IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

This afternoon, our classroom turned into a forest!  The past few weeks we have been talking about the different parts of trees and today we finally put it all together.  Each student became a tree!  We had paper bags that represented the trunk, mulch that represented the bark, and yarn that represented the roots.  While the kids did like their vests, I could tell their necklaces were a the favorite!  They each had brown yarn (the branches) that was strung with leaves!  Here are few pictures from our forest!

Reid, Nytaiya, and Sophia are busy showing off their trees!

Dorothy and Tylisha are acting like they are trees!

We love trees!

We enjoy Reader's Workshop outside on this sunny day!

We are readers!

Cameron and Kaitlyn enjoying their time.

Aidan reads about weather while enjoying the shade.

Enjoying friendship though dance.

A picture of our math strategy posters.

Tags: reading

Today began our first official day of recording our findings on the particular planet we chose Monday. I used the questions that the children came up with yesterday and made a table for the children to fill out. We reviewed the questions and talked about how we would figure out those responses. Then they broke out into their groups. I was blown away with how eager the children were in finding facts about their planet that they could add to their research paper! They were raising their hands left and right to tell me what they had found!

After the children were done we gathered together and discussed any new information we learned while researching. This is a snippet of the conversation:

“Saturn has 60 moons!”-Oliver
“I thought Saturn has 61 moons.”-Jonah
“In Oliver’s research he found that Saturn had 60 moons so we will honor that right now, but maybe we need to research some more to see what is the most accurate information.”-Mrs. Bucher
“It takes 1 year for Earth to go around the sun.”-Saa
“And what is another word for “go around the sun?”-Mrs. Bucher
“ORBIT!”-Many friends
“Mercury is the first planet.”-Heaven
“The earth travels around the sun.”-DeOnna
“Venus has dusty rocks on it.”-Selam
“It takes about 84 Earth years for Uranus to go around the sun.”-Jonah
“That is long!”-Jamari
“Why does it take that long to get to Uranus?”-Bucher
“Because it is so far away!”-Jonah

What great thinking! They are already learning so much about the planets so I am excited to see and hear what else they learn about their planet.

Please join us at 6pm for our Trading Card Family Night! At this event, you will be introduced to the wonderful world of Lab School trading cards and be invited to create and share. We are also hoping for families to add their names to the Lab School directory at this event and exchange phone numbers for play dates over spring break. It should be a great evening!

Over the past week or so, we have tried something new to show our learning: strategy posters. When a child uses a novel idea to help them work through a problem, they are asked to make a poster of their thinking to be displayed in the room. This poster then serves as a guide for other children who may be encountering the same type of problem. This not only encourages kids to take ownership in thier own learning, but also encourages them to look to one another for help when problem solving and collaborate. Right now, we have six addition strategy posters and three posters about what to do when you come to a new word in reading. Look for them at Family Night on Thursday at 6pm!

Tags: capable, problem solving, responsible