IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

During Free Choice the past few days our kids have been experiencing Zumba.  If you are not familiar with this it is a form of dance that is also exercise!  One of our very own friends has a mother who is a Zumba instructor and has taught her a few moves.  I was not able to upload the video at this moment, but here are a few pictures from yesterday, the first time the students experienced Zumba.

We have added insect and praying mantis books to our classroom library. During class this week, students were making connections between our praying mantis and other animals.

“My mommy said birds are kind of weird. The dark ones are girls and the light ones are boys. So i’m going to read about our bug to see if it’s a boy or a girl.” – Chloe

La'Mount, Daysia, and William study Cinderella Lightning McQueen while Chloe does some praying mantis research.

Our school is celebrating Back to Football Friday this Friday, September 9th as a part of the NFL Play 60 program. Throughout our day we will have the theme of football integrated into our lessons.  As a part of this event, our school will be entered into a $10,000 grant from the NFL Play 60.  To add to our exciting day, the children are asked to wear their COLTS or other NFL gear on Friday.  We would love to show our spirit to win this grant for our school!

We have a time each day for Reader’s Workshop. During this time, I read a story and present a mini lesson that has to with with a concept or technique associated with reading. It may be on making predictions, decoding (sounding out words), or a variety of other reading skills. One of our big focuses this week is looking at letters when we are reading to see what the author is trying to say.  One of the skills I teach the kids is Tucker Signing. While this is not the only way that we present phonics at the lab school, it is one great tool to help develop letter-sound association in both reading and writing. The concept of Tucker Signing is that each letter has a sound and movement to go with it. By teaching letters in this way, chldren are given three ways to remember the letter- visual (by looking at it), auditory (by hearing and creating the sound), and kinesthetically (by making a movement  that is associated with the letter and sound). Tucker Signing is not only useful for individual letters, but also for digraphs (a pair of letters that creates one sound) which is something many of our more advanced readers are working on.  Ask your child If they can show you the “sign” and sound for some of their letters. You may be suprised at what you learn!

The following is a link to the Tucker Signs website should you want to find out a little more information about this strategy.

http://www.tuckersigns.com/parents.html

We are learning about a new material in our classroom this week.  Each day this week a group of students will have a chance to work with clay!  Here are a few pictures from our group today.