IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

We had a mini field trip today to the audiology center! We are lucky enough to have it housed in our building. Miss Sally, our district audiologist, gave us a tour of the center and the soundproof hearing screening room. Miss Sally was impressed with our knowledge about the parts of the ear and taught us a little bit about a tool called a Timpometer. This tool measures our ear drums’ activity. She let each friend have a try. It was very cool to watch the computer show how our ear drums reacted to the vibration. Miss Sally also taught us about hearing aids and how they work. We learned that if we had trouble hearing, we could use a tool called a hearing aid to help us. We got to try out the aids and see how they amplified the sound for us. Such a neat day!

Tags: curious, field trip, project, sound

Carriea and Oliver are writing their letters to the Children’s Museum.

Jonah writing his letter to the Children’s Museum.

This week the kids decided that they needed to inform the Children’s Museum where the leak came from in the Museum.  The kids have decided that it was the aquarium.  Today, we worked together to decide what was important to tell our friends at the museum.  The kids wanted to tell them that we recreated the sample from the leak and saw there was salt in it and we know that there is salt in the aquarium water.  We also discovered that the aquarium water was the most dense because of the salt in it.  Each child had the chance to start working on their letters.  We will continue this work tomorrow and put them in the mail after that!

David and William playing Knock Knock

Dorothy and Shayla playing Knock Knock

This afternoon, Mr. Ward introduced a new game to the kids to help with place value.  This game was called Knock Knock.  It is played with a deck of cards.  Each player gets three cards and they have to build the largest number possible.  They can trade cards one time to get a higher number.  It was great to see the kids switching numbers around in the hundreds, tens, and ones places to create larger numbers.  It really made them think!  When Mr. Ward asked at the end of Math Workshop who enjoyed the game everyone agreed it was great!  I know they will enjoy it in the upcoming weeks!

On Monday, November 12 the Block A students took part in a mini-workshop that focused on classroom environment. Mr. Nunn, Ms. Fogler and Bob Price led the workshop and it was highly successful! We formed groups and completed brain mapping activities to express our thoughts and questions toward the idea of environment as the third teacher. We also engaged in a “field trip” to the PreSchool room! Ms. Fogler wanted to show off the work her students had been doing with food coloring, water and plastic bottles. We were invited to explore the provocation they had set up in the hallway. Our class later found out that the PreSchoolers spend most of their time investigating how the bottles full of water respond to sunlight, but most of us found it more interesting to smell and shake them. How intellectual of us, right?
After the field trip we hiked back down to our classroom to play around with the idea of furniture as a part of the environment. Mr. Price arranged the chairs in many different ways and asked us to really think about what each set up allowed in terms of classroom communication and openness. From there we concluded our workshop by asking any lingering questions and discussing how we might implement this into our practicum classrooms.

Written by: Rachel Head, Mollie Bates and Margaret Hurt

One of the many wonderful things about our school is that as teachers we are constantly reflecting and trying to better our practices.  This week Mrs. Grotjan and I rearranged our normal studio times so that I would have the opportunity to observe in other classrooms around the school.  The children went to the studio today for two hours instead of their usual one hour slot on Monday or Tuesday.  In the studio they were studying the illustrations from the books written by the authors that we are studying in Story Workshop.  In Mrs. Grotjan’s second classroom space, the students were given free exploration time. The students explored many materials including musical instruments and light tables.  The children were able to do something different today while I was able to learn from the other great teachers and children in our building!

The other day, at the end of math workshop, one of our friends was upset that they had not been able to get the correct answer for one of our division problems the first time they tried to solve it. She figured it out in a couple of minutes but was still frustrated by the process.

Instead of doing a normal sharing about our problems solving strategies at the end of math workshop that day, I decided to lead a community circle discussion about learning instead. I shared with the class that I remember being in first grade and thinking that learning how to read was really hard. I didn’t feel confident in my reading, so instead, I would just have other friends read to me. I told the kids that sometimes I felt mad or sad or frustrated when I was learning how to read, because it was hard for me. Then I shared how, in second grade, after lots and lots of practicing, I was suddenly able to read and I never stopped.

I then invited each child in our class to share a time (past or present) when they were trying to learn how to do something new and it was challenging for them. Many kids shared things that were hard for them to learn. They were very honest as they talked about their feelings. I was very proud of them!

I could tell it was good for every child to see that they were not the only one who felt challenged by learning something new. Together, we talked about strategies we could use when we were learning something and feeling frustrated. Kids said that they could…

1) Keep trying and practicing. They said they shouldn’t give up.

2) ask a friend for help.

3) Take lessons

A couple months ago a went to a class at my gym that I had never been to before. I was quickly reminded, even as an adult, how hard it can be to learn something new for the first time. It can be frustrating and even embarrassing to feel like you’re the only one who doesn’t know how to do something.

What a great reminder to remember what learning can look like for our kids. In the coming weeks, and throughout the rest of the year, I intend to have more opportunities to come together as a class and celebrate our EFFORTS towards learning. Really, that is so much of what learning is all about!