IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

We are continuing with our author’s study in Story Workshop this week.  Before break, the students worked in their groups and made observations about their author’s voice, word choice, illustrations, and structure.  This week I am meeting with each group and we are getting to know more about the authors’ lives and how that has impacted their writing.  Today the students focusing on H.A. Rey learned that he loves animals and always visits the zoo when he travels to a new city.  We made connections between his life and his stories.  “He writes about Curious George because he likes animals and likes going to the zoo,” Donovan.  We will continue learning more about the different authors this week and then start drafting our own stories inspired by the authors soon!

Exciting things are happening I our classroom, in studio, and in yoga! Our students have taken a big interest in how yoga helps our body, the muscle systems, and using art to depict their body and how it moves! For the past few weeks, Mrs. Grotjan and Mrs. Williams have been working together to engage students in experiences that connect yoga with the arts. In our classroom, we have just begun to explore our body and the muscles we have. As this special project continues to unfold outside our classroom, we will comtimue to comment this learning to work happening each day! Be on the look out for news about an upcoming field trip that connects to these experiences!

This week, we have been talking a lot about patterns and how they may connect to sound and listening. We have been practicing creating patterns in many ways, including creating them with our bodies. Our friends love trying out other friends’ body patterns. It feels like dancing!

This morning  friends were presented with several patterns that I had drawn. A simple ABAB pattern, an AABB pattern, and a few others. After talking about characteristics of patterns, I then posed the question to them, “How can you incorporate this with sound?”

Almost immediately, Makenzi mentioned that she had been playing the piano in the big studio with Mrs. Grotjan and had followed along with something that looked like a pattern that told her what notes to play. That gave us the idea that we could create music to these patterns!

We tried singing high pitches and low pitches to the ABAB pattern. Then we tried with some of the other patterns. When a new pattern gave us a third option, one friend suggested clapping instead of singing for that portion. This then inspired us to create our own song patterns. We had so much fun creating and sharing them!

Tags: music, patterns, project, sound

Today, in Reader’s Workshop, we started talking about different perspectives in stories.   Over the next few weeks we are going to be digging into this idea that all people (characters) have different perspectives on events. Today we used the historical fiction book, Henry’s Freedom Box to talk about different perspectives.  This book focuses on a slave and his life and eventual escape to freedom.  I was so impressed with the kids conversations about the perspectives of the slave vs. the slave owner.  We had some powerful conversations!  Someone even said the slave owners were selfish because all they wanted was money and they really didn’t care about the slaves.   The conversations were so rich and I could already see the kids begin to tackle this topic with an intense book.  I am really looking forward to more of these great conversations as the week progresses.

This week, we added a new step to our story workshop cycle. To encourage our students to think about improving their writing, we created a critique form. This is a place where students can receive feedback on a story they have written, both positive and parts to improve on. This will help students become more independent as writers and learn how to accept critical comments without their feelings being hurt. I was impressed by how well each child did this today and can’t wait to see how this tool is used throughout the year!