IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Working hard on observational drawings.

Aidan working on his observational drawing details.

What parts of the airplane do you see?

One of the things that our class wants to know about airplanes is how they fly. One of the ways we can better understand how they fly is by understanding their parts and their functions.  To begin this task, we did an observational drawing of an airplane. I projected a large picture of a jet on our screen and asked the children to sit quietly in a comfortable drawing spot and draw exactly what they saw. We talked about noticing the details of the picture- the shading, the small words on the plane, the placement of windows. After we were done, we talked about what parts we had added to our planes and what we supposed each part did. We also took time to admire each friend’s drawing-we really enjoyed seeing how different each friend’s interpretation was of the same picture. We talked about how we have many similarities but we can also have very different perspectives on topics we discuss so it is important to listen and share everyone’s ideas. Our observational drawings are proudly displayed outside our classroom. Come and see them!

In Writer’s Workshop,we have been talking a lot about details in our pictures. Last week, we talked about faces and bodies of our characters and how we can add detail to them to show how they are feeling and what they are doing. This week, we are learning about adding detail to our stories by adding a setting, or background. Coincidentally, I had an experience this weekend that had to do with setting and shared it with our class. Over the weekend, my beloved dog Jackson ran away. He was gone for about 15 hours,  and then my husband and I got a phone call that he was in the neighborhood in someones yard. While I am so relieved to have him back,  I can’t help but wonder what Jackson did all that time he was missing and where he visited in the time he was gone! We decided to write a class book about where Jackson could have been in those 15 hours he was gone. Each child created a page that illustrated Jackson in a place he may have visited (the setting!) and focused on adding lots of detail to clearly show the location. Some of the pictures were quite humorous (the beach, Wal-Mart, school) and some were rather realistic (the pound!). While I can’t say I am glad that Jackson went missing this weekend, I will say that it provided a fun and authentic reason to talk about setting. I just hope Jackson doesn’t give us a reason to do this lesson again!

Our school is celebrating Back to Football Friday this Friday, September 9th as a part of the NFL Play 60 program. Throughout our day we will have the theme of football integrated into our lessons.  As a part of this event, our school will be entered into a $10,000 grant from the NFL Play 60.  To add to our exciting day, the children are asked to wear their COLTS or other NFL gear on Friday.  We would love to show our spirit to win this grant for our school!

Here's a picture of the notes that we took on what our puppet show should be.

Today, I asked a question to see if the children were interested in putting on a puppet show for you all.  The majority of the children said they would love to so then I asked what show would we put on, and the children gave a list of ideas ranging from Goldilocks and the Three Bears to The Three Little Pigs to Michael Jordan to Spongebob.  We went through each choice and talked about how many characters were in the story so that we could narrow down the choices, and the children ended up with the following stories:

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

The Princess and the Frog

The Three Little Pigs

The Runaway Pancake

Those will be the stories we will be acting out.  Now, I am not sure when this will be because we have lost to do to prepare like:  creating the puppets, creating a backdrop, writing a script and program as well as making a poster.  But I did want to keep you up to date with where we were on the process of puppet making!!

By the way, next Wednesday at 11:15, a puppeteer from Peewinkle’s Puppet Theater will be here to help make puppets with the kids.  If you would like to come and help the children make the puppets that would be wonderful!

Our study of bugs has continued to progress over the past week. Word got out that we were studying bugs, so other teachers in our school started bringing insects to room 105! Mrs. Grojon brought a praying mantis to us last week. We studied it, drew observational drawings of it, and even named it…Cinderella Lightning McQueen! This weekend I went out a purchased a new terrarium and some crickets for our praying mantis. Cinderella is now a permanent fixture in our classroom community. We will continue to study this creature as a piece of our insect project!

Larry works on his observational drawing as well.

La'Mount and Aaliyah working on their observational drawing of our praying mantis.

Cinderalla Lightning McQueen

We have a time each day for Reader’s Workshop. During this time, I read a story and present a mini lesson that has to with with a concept or technique associated with reading. It may be on making predictions, decoding (sounding out words), or a variety of other reading skills. One of our big focuses this week is looking at letters when we are reading to see what the author is trying to say.  One of the skills I teach the kids is Tucker Signing. While this is not the only way that we present phonics at the lab school, it is one great tool to help develop letter-sound association in both reading and writing. The concept of Tucker Signing is that each letter has a sound and movement to go with it. By teaching letters in this way, chldren are given three ways to remember the letter- visual (by looking at it), auditory (by hearing and creating the sound), and kinesthetically (by making a movement  that is associated with the letter and sound). Tucker Signing is not only useful for individual letters, but also for digraphs (a pair of letters that creates one sound) which is something many of our more advanced readers are working on.  Ask your child If they can show you the “sign” and sound for some of their letters. You may be suprised at what you learn!

The following is a link to the Tucker Signs website should you want to find out a little more information about this strategy.

http://www.tuckersigns.com/parents.html