IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

A beautiful teachable moment came today in such a natural way during Story Workshop. After I read our story to begin Story Workshop and reviewed our new structure for Story Workshop, many of the children wanted to make final drafts of their stories they started this week. We were not anticipating so many of the students wanting to continue to work on their story so it was a great surprise to see so many students interested in it. I gathered Danielle, Noah, Malachi, and Ashu (four friends who wanted to do a final draft) and we did something called a Peer Critique. We looked at each friend’s first draft as well as their photograph from their planning session. While looking at each friend’s work, the children engaged in a discussion without much prompting from me discussing what they liked about each friend’s work as well as any questions they had. It was such a beautiful moment because they were editing\revising each other’s work but in such a gentle and respectful way! They only had a couple of minutes to work on their final drafts so the bulk of it will be next week, but I was so proud of their discussion as well as how respectful they were to each other!

I am really looking forward to doing this more so we can grow as critical thinkers!!

This week, we have been working to choose our own just right books. This means that students are able to look through books from our classroom library to select some for their personal bag. We have been working hard to learn what a book will look and feel like when it is just right for us and here are the criteria we are using:

-you know most of the words
-you understand most of the words
-you are interested in the topic

If a book meets all three of these, it is just right! Encourage your child to read books that are just right for them at home! The books I sent home last week are just right for your child too! A new reading log and books will come home again starting Monday- this short week was made shorter because I was at a conference on Tuesday!

Abigail reading a just right book.

Today our 3 Butler teachers started in our class. Every Wednesday (and the occasional Monday) our 3 new Butler teachers will be in our classroom! They did a great job this first day just jumping in and engaging with the children. I look forward to having them in our class this semester. Their names are Miss Hammer, Miss Neifert, and Miss Wessels just in case your child starts talking about various things they did with the teachers.

Today we started Word Work. During this time we break up into groups and work with letters and words-building words, chunking words, tracing letters working on letter formation, sorting words according to various patterns, etc. This will be a time that we can just focus on the letter\word\sentence formation which will aid us in our writing.

Isai came in today with a weather report written down! At the end of the day he shared his weather report with his friends, and I was so impressed with his work! The children were excited about Isai forecasting the weather for the rest of the week. We will see if this catches on…

Today we had new Butler friends in our classroom! Being the Butler Lab School, we are lucky enough not only to have a Butler student teacher but also three practicum students from Butler. Each Wednesday, we will have their support in our classroom all day. This means more one on one time for our kids- awesome. Our practicum students are Stephanie Bickel, Kara Saka, and Cayla Weese, and they did awesome with the kids- so helpful. We look forward to getting to know them throughout the semester!

Miss Bickel and Makenzi work hard!