IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

We have been working hard to prepare for our Author Celebration tomorrow! Friends have been putting finishing touches on their stories and helping. We have been practicing the skills of problem solving, negotiation, and being flexible in deciding how to present our stories, how many to share, where to present etc. I am really impressed with how seriously the kids have been taking this planning process and how they have been democratically solving issues that arise with planning. The children have totally taken ownership over this event. Make sure to come tomorrow at 6pm to celebrate our wonderful authors!

Tags: celebration, collaboration, story workshop, writing

This week in Story Workshop, we are learning about the concept of memories. Today, we read the Mo Willems classic, Knuffle Bunny, about a little girl about losing her favorite bunny toy. We shared memories of times we had lost things as well and decided to put them down on paper! We are talking about the concept of how a memory is something that has really happened and it took place in the past. We will continue to delve into this concept this week!

We also have several new materials in our math boxes. Yesterday, friends were introduced to number puzzles- puzzles that need to be assembled to match a hundreds or two hundreds chart. The kids love doing them. We are also working on building numbers with base ten blocks and checking ourselves by re-counting the number.

Tags: story workshop, writing

As you may know, we have been working quite a bit on peer critique and feedback. Often, when a student wants to make their writing better, they grab a critique sheet and ask a friend to listen to their story and add suggestions. This week, we are taking it a step further. We have slowly been introducing criteria for creating a final draft. If a student chooses to make a final draft, they are encouraged to use our “Am I Ready For a Final Draft?” checklist. This checklist includes things such as making sure there is detail in the words and pictures, the story makes sense with a beginning, middle, and ending, and making sure that it is beautiful work that the author is proud of. It is not an expectation that students will always publish/make a final draft of their books, rather they will choose this only for stories they have a special connection to and feel strongly about. I feel so proud that our class has taken such an interest in such an important life skill!

Tags: story workshop, writing

Today, we continued to discover new genres of music. We practiced moving our bodies to bluegrass and classical music! This afternoon, I played one of the kids’ favorite genres thus far- polka- and gave them a challenge. Close your eyes and think of a story that matches the music. The stories were incredible. Dancing bears, magic holes, donkeys on mountains- the works! Friends were then encouraged to tell those stories during Story Workshop, while more polka music played. Its incredible how music affects our creativity. We are excited to try this again tomorrow, except with a new genre… What types of stories will we get then?

Tags: creativity, project, story telling, story workshop, writing

This morning, the kids were greeted by something pretty exciting in our room- a kitchen set! Included with the kitchen were real fruits and vegetables and grains. We also included measuring cups and spoons, for pretend mixing. The kids were ecstatic over the addition to our room. Friends experimented and played with our various measurement tools and also did something we didn’t expect- they began writing! Various friends took clip boards and pieces of paper and began taking friends’ orders for meals! Then they would hurry back to the kitchen area and ask for the ‘cook’ to create the meal. The kitchen has unexpectedly become a wonderful literacy provocation as well as a measurement and math provocation.

Tags: arithmetic, garden, project, writing