IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Today, we asked the kids, “Would you like to be a part of the recycling team?”  Over half of our class responded yes!  Last year, as a school we all recycled paper weekly and dumped it into our paper retriever outside in our parking lot.  A lot of the kids have been asking about it again this year and we are finally starting to collect again!  This week, friends from both 1-2 classes will be giving speeches to the rest of the school to talk about how we recycle and how we can do it at school.  Check back later this week or next week to see how this goes!  I know the kids are excited once again to help our planet!

We’ve started discussing time during math workshop this week. Today, we shared with each other what we know about how to tell time and what we know about clocks. Students said that you can tell time with clocks, watches, phones, computers, and timers. They said that most clocks are round and have 12 numbers that are written around the end of the clock. They also said that clocks have two hands (sometimes 3 if there is a second hand).

Together, we drew a clock and figured out where all the numbers went. We began exploring how to make the clock be an o’clock time.

After making a clock in their math journals, students were able to play a clock game with a partner. In the game, you roll a 12 sided die, and write whatever number you land on, on your clock. You and your partner take turns. The first person to fill in all the numbers on their clock (and put those numbers in the correct places) wins! The kids had a great time. We’ll keep exploring time all this week.

Spencer and Ben play the clock game together.

We have started doing a monthly writing prompt to help expose the children to different purposes for writing.  Last month was the first time we did this and this type of thinking and writing was very challenging.  Today we completed our second prompt.  Before the children had time to write I passed back their work from the previous time and had them read it again.  Then we had a discussion about ways that we could have made our writing better.  They came up with a lot of great ideas such as more description, neater writing, spelling, adding more words, and putting spaces between words.  We also talked about using these ideas each week on the writing section of the homework.  These discussions will continue as we start to write drafts and edit our stories for the author’s study.

Today, we had a special visitor come to our classroom! Our friend Kaelina’s mom came to read us a story, teach us a song about holding a crayon, and introduce us to Mat Man! We have been working hard learning about good handwriting and how to properly hold a pencil, so this was great reinforcement! We had the chance to practice our new pencil grip while drawing a self portrait that included the same parts of the body that Mat Man has! We are excited to continue to practice holding crayons and pencils and writing so that a reader can read our words!

Today, we were introduced to several different genres of music. We practiced moving our bodies to the different types and then describing each with adjectives. Our notes were as follows:

Reggae: soft, sorta jazzy, slow, chill

Polka: funny, kinda slow, kinda fast, loud, crazy, ooom pa pa

Jazz: fast, medium, calming, piano, upbeat, happy

We are looking forward to our field trip to the Rhythm Discovery Center this Wednesday!

We also have something new as part of our math routine. As you may know, our math workshop currently includes a time for number work, problem solving, and math games. We will begin a new portion of math workshop called “math boxes”. During math box time, our friends will have an independent time to work on building specific skills to support them as learners. This time is especially devoted to fact fluency and building efficiency as mathematicians. Today, friends practiced two different activities in their math boxes. They enjoyed them!

Tags: fluency, math, sound, story telling, story workshop