IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Has anyone wondered about those papers that are coming home that say “Daily News” at the top of them?  Over the past two weeks our class has been doing an interactive writing activity at the end of each school day.  We start with our names, the title, and then the date.  (As a class each morning we are also working on what those date numbers actually stand for.  “What does that 9 mean at the beginning of the date?”)  Then I ask the question, “What was something special we did today?!”  The kids are always really excited about this and almost every hand shoots up to share an experience.  We talk about the day’s events and then decide on one item to write about.  Because this is at the end of the day, the Daily News goes in their mailbox to bring home the next day.  So if you are curious check out your child’s Daily News and have a conversation about their days.  I am sure it will bring out even more! 

**As an edit to yesterday’s post, I forgot one date.  October 6th at 6:00pm- We will have our second parent meeting at the school.  All are welcome!  Come and find out how you can get involved in the school.  The last event was so successful I am looking forward to seeing what happens next.

Hello hello!  Yesterday we started new literacy stations, and let me tell you…the children are SO engaged in the various activities!  One station is stamping words that have to do with puppet shows.  One station is doing the clipboard cruise again, but this time they have to find words that begin with A, B, and/or C.  The children have really been searching for those words around the room.  Another station is matching upper case and lower case letters together, and then they have to write the letters.  If they get done with that then they can begin to write words or draw pictures that begin with the specific letter they are at!  Another station they will do is writing words they see in various puppet books that I have gotten from the library.  The fifth station is cutting out pictures from The Three Pigs, and then gluing it in a beginning, middle, or end box.  We have begun to talk about how stories have a beginning, middle, and end so this is a tangible way to show beginning, middle, and end using a story we are familiar with.  The last station is working with rhyming words and styrofoam cups!

I was so proud of our friends today!  They worked so hard throughout the day especially during our Writer’s Workshop and Math Workshop time!  I love seeing our friends really stretching with their thinking and learning!

Tomorrow we will be going to the library as a class for the first time…SO EXCITED!!

Ruth, Angela, and Monica using the number line during math workshop.

Today during math workshop, our class had a challenge. Each child had a paper with a number 1-20 and we needed to put them in order. We counted one by one and put the numbers in order, then practiced counting them forwards and backwards.  We talked about what we had created: a number line. We took turns walking along our number line and stepping by each number as we said it. While working on our math workshop problem (a take away problem), I challenged some friends to utilize the number line in their thinking. How could you use this tool to help make a subraction problem easier for you? Monica drew a number line in her math notebook and then counted backwards and crossed out the amount of numbers being taken away. Ruth and I worked together to show “hops” on a number line and drew backwards. Our class will continue to discuss and utilize number lines throughout the year. This is a valuable tool that can greatly help in our mathematical thinking!

After Reader’s Workshop, our class read a book called City Numbers by Joanne Schwartz. This book is really unique because it is filled with photography of numbers all over cities. The kids were excited to see such unusual numbers in such interesting ways (a light up sign that said 2.5%, a store sign that read 7.99, an address) we decided to go on a number walk of our own and see if we could find unique numbers around our school. We wrote what we saw and took pictures. We plan on creating a number book in the style of Schwartz’ book tomorrow.

Friends on our number walk.

We have been working very hard on earning our marbles in the classroom.  For the past few weeks each time another teacher or myself saw someone making a good choice the class would earn a marble!  The day finally came today when we filled up our jar.  For the last few minutes a day we packed up and had a popcorn party!  The kids gathered around and ate their popcorn as we talked about our day.  (The popcorn party was voted on by the class.)  I am looking forward to starting over tomorrow and talking about our next party.

While the popcorn party was the highlight of the day, we have a few more great things coming up!  Here are a few date reminders:

**Thursday, September 29th: Family Night-6-7pm

**October 6th: Picture Day.  The students may dress out of uniform on this day for pictures.

**October 10th-21st: Fall Intersession.  School will be back in session on October 24th.

This weekend I found a great video created by a puppeteer.  He shared his knowlege on how to create a frog, , , lion, and a zebra.  The children LOVED this video, and some used what they learned from the video to add ne detail to their puppets.

Jamari's puppet he made after he saw what the "puppet man" did on the puppet making video!

Our friends watching the video on puppet making.