IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Today we visited the library for the first time! Mrs. Thomas was there to greet us and she introduced us to a special friend, Mr. Wiggles.  Mr. Wiggles and Mrs. Thomas taught the students all about taking care of our library books.  The students made a connection to our classroom agreements.  Donovan said, “Oh this is just like our rule: Take care of materials.”  After reading a story everyone was able to find and check out one book! For now, the books will stay at school, however, in the future students will be able to bring them home! Take a look at all the fun we had!

Mrs. Thomas greets us with Mr. Wiggles.

How do we take care of our books?

Listening to the story

Writing Library Agreements for our class.

Decisions, Decisions!

Checking out books!

No one could wait to start reading!

Mr, Henderson, Jo’Vyon and Addie created dinosaur tracks.

Sascha creates a triceratops head! We learned their big head protected them by intimidating other creatures.

This morning, some friends noticed that our morning message looked a little funny- it had lots of interesting looking words and pictures on it. During morning meeting, we took a closer look at the message- it was Dinocabulary! The chart had three categories each written with a Latin word part and a picture of its meaning. We learned that dinosaurs names come from Latin and they often describe traits about the dinosaur. For example, triceratops means three horned face. Tyrannosaurus Rex means tyrant king! We tried building some of our own dinosaur names for fun- and loved it. Tomorrow, we will make our own dinosaur word generators.

Dinocabulary!

Messi tries out a new dinosaur name.

Dinocabulary!

Tags: curious, project

Yesterday we began a discussion about what weather is. The children had many great ideas for what weather is. Today we asked if they had any questions about weather, and it was really interesting to hear their questions. I assumed that many of their questions would be related to hurricanes and tornadoes since that was a highly talked about idea yesterday, but today their questions surrounded ideas of why clouds turn gray, and how clouds soak up the ocean, and how clouds move. So…clouds might be the area we begin!

Yesterday and today we worked on a piece of writing. This writing will be an assessment that we will use to show where the students began with their writing at the beginning of the year. The first day (yesterday) we just asked the friends to write down a story the best they can. Today we asked them to add to or change anything in their story. Each day after they were done writing, we sat in a circle and had all of the students share their books to their friends on either side of them. This was a way to show value in every child’s piece of work regardless of where they are. It was such a neat experience to see the children genuinely interested in their friend’s story. I recall Israel today asking questions about Niall’s book in such a sweet and interested manner, and Niall had such a proud face on explaining in more detail his book.

We are taking about “just right” books in readers workshop. We are at the same time talking about “just right” numbers in math workshop. We do number stories each day in our math notebooks. Many of our friends were getting through the first number story quickly so we added number sets
(5, 3) for example, so that children could put the new numbers in place of the two original numbers; thus having a new problem. Well, with just right numbers if you can do it in your head, then it is too easy. If you cannot think of how to solve it or it is too big of numbers then it is too hard. The numbers need to be in the middle of easy and hard. Anywho….I was conferencing with Selah today and she said, “Mrs. Bucher, these numbers are not “just right” for me! They are too easy!” I loved that Selah recognized and monitored herself and was able to communicate to me that they were too easy. I told her how proud of her I was, and that of course I would put a more appropriate “just right” number in her problem tomorrow.

This week we have started a new workshop called Word Study.  During this time students will work with words by building words, finding patterns, and rhyming.  We have been focusing on rhyming words.  Each day I have read a different story with rhyming words.  The students have been identifying these words and then working together to play a game and practice rhyming cooperatively.  We played rhyming bingo as a class yesterday and today we learned rhyming go fish.  The students also helped to create letters for our word wall.  We finished our word wall today and each student’s name is displayed.  We will start adding sight words and words that we work with during Word Study soon!

De’Onna and Madeline make letters for our word wall.

Mekhi hanging names on the word wall.

Ashley helps with the word wall.

Finished word wall!

Friends playing Rhyming Go Fish!

We also met our four Butler Friends who will be joining us each Wednesday! They came in for our morning meeting and read with some friends during Reader’s Workshop! More about them to come in the upcoming weeks!

Our finished word wall

It might be hard to see from this picture, but this week we put up our word wall!  The wire letters that the kids completed last week look wonderful against the black.  I can already tell this is going to be a useful tool in our classroom.  Today, during Story Workshop, a friend asked me, “Mrs. Clark, how do you spell Melina’s name?”  I simply referred her to the word wall where she could take down Melina’s name and use it to help her and then put it back up (the word wall is magnetic).  As we progress in word study, this wall will fill up even more.  Check out a few close ups of letters below!

A

Q