IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Yesterday during math, we starts exploring the hundred chart. We examined it together, looking for patterns. Students had some wonderful noticings, especially about the columns that ended in zero and five because this is a way we commonly count.

Today, we worked as a team to create a “life-sized” ten frame on the floor of our classroom! This will allow students to be in the middle of the ten frame as they explore and give us a place where we can go to learn number patterns together. At first, we counted 1-20, but then a student suggested we count by 10s to get to 100. While this left us with an interesting looking work in progress, I am happy that the children are beginning to see patterns with the chart!

We will finish the hundred chart tomorrow, then learn a new game that we can play on it!

Today we did partner reading after our independent reading portion of readers workshop was finished. It was so wonderful to watch the children take turns reading their books to their partner. Their pride for their reading was evident as they read and read and I had to stop them from sharing their work.

We will be doing partner reading here and there as it helps children listen in a more intimate setting.

Today in studio the children worked with wire which is perfect because next week we are going to work on having the children make their gifts out of wire so that we can display them. They were very proud of their work when they entered the room so that was fun to see!

Yesterday we began a discussion about what weather is. The children had many great ideas for what weather is. Today we asked if they had any questions about weather, and it was really interesting to hear their questions. I assumed that many of their questions would be related to hurricanes and tornadoes since that was a highly talked about idea yesterday, but today their questions surrounded ideas of why clouds turn gray, and how clouds soak up the ocean, and how clouds move. So…clouds might be the area we begin!

Yesterday and today we worked on a piece of writing. This writing will be an assessment that we will use to show where the students began with their writing at the beginning of the year. The first day (yesterday) we just asked the friends to write down a story the best they can. Today we asked them to add to or change anything in their story. Each day after they were done writing, we sat in a circle and had all of the students share their books to their friends on either side of them. This was a way to show value in every child’s piece of work regardless of where they are. It was such a neat experience to see the children genuinely interested in their friend’s story. I recall Israel today asking questions about Niall’s book in such a sweet and interested manner, and Niall had such a proud face on explaining in more detail his book.

We are taking about “just right” books in readers workshop. We are at the same time talking about “just right” numbers in math workshop. We do number stories each day in our math notebooks. Many of our friends were getting through the first number story quickly so we added number sets
(5, 3) for example, so that children could put the new numbers in place of the two original numbers; thus having a new problem. Well, with just right numbers if you can do it in your head, then it is too easy. If you cannot think of how to solve it or it is too big of numbers then it is too hard. The numbers need to be in the middle of easy and hard. Anywho….I was conferencing with Selah today and she said, “Mrs. Bucher, these numbers are not “just right” for me! They are too easy!” I loved that Selah recognized and monitored herself and was able to communicate to me that they were too easy. I told her how proud of her I was, and that of course I would put a more appropriate “just right” number in her problem tomorrow.

This week, we have been working to identify the problem and solution in stories we are reading. As a class, we decided that stories are much more interesting when something happens to the characters that they have to overcome. To help us identify problems in a story, we have been reading books from the Curious George series and telling our own stories verbally.

Today, I challenged students to write their stories in a book for the class to read. They got to work using various materials to build their story and then transferred their thoughts into books! This was the first day they had been asked to use a book as a material, even though some have made this choice over the past few weeks.

The attention to detail in these stories was amazing! Each child came up with a very clear problem and used their character to solve it. Some problems included:
-A scary cheetah
-A broken water fountain
-A hurt butterfly
-A stolen car

Students offered created solutions to solve the problems they had created. I was proud of their hard work and their final products!

Isai, one of our friends, brings the paper (the weather section) often into school and really is interested in all things weather and geography related. Yesterday during the day our friends were talking about how much it was raining! It seems that weather has been popping up over and over.

Before school, Miss Jeffrey and I talked about doing a few things in our classroom to see if weather would be an area of interest for a project. Our question of the day was asking if everyone knew what weather was. Then I asked our friends if they could show weather using the beautiful materials. After lunch we asked our friends to share what weather was, and let me tell you it was quite the discussion! We had friends sharing their knowledge of rain, snow, wind. We had friends talking about weather being hot and cold. We had friends sharing their knowledge of tornados and hurricanes. Tomorrow we are going to talk some more about what they know and we shall see if their interest sustains!

Today we put up our hundreds chart, but there were missing numbers!! We played a game called Find the Missing Number where the children could come up and tell us one of the missing numbers. We also talked about counting by 10’s because a friend noticed that those numbers were colored brown! They were proud of themselves for knowing so many of the missing numbers, and so was I!