TA’s Notes
- Voyager FAP Meeting: Tuesday, October 1st at 6:30pm in Voyager Kiva
Anyone is welcome to attend this meeting with Voyager FAP Reps to become more involved with FAP and the planning and implementing of fundraising activities.
Need Something to do this Weekend?
The Dorothy Alling Memorial Library in Williston will present “Vermont History Through Song” this Saturday September 28 at 1 pm. - Dressed in period costume, Ms. Radtke takes listeners through state history, using the songs Vermonters published in their communities. From the earliest published song, ‘Green Mountain Farmer” (1798), though 1850 temperance ballads, Civil War era songs, to songs about Vermonters Calvin Coolidge, Thomas Dewey, and Jim Fiske, singer and researcher Linda Radtke joined by pianist Arthur Zorn bring Vermont history to life with engaging commentary about the songs found in the Vermont Historical Society’s collection of sheet music.
Linda Radtke, mezzo-soprano, has served as the principal alto soloist for the Mozart Festival and the Gilbert and Sullivan Players with the Oriana Singers, and is a founding member of Robert DeCormier's professional vocal ensemble, Counterpoint. She also sings with a vocal quartet, Ah!Capella, sponsored by the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, which brings music to Vermont schools. She toured the state with a Vermont song recital sponsored by the Vermont Historical Society. She works for Classic Vermont, WCVT 101.7 hosting Vermont Notes, a radio program focusing on the Vermont classical music scene, and the Classic Vermont Choral Hour, on Sunday mornings.
A recording of many of the songs from the program is available from the Vermont Humanities Council. (www.vermonthumanities.com)
Sponsored by the Friends of the Dorothy Alling Memorial Library and the Vermont Humanities Council.
Mr. Merrill’s ⅚ Humanities Wrap Up
This week we continued our work with Peacemakers by focusing on the vocabulary that we have been using throughout the unit. Students created wonderful word maps to use as a teaching visual for group activities. We also explored the issue of bullying by using role play, followed by some engaging discussion and a journal activity. The journal entry was of one day in the life of the character they played in the skit. Today, Students took a quiz on the Peacemakers vocabulary and were to have finished typing their “Best Summer Memories” LEAF (Constructed Response).
Note - We made an attempt to start No Red Ink (NoRedInk.com is a web-based learning platform that helps students improve their grammar and writing skills), but we had some glitches. If your student wants to try and log on this weekend, there is no need to… I need to go back into the program and reconfigure it. I will send an email out next week with the passwords and codes.
Ms. Q's Corner
Math 8
How is the line of best fit created in a data set that is not quite linear? What does this "best fit" mean? We continued investigating data sets that trended toward being a line and discovered the equation that would encompass that trend. We reviewed how to find equations from points, slope and a single point and a graph. We saw an "interesting" short video on functions to illustrate another mathematical model of how functions work. Math help is available during core and after school on Wednesdays.
Math 7
What stories do graphs tell us? What is the difference between the dependent and independent variables and where do you place them on a graph? Students continued their exploration of Behavior over Time Graphs or B.O.T.G. and worked with a partner to come up with a narrative that could be replicated as a graph. Each team presented their narrative and the class tried to replicate the story in graph form. It was a lot of fun! We rounded out the week with a Check-up on Investigation 2. Math help is available during every core and after school on Wednesdays.
Science 7/8
When last we corresponded our fearless scientists were pondering the physical properties of matter. This week we continued our investigation of melting and boiling points of different substances. Students graphed their results, compared and contrasted the melting and boiling points of water and our substances (H2O2, NaCl aqueous and C2H4O2) and they made claim/evidence statements. Conclusions were formed and we conjectured why boiling points may differ between substances. We rounded out the week with vocabulary review, and a BBC movie called "Chemistry- A Volatile History." Students will be writing a LEAF paragraph on the question: "How has man's view of the world been changed by chemistry?" We will be moving into a study of the Periodic Table and chemical properties and reactions next week.
