Friday, May 31, 2013

Week of May 27

New York City Field Trip
Just a friendly reminder to review the packing list and itinerary for the trip.  This information will be forwarded to you in an email attachment, if you do not have it available.  Start packing this weekend and prepare snacks and lunch for the trip.  We will be meeting in the WCS parking lot (near the tennis courts) at 6:30 am on 6/5.  We will load the bus, take attendance and depart at 7am. Please be on time.

⅚ Field Trip Update
We have exciting adventures planned for 5th and 6th graders!  On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of next week, we will be breaking from our normal schedule and leaving campus for trips to learn about ourselves, each other, and the world!  On Wednesday, we will spend the morning climbing walls at Petra Cliffs.  On Thursday, we will spend the morning at the ECHO Center learning about water quality and the conditions of Lake Champlain.  And Friday, we will host an artist- in-residence to build kites, an engineering task that will bring to life our learning about lift and drag and Bernoulli’s Principle.  If you did not receive paperwork, it will come home today.  Paperwork is due by the end of the day on Monday.

Ms. Quatt’s Corner
Math 7
This very short week began with reviewing for the Common Math Assessment.  Students worked on a review and we worked through questions in class.  The Common Math Assessment is given throughout the district for grades 1st through 8th and is used to inform instruction.  This assessment score will be reported for every student, but will not be factored into a final grade.

Math 8
The 8th graders were similarly working on reviewing for the Common Math Assessment.  These scores will be reported for each student, but will not factor into a final grade.

Science 7th/8th
This week we turned away from our engineering tasks and returned to our study of space.  Our overarching question:  What could life be like on other habitable planets?  We watched a TED education talk “A needle in countless haystacks: Finding habitable worlds”  by Ariel Anbar. We also read an article on how the planetary ecosystem could impact on the evolution of the creature.  Does the planet

Mr. Merrill’s Wrap Up ⅚ Language Arts and Social Studies
This week 8th graders presented their final 8th grade challenge work to the house.  The presentations were excellent and there were some very interesting topics and community connections shared with the audience.  Our classes were a bit shorter than usual, but we completed 2 media literacy lessons as a part of a short unit that we will be working on until the end of the year.  The lessons focused on kids as consumers, exploring ads, and the techniques that advertisers use to get us to buy their products.  We identified a number of techniques and analyzed some tv ads for these marketing strategies.

In Social Studies, the students are working very hard on their Create a Business projects.  Students are using Google Draw to create an electronic poster to share their business plans and products or services.  Students will be presenting their plans during the last week of school.   Today,  the ⅚ students participated in the ⅞ version of this project by acting as investors and choosing which ⅞ products to invest in with a set amount of investment dollars to use... ask your student about this experience!

News from Ms. O
⅚ Math:  Students spent this week working to complete units of fractions, decimals, and percents.  Understanding how we operate (not that kind of operate!) on these kinds of numbers will be essential for building skills in algebra.  Students also took the CSSU Common Assessment.  I will report out scores for each student in Jupiter Grades, but this score will not factor into this semester’s overall assessment score.  

We are not done yet though...

5th Graders will be securing basic computational skills while diving back into algebra.  6th graders will also be securing basic computational skills while applying them to algebraic equations and patterns in data.  

⅚ Science:  We continue to pick away at the ecology ideas around food webs and energy in an ecosystem.  We did quite a bit of modeling this week on food webs, with yarn, with prairie, ocean, and other ecosystem food webs in addition to talking about energy transfer, as one organism ‘passes’ its energy on to another organism who eats it!  We will do a predator/prey simulation early next week and finish the year with how organisms adapt to their environment.  

Coming soon...Look forward to the publishing of podcasts from our radio broadcast series, the New Frontier.  


Friday, May 24, 2013

Week of May 21

NYC Information Meeting
⅞ students received their packing lists, expectation forms and reviewed the itinerary for the trip today at their meeting.  Please review the packing list and itinerary with your student and start preparing for the trip.

End of the Year Stuff...
  • Please remind your student to return all library books before the end of the school year.
  • Please settle all cafeteria accounts before the end of the school year.

