IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

When we began working on our Mouse City, I began reading The Mouse and the Motorcycle.  I cannot begin to tel you how incredible it is to watch the children while I am reading.  They are listening so intently and have such a good time while I read this chapter book.  They are predicting, questioning, gasping, laughing.  The best part is that when I get done reading they beg me to read more!  I love it!

I love seeing their minds stretch.  I love seeing their love of reading being fostered.  I love seeing and hearing them make so many connections!

During Math Workshop some of our friends have encountered addition problems that have regrouping into the tens or hundreds place.  I have been blown away by the students’ creativity in solving these challenging problems.  Many students are creating their own meaning and coming up with a way to record these problems that makes sense to them.

We started a new routine at the end of the day…daily news! During pack up and snack the students are now writing about something that we did during the day.  Be sure to check their folders tonight to see what they came up with!

The other day, we read The Peace Book by Todd Parr. It has a wonderful message;

Peace is listening to different kinds of music.

Peace is helping your neighbor.

Peace is saying sorry when you hurt someone.

And so on.

The kids were challenged to come up with their own verse for our own Peace Book. After we thought deeply about what peace meant to each of us, we made a drawing of a metaphor for peace. We then used wire and beads to create sculptures for our metaphors. They are beautiful.

Today, we read Mem Fox’ Whoever You Are about children all over the world. We made notes of the many differences yet similarities between the children. We have started a list about all the things people always have in common. So far, it reads…

We all have hearts.

We all are from somewhere.

Everyone grows.

Everyone has blood.

Everyone has a brain.

Everyone has pain.

Everyone has feelings.

We will discuss this idea more in the coming days.

Tags: collaboration, community, creativity, friendship, peace, world

Last week and this week we have been talking about Informational Text (nonfiction) in Reader’s Workshop.  To begin we studied the different components of nonfiction; glossary, table of contents, bold words, index, subtitles, and captions.  Today, as we came to captions, the kids worked together in partners to create captions of pictures we took in our classroom.  They were so excited to create their own from pictures of their friends.

Today during Reader’s Workshop the children had a new challenge.  They had to find a partner and work together to write a caption for a picture they were given of their classmates! The students really worked hard to observe the picture and come up with a sentence to describe what was happening in the picture. I was really proud of their cooperation with each other while they worked.  Tomorrow we will continue our study of Informational Texts by hunting for the text features that we learned about in nonfiction weather books that are in their book bags!