The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room:
7/8 Humanities: This week in Humanities started off as usual with our Independent Reading in the morning, and our Current Events catch-up in the afternoon. As the week continued on we did a close reading of a Time Magazine article titled “The Fighter - Malala Yousafzai”. This young woman over the past year has become an advocate for children’s education around the world and women’s rights. As a class we read this article aloud, took notes, found new words, asked questions, and discussed her story. Over the summer she gave an inspiring speech to the United Nations, which our classes watched and reflected on. If you haven’t heard it or seen it, you can find a link to the video via BBC News on the Humanities website. This week marked the start of the General Assembly Debate for the United Nations in New York City. In perfect timing with what’s going on in the world outside of Williston Central School, our Humanities class focused our learning lenses on the United Nations. We continued our guided learning on the United Nations by students working in small groups to prepare a Google Presentation. This project had a little bit of a competitive edge to it. Using the United Nations as our bridge between our mini unit on Peace Day and our trimester unit on Global Cultures, students were told that after all presentations were shown we would vote on 1 presentation per class to be linked to our class website. Linking presentations to the website will be our way of not only spreading the word and educating others on Peace Day, but it is also a great way to showcase work to the global community! All groups had to focus on the same questions, but were given the use of their creative license to jazz up their presentation. Some groups added animation to each slide, pictures, or even links to the live feed of the debate in NYC. The presentations were all around fantastic! Humanities Gold had 2 presentations linked due to a tie, and the Humanities Blue had 1 presentation linked to the website. Check out the Humanities page to see whose presentations will be educating others on the United Nations and Peace Day :) Next week we will be preparing for our Model UN General Assembly, in which pairs of students will pick 1 member nation to represent in a debate over important global issues.
News from Ms. O
Math 5: We are moving toward completion of Unit 1 of Bridges Grade 5. This first unit is intended to review 4th grade learning and then advance discussion on concepts like algebraic patterning and the use of variables, factors of a number and each number’s prime factorization and properties of operations and how to model multiplication and division. The instruction does not allow for expertise in student learning, but is designed to reintroduce the discussions about the above mentioned concepts. Our next unit does a deep and comprehensive drive toward expertise and proficiency in the area of multi-digit multiplication. We will be taking a unit assessment next week while working on testing strategies for NECAP. I will not pause instruction for testing practice, but will use those items as a launch in our discussion about the math we are studying. Watch for notation in the planner about a specific testing day by Tuesday.
Also, please help your student plan for at least 4 FASTT math sessions a week. This may require your student to use a computer. If you have hard and fast rules about computer use, access to FASTT math is simple and can be no longer than a 10 minute session on computer. I will also work on helping them complete some of those sessions in school.
Math 6: We continue to explore the properties of numbers while investigating tools that allow us to find the prime factorization of any number. Is there only one product of prime numbers for any given number? Yes. For example, the number 12 can be decomposed into the product of these prime numbers, 2x2x3. There is only one prime factorization for the number 12 which makes the number 12 unique. We also investigated how a prime factorization can help you identify all the factors of a number AND help you identify the greatest common factor and least common multiple of any pair of numbers. Cool tricks abound! For example, if you have the numbers 12 and 18, the prime factorization of each respectively is 2x2x3 and 2x3x3. Because each prime factorization has one two and one three in it, if I multiple those I have found the greatest common factor - 6! Now, I can use that same factorization to find the least common multiple. I take the GCF (greatest common factor which is 2x3 and I then multiply that by another 2 and another three and I have 2x3x2x3, which is 36. That is my LCM! So really it’s cool to find the prime factorization of any given number so that we can solve problems!
Students have been working on their special project for this book , which is to write a children’s book about their number. Please check in on that so that students are honest about the expectations and approaching due date.
Science ⅚: Science this week has been all about the Earth’s crust. We made soil profiles from samples taken during our soil pit dig last week and then moved toward one very important theory of geographical changes on Earth, the idea of Continental Drift. We are working to build our understanding while using nonfiction text and good writing strategies, so that we can understand how it is possible that we are moving across the earth’s crust, up to 3 inches a year! We will look more specifically at the mantle on Monday, so that we can build understanding from the idea of Continental Drift to what is now accepted as the theory of Plate Tectonics. Quiz results will be posted this weekend on Jupiter Grades.
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