Ms. Q’s Corner
7th Grade Math
Students created Stem/Leaf and Box and Whisker Plots  to explore a visual representation of how data is spread.  Students learned about five number summaries which include the mean, median, quartile 1, quartile 3, the maximum and minimum number. These data points are utilized to create box and whisker plots. We finished out our week with exploring what happens to our measures of center when data is added or moved around in our data set.  We completed the Data Distribution Unit Test and students were given a common assessment review packet in preparation for next Friday’s CSSU Math Common Assessment.

8th Grade Math
We moved our thinking from finding the area and side lengths of squares to  finding the area and side lengths of right triangles. Students found the missing legs and hypotenuse  of right triangles.  We practiced with radicals and learned how to simplify them by factoring out numbers that are perfect squares.  Next week there will be two math assessments.  On Tuesday we will have the Looking for Pythagoras Unit Test and on Friday we will have the Algebra Final or the 8th Grade CSSU Math Common Assessment.
Science 7th/8th
Our science class directed it energies toward building, designing and creating drawings, models and prototypes for the 7th/8th grade Economics project.  Students created step-by-step directions and  wrote environmental impact statements that will be placed with their models for their presentations.  Students will receive a separate science grade for this portion of their project.

Mr. Merrill’s ⅚ Language Arts and Social Studies Wrap Up
In Language Arts we wrapped up our read aloud books.  Each class had a letter writing assignment that connected with the book.  In Number the Stars, students wrote a letter to Israeli Authorities, recommending Annemarie for a medal, based on her heroic acts.  For Tuck Everlasting, students took on the character of Winnie, writing to the Tucks about her life after meeting them, as she never saw them again after helping with the escape.  
Students started creating their own businesses in Social Studies this week.  We followed a brainstorming process to come up with ideas for products or services.  Students focused on trying to solve a problem and fixing it or combining favorite things to do this.  Students will be working on their business plans next week and will create an electronic poster to design and present their new business product or service.

The Week in Ms. O’s
5th Grade Math:  Working our way through decimals...we have discovered the key to understanding decimals!  It’s place value.  What is the value of a numeral in a number?  It is it’s location to other numbers.  The decimals becomes terribly important because it is yet another place value marker that sorts out our place values.  Students took a quick quiz on place value names and are working on addition and subtraction of decimals in addition to understanding magnitude when looking at a set of fractions, decimals, and percents.  End of Unit test is coming...

6th Grade:  We have completed our unit on operations with fractions.  Students received assessments back to correct, as fluency errors again were the cause of some shaky results.  Don’t forget to practice multiplication and division at home!  We have moved into operations with decimals which is once again practice in computation fluency.  Our last unit in algebra will begin next week!

⅚ Science:  We are still wrapping up podcasts but have moved on to our unit in ecology. We dissected an owl pellet this week and read about owls as a way to begin conversations about food chains, food webs and conservation of mass and energy.  We will move onto to a variety of simulations re: predator prey and then onto adaptations!

The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room:
7/8 Language Arts: With the 8th graders we continued our read aloud. Students seem to be really enjoying the story and are really engaged in our conversations and in-class discussions. The 7th graders finished their great review of punctuation and developed a list of punctuation rules/guidelines for writing success! Our 7th graders will be put to the ultimate punctuation challenge on Tuesday morning!

7/8 Social Studies: This week our Business Convention Project received a major boost by teaming up with Ms. Q in Science. Students are making some great prototypes and models and seem to be having a lot of fun with the construction portion of this project. It has been so fun to see their ideas come to life!

Friday, May 17, 2013

Week of May 17

FAPAC May Meeting Highlights Information

REMINDER:  If you've signed up to bring a Desert in for Teacher Appreciation, please drop off in lobby on Friday morning!!!  Thank you!!!!

