IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

We had an exciting day in Math Workshop today!  We are fortunate enough to be working with the Butler friends that are here for their math practicum work.  Similar to past semesters, we will have 4 butler students in our classroom every week.  This semester we have an extra special treat.  ALL of the Butler friends are coming into our classroom to work with us during Math Workshop once a week.  So we have 23 extra teachers helping us learn and grow as mathematicians.  Today, the kids learned how to play a game called Capture 5.  I am excited to see where this extra support takes us this semester!

William and Andrew working together on their story.

Wyatt and Ruth working together on their story.

Maxwell and Reid working together on their story.

Something very exciting started to happen this week in Story Workshop.  As we finish up our publishing of our author study books, the kids started co-authoring books together.  Many of them are working with partners to create a story.  We are just in the beginning phases of this, but it is really exciting to see!

Here was a quick overview of what happened today!

*Reader’s Workshop- Today we started pointing out the main idea in our non-fiction text.  Today we read about tornadoes and learned about how they can destroy things, how they form, and what to do in case of a tornado.

*Math Workshop- We have been talking about friendly numbers.  Friendly numbers are when you split up a larger number to make it easier to use in a problem.

*Story Workshop- We are in the midst of finishing up our author study books.  Many friends have published their books and and now moving onto new stories.  As a class we are talking about how and when to use punctuation in our writing.

In Math Workshop, we have been asking the kids to challenge themselves with larger numbers.  Today we talked about breaking apart numbers into smaller groups.  This is called friendly numbers.  For example, if you are adding 50 plus 15  you can break apart the larger number to make it easier (or more friendly) to solve.  50 could turn into five groups of 10!  All of the sudden the problem seems much more approachable.  Townes used friendly numbers to solve his math problem today.  He shared it with the class.  Check out the picture below of him sharing his mathematical knowledge!

This morning, during Reader’s Workshop, we had a great conversation about non-fiction.  I asked the kids: “Why do we read non-fiction?”  Instantly hands went up and here are some of the answers they shared:

“We read non-fiction to learn new things.”

“We read non-fiction to explore ideas that we don’t know about!”

“To grow as readers.”

“To gather new ideas!”

We read a book about clouds.  Together we learned that clouds that are thin and wispy show the weather will be good.  At the end as we shared more things we learned Raki said, “Mrs. Clark, I learned that you can’t walk on clouds!  They are made of gas and you would fall through them!”