IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Addie’s Ear Book

Today we had something exciting happen- a friend finished a final draft! Addie and I worked together for several days to figure out exactly how she wanted her book published and what the final details would be. This is a story Addie has been working on for two weeks now, during our unit on critique, revision, final drafts, and sharing sound stories. After finalizing her published copy, I asked Addie where we could display the book in our classroom, as an example of exemplary work. Immediately, Addie took her book to our classroom library, found an open shelf, and placed it on a display easel. Addie exuded excitement, pride, and confidence as she did this. As Addie walked back from placing her book, she was surrounded by a chorous of “Good job, Addie!” and high-fives. Such a proud moment for our entire class.

For the past two weeks, we have been comparing and contrasting books during readers workshop. We started by comparing and contrasting fairy tales. This week, we have been comparing and contrasting fiction and non-fiction (now called informational texts) books on the same topic. For example, today we read an informational text about T Rex, and we also read “How do Dinosaurs say I Love You?” by Jane Yolen. It’s been great to see the kids think critically about the books they are reading. One of the things we discussing while creating a venn diagram today was that informational texts teach us something and fictional books, although they can teach us a lot, usually have more of a story feel.

At the end of readers workshop today, Tyrese shared a book he had read called “We Go Out.” After Tyrese finished reading the book, I asked the rest of the students if they thought the book was a fiction book or an informational text. One child concluded that because it wasn’t teaching us anything, it must be fictional. Another child concluded that because it had pictures that were taken with a camera, it must be informational.

Tyrese reads “We go out” during readers workshop share time.

I thought this was an interesting perspective on their part! Most informational texts do have pictures taken with a camera, and most fictional books do have illustrations. But is that the case all the time? Or is that the perspective of the students in our class? In an effort to broaden that perspective, I challenged the students to take a paper, clipboard, and pencil to recess and take a survey of what their peers thought. We shared our findings after lunch and realized that we had very mixed responses from other students. So, during math workshop, we talked about how we could conduct a second survey so that our data would be more clear, one way or another. We narrowed what had been four different questions during the recess survey, down to two questions. The questions are…

1. Do fiction books ever have real pictures that you take with a camera?

2. Do informational books (non-fiction) ever have pictures that you draw?

We intend to ask other classes these two questions tomorrow. We also would like to send home surveys for students to give to their families over the weekend. It might even be fun for students to go on a hunt for books in their home that break the norm.

So excited about this inquiry based learning that is taking over readers workshop! Thanks for sharing in our learning with us!

As a part of our geometry exploration today, the students used new materials to create shapes…gumdrops and toothpicks! While we were building we discovered that the gumdrops are called vertices, the place where two sides meet.  When someone asked Chairo about the gumdrops he responded with “These aren’t gumdrops today. We are using them as vertices.”  Cameron made the connection “Vertices are really like corners.”  The students also began building 3D shapes.  This was a great way for me to see what they already know about 3D shapes.  During share time we noticed a pattern with 2D shapes: the number of sides is the same as the number of vertices.

In math workshop this week, we are continuing our learning of time. We have gotten pretty adept at telling time to the hour and drawing that time on clocks. We are improving in the area of telling time to the half hour and and writing half hour times on clocks. We have also been doing time story problems in our math notebooks this week. Students are learning different strategies to solve problems such as “Tyrese, Cece, Danielle, and Jace get on the bus at 3:30. They eat dinner four hours later. What time do they eat dinner?” Some students use small clock manipulatives to solve these problems. Others have been thinking about a clock as a round number line and have been making jumps around the numbers in the same way we would jump forwards or backwards on a number line. Both strategies work great for different students.

Chloe solves a time story problem in her math notebook.

Something new we have started, as I’m sure you’ve noticed in the papers your child is bringing home, is writing our morning message together during morning meeting. I was noticing that we all had a need for lesson on letter formation, spacing of words, and concepts of print. Not wanting to take any additional time away from our workshops, I decided to build these lessons into our morning meeting. So now, during morning meeting, I write two sentences on the board, that students are then able to copy. One is always the date and the second is something about our day. During this time, I talk to students about the proper formation of letters, such as which letters go below the line (into the “basement”), which letters go all the way to the top (into the “attic”), and which way tricky letters face (like b, d, s). We also talk about how many sentences we wrote, how many words are in each sentence, how many letters are in different words, and which words have capital letters. Although odd, these are all skills that we try to work on during kindergarten and first grade. As always, it’s exciting to see everyone’s growth. Just a week of writing like this together, and I can already see major improvements!

Aidan circles a capital letter in our morning message.

This week, in addition to working with elapsed time, we have been starting to learn how to tell time to the half hour! Once students made the connection that each number at the clock need to be counted in increments of 5, the half hour time came easily!

We made our big clock on the floor and talked about why the minute hand on the 6 meant half hour. Then, we build times using our bodies as the hands! Students loved having the opportunity to become the hands of the clock and really grasped the concept quickly!

We have been making our daily schedule with clocks to represent to times using plates and students have enjoyed making the clocks, so today, each child had the chance to make their own clock. They turned out great and we will be using the in the coming days to help us with a game!