The FAP Advisory Council held its final monthly meeting of this school year on May 9th.  Check the full minutes and our approved 2013-2014 FAPAC budget in a PDF format by clicking HERE.  Below are a few meeting highlights:
  • School Budget Approved on May 7th
  • Last Day of School Changed to June 18th, which will be a half-day
  • Placement Letters should be mailed by early June.  Parent information nights for transitioning students are scheduled as follows:  4th to 5th grade parents on May 22nd from 6:30 to 8 pm in the WCS Auditorium; and 2nd to 3rd grade parents on June 4th at 6:30 pm in the WCS Auditorium.
  • 1 to 1 Initiative--there is an interesting video recently shown at a Rotary Club meeting about 1 to 1 programs.  Please check it out on the school website's school information area under 1 to 1 information or at this link HERE.
  • On June 1st, the Williston Run for Education  will take place (a Fun Run for kids as well as a timed 5K).  Flyers have been in the School Bell, sent home in folders or via email.  Register on-line by going to www.willistonruns.org.   For more event information, contact Sue Scheer at sue@willistonruns.org.  Volunteers are also needed to run this event so if you can help, please go to this LINK.
  • There is a Williston Day at the Lake Monsters being planned for July 7th!  Ticket information has been sent home either in folders or by email; has been in the School Bell; and is available at upcoming school events.  Tickets can be turned in for other dates if you are unavailable on July 7th.  Time is running out.  Sales end on May 24th.

NYC Update:
Chaperone Meeting (Voyager Kiva) on Tuesday, May 21st at 6:30!!

Math 7
Which hand has a faster reaction rate and which genders’  reactions are faster in an online reaction rate test.  We gathered a large amount of personal data, created value ordered bar graphs, explored the measures of center(mean, mode and median) and created line plots of the classwide data on reaction rate.  Clearly, we had some unexpected variables such as the post play lethargy.  Interestingly enough, student data showed that the variability of reaction rate between male and female was quite narrow.  Surprisingly some students found that they were much faster with their non-dominant hand then their dominant hand.  We ended the week with creating box and whisker plots.




Math 8
Math was impacted by  the 8th grade science NECAP testing. This week we continued to explore finding the side length of squares from the area and finding the area of a square from the side lengths using squares on the diagonal.  Students were given an entrance task and check-up this week on their use of square roots. We finished off the week with Pythagorean Jeopardy game.

Science 7th/8th  
Our focus this week was on writing a clear and precise conclusion statement for a scientific inquiry.  Our testable question was: "Which solvent (water, hydrogen peroxide and alcohol)  will dissolve the solute (salt) best?' Students performed the experiment and recorded the time it took for the solute to dissolve.  From their results we used a modified LEAF format to write a conclusion.   

We watched a TED Ed talk by Jill Tater  from S.E.T.I. ( Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). We learned about the Drake Equation and how scientists are looking at different constraints such as number of stars, planetary systems around stars, those that are within the “Goldilocks Zone” and other factors  to calculate the probability of life in our galaxy.  We had a rousing discussion about our beliefs that there is other life and where our beliefs originate.    We explored the message that Voyager 1 and 2 has sent to the outer reach of space and read an article on our quest to find signals from space.    

Next week students have a combined science and social studies period to engineer a prototype of their product.  Students will be asked to bring recycled material, odds and ends from home to help supplement materials at school.

The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room

7/8 Language Arts: This week in language arts we started to wrap-up our Independent Reading Monday’s. Most students really enjoyed having time in school to read a book of their choice. Some students even found that through independent reading Mondays they were able to develop (wait for it) a LOVE for reading. Once students were able to find a genre or author they enjoyed, they were able to develop a love for the activity of reading. As the week continued our schedule had a few shifts due to 8th grade Science NECAPS. The 7th graders were given time to do some journal writing, and we also had a FANTASTIC 8th Grade Challenge brainstorm sessions. All of the students found this very helpful, and over the 2 days most students said they had an idea of what their 8th Grade Challenge is going to be. We also took time this week to work on our Business Convention projects. We focused on the Sales Pitch this week, and talked about how to hook an audience and what a sales pitch should look like. To end the week 8th Graders started their 8th Grade Read Aloud which will be of the book “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” by Mitch Albom. As we read the book students will be taking part in some entrance tasks/mini quizzes, and they will also be asked to participate in short or long discussions to analyze the text, word choice, and author’s voice. 7th graders began their short grammar challenge which we will continue at the start of next week!

