IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Lab Report September 2011

During our free choice time on Friday, Larry decided to use the unifix cubes to build the Great Wall of China. Leah had read a book about the Great Wall of China and knew that there were warriors, called the Terracotta Warriors, whose job it was to guard the wall. So with many other students’ help, Leah and Larry began setting up teddy bears around the wall, to represent the Terracotta Warriors.

Today, we did a Great Wall relocation, moving the wall to the block building area. Many warriors were lost along the way, so Heleria and Nailah helped re-set up the bears during free choice time. The wall lead to some great conversations today!

Heleria and Nailah use teddy bears as terracotta warriors to defend the Great Wall of China.

Katie Jones reads with a student during Reader's Workshop.

Elyse Estridge helps a student with a project.

Amy Gaisser interacts with student at a light table in the studio.

On last Wednesday, the Block A students from the Butler University College of Education began working in our classrooms.  Today they returned to the classrooms for a second full-day of teaching experience at the IPS/Butler University Laboratory School.  In addition to working with individual students and small groups, many of the Block A students have taught lessons and read books aloud to the classes with which they work.  Several Block A students returned to school last Friday (on a day they were not even scheduled to be at our school) to participate in a class celebration with the children in room 104.  So, if your child came home recently and told you he/she has four new teachers, it is true!

For the past few days we have played a game where I show a ten frame card and the children have to say how many dots it shows (what number it is). At first I went really slow so the children could see the card well, and they did a really good job at telling me how many dots they see and why and how they got to that number. Today, we did the same game, but this time I went really fast, and you know what…they did great! With a smaller version of the ten frame cards, we played high card which the children loved playing. In partners, they each placed a card in front of them. Whoever had the highest card won the hand! The children really loved playing the game and they were getting really good at knowing and seeing how many dots were on the cards.

Today we got to the fourth group to work on making their puppets for their shows. Tomorrow we will start looking at puppet books to see if there is anything else we can do to add or enhance our puppets. They are REALLY enjoy this process! Next up after creating the puppets will be working on the background to our puppet shows.

(I tried posting pictures with this post, but it is not allowing me to do so…sorry!)

Wyatt and Christina are very exctied about Mo Willems!

Jaiden loves the Piggy and Elephant books by Mo Willems.

Today we started an author study on Mo Willems in Reader’s Workshop.  The kids have really been drawn to his work as we read them in class.  I decided this might be a great author to study.  Over the next week or so we will be looking at the different techniques Mo Willems uses in his book and what we notice about his writing.  I am sure that stories will come home about this because he is our favorite author so far!