IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

It was so interesting today watching Miss Jeffrey lead Reader’s Workshop today because there was such a great discussion on whether or not this certain book Miss Jeffrey read was non-fiction or fiction. She read two books about space-one was fiction and one was non-fiction. Then they compared the two books. Niall explained that one book was non-fiction because cats cannot go into space, and the other book was fiction because it gave us information. Isaac then interjected saying that the space book with a cat in it was non-fiction because it gave us information about space just like the other one. There was no resolution to the discussion, but it was a great example of children being able to state their opinion and know that there might be some agreeing and some disagreeing, but that there are valid points to all.

We did our second writing prompt today. We asked the children to write about a time they taught someone something. We only did it with half of the friends, but I was really impressed with how the children worked. There was a lot more writing and depth to these prompts compared to the first one. I look forward to seeing how they continue to progress throughout the year!

Miss Jeffrey led a great discussion about how to make friends feel better if you know they are upset or lonely, and there were some great ideas like make a picture, visit Maggie’s Joke Box, play with them, help them. We ended the day with the Friendship Meeting again, and so many friends were celebrated for their interactions with each other.

For the past two weeks, we have been comparing and contrasting books during readers workshop. We started by comparing and contrasting fairy tales. This week, we have been comparing and contrasting fiction and non-fiction (now called informational texts) books on the same topic. For example, today we read an informational text about T Rex, and we also read “How do Dinosaurs say I Love You?” by Jane Yolen. It’s been great to see the kids think critically about the books they are reading. One of the things we discussing while creating a venn diagram today was that informational texts teach us something and fictional books, although they can teach us a lot, usually have more of a story feel.

At the end of readers workshop today, Tyrese shared a book he had read called “We Go Out.” After Tyrese finished reading the book, I asked the rest of the students if they thought the book was a fiction book or an informational text. One child concluded that because it wasn’t teaching us anything, it must be fictional. Another child concluded that because it had pictures that were taken with a camera, it must be informational.

Tyrese reads “We go out” during readers workshop share time.

I thought this was an interesting perspective on their part! Most informational texts do have pictures taken with a camera, and most fictional books do have illustrations. But is that the case all the time? Or is that the perspective of the students in our class? In an effort to broaden that perspective, I challenged the students to take a paper, clipboard, and pencil to recess and take a survey of what their peers thought. We shared our findings after lunch and realized that we had very mixed responses from other students. So, during math workshop, we talked about how we could conduct a second survey so that our data would be more clear, one way or another. We narrowed what had been four different questions during the recess survey, down to two questions. The questions are…

1. Do fiction books ever have real pictures that you take with a camera?

2. Do informational books (non-fiction) ever have pictures that you draw?

We intend to ask other classes these two questions tomorrow. We also would like to send home surveys for students to give to their families over the weekend. It might even be fun for students to go on a hunt for books in their home that break the norm.

So excited about this inquiry based learning that is taking over readers workshop! Thanks for sharing in our learning with us!

As a part of our geometry exploration today, the students used new materials to create shapes…gumdrops and toothpicks! While we were building we discovered that the gumdrops are called vertices, the place where two sides meet.  When someone asked Chairo about the gumdrops he responded with “These aren’t gumdrops today. We are using them as vertices.”  Cameron made the connection “Vertices are really like corners.”  The students also began building 3D shapes.  This was a great way for me to see what they already know about 3D shapes.  During share time we noticed a pattern with 2D shapes: the number of sides is the same as the number of vertices.

Today we had an engaging discussion on how to keep the close community in our classroom instead of it going sour (ex. arguments, friends getting hurt feelings, etc.). Heaven suggested we make a sign that shows what “friends” look like and what “friends” do not look like. Malachi suggested we have a meeting at the end of the day focusing on how we were friends that day. Then Makayla talked about how we need to make people happy so we are happy inside. The children all agreed and were already discussing how they do that for their friends. Maggie explained that that was the Golden Rule which was a beautiful connection.

So at the end of the day we had a Friendship Meeting where the children celebrated when and who they saw being good friends within our classroom community. You should have seen the smiles on our friends faces when other people noticed how they were being good friends to each other.

The last thing we did was we made a list of things\traits that friends have or show: some of the ideas were:

Friends-help, share, are fair, are nice, care for their friends…

We will continue to explore this idea and continue to celebrate the friends in our class being great friends!

Oh, and we also learned a song that some of my friends learned last year-F-R-I-E-N-D, F-R-I-E-N-D, F-R-I-E-N-D, that’s what friends are for.

What I strive to do each day is to provide a safe and supportive environment for each child in our class. By us focusing on friendship on occasion, and making the children conscious of their choices in a supportive manner,I feel that the community will continue to strengthen. I believe in each child in this class, and each child brings something so vital to the community. Through this exploration of what friendship is, we are focusing on the children thinking about how they are treating each other and really highlighting those beautiful interactions they are having each day.

In math workshop this week, we are continuing our learning of time. We have gotten pretty adept at telling time to the hour and drawing that time on clocks. We are improving in the area of telling time to the half hour and and writing half hour times on clocks. We have also been doing time story problems in our math notebooks this week. Students are learning different strategies to solve problems such as “Tyrese, Cece, Danielle, and Jace get on the bus at 3:30. They eat dinner four hours later. What time do they eat dinner?” Some students use small clock manipulatives to solve these problems. Others have been thinking about a clock as a round number line and have been making jumps around the numbers in the same way we would jump forwards or backwards on a number line. Both strategies work great for different students.

Chloe solves a time story problem in her math notebook.

Something new we have started, as I’m sure you’ve noticed in the papers your child is bringing home, is writing our morning message together during morning meeting. I was noticing that we all had a need for lesson on letter formation, spacing of words, and concepts of print. Not wanting to take any additional time away from our workshops, I decided to build these lessons into our morning meeting. So now, during morning meeting, I write two sentences on the board, that students are then able to copy. One is always the date and the second is something about our day. During this time, I talk to students about the proper formation of letters, such as which letters go below the line (into the “basement”), which letters go all the way to the top (into the “attic”), and which way tricky letters face (like b, d, s). We also talk about how many sentences we wrote, how many words are in each sentence, how many letters are in different words, and which words have capital letters. Although odd, these are all skills that we try to work on during kindergarten and first grade. As always, it’s exciting to see everyone’s growth. Just a week of writing like this together, and I can already see major improvements!

Aidan circles a capital letter in our morning message.