7/8 Social Studies: This week our classes started off with our usual current event run-down on Monday which ended up sparking a great classwide debate trying to answer the question: What is more important, the economy or the environment? This debate started after we read an article about what fracking is and the pros and cons to fracking. On Tuesday while the 8th graders were taking their Science Necaps the 7th graders continued with this topic by developing and participating in a lengthy and heated full debate. As our week continued we worked on and discussed the writing piece that was due today for the Business Convention project, which was about labor regulations. Students were given an outline with expectations, and were also provided time in class to work on this. We also looked at specific websites and talked through much of the heavy language that is included in labor regulations around the globe. The project is moving forward well, and we are all looking forward to next week when we team up with science to begin building prototypes and/or working on our official product drawings!

News from Ms. O
Math 5:  Students spent the week investigating the base ten place value system and how it helps us understand fractions and decimals.  We have transitioned from fractions to decimals in this logical way so that we can understand how to rename fractions as decimals, especially when the denominator is not a factor of 10, 100, 1000, etc.  Students are moving into addition and subtraction of decimals next week.

Math 6:  Students are wrapping up Bits II by confirming their skills in fraction operations.  Students will be working on a decimal skills unit next week to learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide decimals. The positive thing about this next unit is that we are back to practicing our computational fluency.

⅚ Science:  Students took the final Beyond Earth assessment this week and will begin an ecology unit to finish the rest of the year.  We will dissect an owl pellet Monday, a task that students have done before, but one that will be critical to understand given the food chain GE’s for 5th and 6th grade.

Mr. Merrill’s Wrap Up
Next week marks the final week of literature groups for our school year.  Students have been reading fantasy books and will be writing a final LEAF paper that will be due on Wednesday.  The focus question for the paper is “How does the real world parallel the fantasy world in your book?”

5th graders continued their in class read aloud of Number the Stars, discussing and journaling about bravery and the dilemmas that occurred when people had to lie in order to protect the lives of others in WWII.  In Tuck Everlasting, 6th grade students have been discussing and journaling about the desire to live forever and whether or not this would be a good thing.  

In Social Studies, we continued to work on our economic word maps.  Once students completed the maps, students used their expertise during a concentric circle activity, to teach others the meaning and concepts that are associated with the word.   Students then created a skit to showcase these economic terms.  Next week in Language Arts, students will be studying media literacy, and in Social Studies, we will begin our final economics project.

                                                                                                    


Friday, May 10, 2013

Week of May 7








⅞ New York City Field Trip Reminders

  • We are asking that the final payment and the permission slip/medical form for the NYC trip be brought to school by Friday, May 17th. Checks should be made out to Williston Central School.  If you need more time or financial support (some scholarship support is available), please do not hesitate to let us know.   Cost is $255 for students and the same for chaperones.  See the letter/itinerary for details.  Contact Aron Merrill - amerrill@cssu.org or Lauren Wesnak lwesnak@cssu.org  if you have any questions.


  • If you have volunteered to be a chaperone, there is a field trip meeting scheduled for Tuesday, May 21st @ 6:30pm.  We ask that all chaperones attend this meeting so that we may discuss chaperone responsibilities, student behavior expectations, communication, packing lists, academic responsibilities and the final itinerary.  The meeting will be held in the Voyager Kiva.  Parents are welcome to attend.  All students going on the field trip will have a similar meeting during the school day.


Pictures of the 5/6 Science Day in the Field

We apologize for not highlighting the wonderfulness students presented last week on their day of tree planting and ecological investigations at the Winooski delta.  Enjoy the photos below!

