the rest of the class. Everyone was so proud and impressed with our performers! We will have to do more reader’s theater in the future- we have some wonderful actors!

 

 

Tags: arithmetic, capable, collaboration, creativity, curious, image of the child, problem solving

Our recycling project is on a roll!  This week we have been going to classrooms all over the buildings to present and ask for other students to recycle with us.  So far we have a lot of requests for recycling boxes and everyone is saying yes!  (Please see Mrs. Bucher’s post about one of our first presentations.)  I am so proud of the kids and their ability to tackle public speaking with no fear at such an early age!  In addition, we received good news today.  Our paper retriever bin is scheduled to be delivered to our school on Friday or Saturday of this week!  Once it is here feel free to bring paper in from home.  We need everyone’s help to make our environment a safer place!

Isn’t this impressive?!

I promise this is not photo-shopped! Jaiden is actually doing this!

I am continually impressed with the kids’ dedication to our daily yoga.  I have noticed that as we end everyone is calmer and more relaxed.  We are able to start our Math Workshop in a calm tone.  Mrs. Williams and I have noticed how the kids are really grasping different poses.  Mrs. Williams took our class to the next level today.  Check out the pose Jaiden is doing above!  She, like many others, was able to hold this pose for many seconds.  (I tried it myself and it is a hard one!)

On Monday and Tuesday we talked about “Stopping and thinking” about what we are reading when we are reading books.  Today, we discussed the 5 W’s:  Who, What, When, Where, and Why.  We had some pictures to show each word, and then we discussed a little bit about them.  Then I challenged the children to find those in their books while they were reading.  I was so proud of them for finding those “W” words.  By finding those 5 “W” words, that helps with summarizing and comprehension.  Next week we are going to talk in more detail about each “W” word so that the children have a better understanding of what to look for in their books.

This week we started a new unit of study in Writer’s Workshop.  We are Writing For Readers, meaning that we want to make our writing clear and neat so others can read it.  Today I asked the kids to do something new.  I asked them to go through their own folders of finished books and evaluate them.  They had to make a pile of  “easy to read” books and “hard to read” books.  While watching them sort through their books, I was impressed!  Every student was honest with themselves and really took the time needed to look through and evaluate their own books!  The goal is that the kids find an area they need to work on and apply that to their writing time.  Check back in a few days and I will let you know how we are doing!

Tyler is evaluating his own writing.