This Week in Ms. O’s Class
Math 5
Thank you to parents who joined up for the Tour of Learning.  If you enjoyed this opportunity please let you core teacher know and we will try to make that happen more regularly next year.
I’m so proud of so many students who took the fluency challenge seriously!  The 5th graders have made huge progress.  I will report those scores so that we can all enjoy and celebrate the success and efforts of these students!  There is always work to do…Keep up the 4x a week efforts on      
Students have just finished a quick quiz on equivalent fractions and addition and subtraction of fractions.  Our new mathematical adventures include renaming fractions as decimals and adding and subtracting them.
Math 6
Thank you to parents who joined up for the Tour of Learning.  If you enjoyed this opportunity please let you core teacher know and we will try to make that happen more regularly next year.
We began work on division of fractions by looking at problems like 12 divide 1/3, 12 divide 2/3, 12 divide 5/3 to ask questions like, what is similar?  How will the resulting quotient compare?  Students will be playing with multiple strategies for division that will move them again, towards a generalization.
Fluency scores were up for 3rd trimester, but many still need the practice of FASTT Math and flashcards.  Don’t discount the value of an app or a five minute practice each day.  I hope that 6th graders move to Ms. Q with competency in math fluency.
Science 5/6
Students finished up podcast scripts this weekend and will be recording them next week.  Most are in good shape and ready to go!  Students are reviewing for a final assessment on the Solar System concepts including gravity, moon phases, solar and lunar eclipses, and why the sun and moon appear to be the same size in the sky.
Please enjoy the photos from our trips last week!
Mr. Merrill’s Wrap Up

⅚ Language Arts and Social Studies

This week each grade started an in class read aloud.  The 5th graders will be reading Number the Stars by Lois Lowry and the 6th graders will be reading Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt.  Each class will be journaling and using their reading response notebooks throughout the read aloud, working on reading comprehension and vocabulary skills as we go.   
In Social Studies, students started working on word maps.  Students take a word related to the topic of study (economics), and map out the word, often finding many connections along the way.  Maps include definitions, facts, examples, sentences and visuals.  We will use these words to create skits and find deeper meaning and connections with all of our vocabulary for this unit.  


This week we say a fond farewell  to our graduate intern Ms. Cooper.  Over the year she has become an integral part of our teaching team.   Ms. Cooper has made meaningful connections with our students and shared her fun and witty personality with all of us. We wish her  well in her future educational ventures!

Math 7
We began this week with our new CMP unit “Data Distributions”  This book investigates measures of center, various statistical representations and the concepts of variability.  The 7th graders explored mean, median, mode,  line plots and value ordered bar graphs this week.. We looked at an assortment of  data it see if it was clustered or spread apart.   We talked about human error in recording data and the Law of Large Numbers.

Math 8
This week we continued our explorations in our “Looking for Pythagoras” unit.  Students reviewed concepts of square roots and utilized  their estimating  skills to find the square roots of non-perfect squares.  We investigated finding the area of a circle within a square and finding the area of squares that are on the diagonal.   All these examples help demonstrate how and why the Pythagorean theorem is used.

Science 7th/8th
We completed our presentations of our alien postcards.  We have found the more we study space, the more questions come up.  We began watching the Nova series on “Origins” to answer the question: What conditions were needed to form life on our planet?  Next week 8th graders will be participating in the Science NECAP test.  Tuesday we will have two session and Wednesday we will complete the assessment.  8th graders will need to get a good night sleep, have water and a good book for when they are done.  Snacks will be provided.  

The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room

First off, I just want to say how AMAZING the “Annie” show was! It was so wonderful to see so many of our Voyager students put on such a beautiful and fun performance. Best of luck to them over the weekend!!

7/8 Language Arts: This week in Language Arts we started off with our Independent Reading Monday for 7th graders, and the 8th graders had a work day for their 8th Grade Challenge projects. We also took some time to work on our Business Convention projects. Students were able to brainstorm with each other and teachers, and get a great amount of work done. We then got back into our routine with journal writing and wrote in a variety of ways, with various time limits. As the week came to a close we showcased our PhotoStory memoirs and had a bit of fun with vocabulary through playing the game “Zip”.

7/8 Social Studies: This week we had our first run with Silver-Lining News on Monday and then jumped right back into our economics unit. We began building up our knowledge of our economic vocabulary and also watched more CNN Student News coverage due to their stories on our country’s current economic status. Students were given multiple class periods to work on their vocabulary maps, and these will be their final vocabulary maps of the year! We finished up the week by learning about “supply and demand” through a brief video and interactive quiz.

I also just want to take a second to say how AMAZING the “Annie” show was! It was so wonderful to see so many of our Voyager students put on such a beautiful and fun performance. Best of luck to them over the weekend and congratulations on such a wonderful show!