Week of September 9

Important Info from the Voyager TA

Lots of information coming home with students this week!

• Jupiter Grade logins were sent home today allowing you to view your child’s current grades, homework, missing assignments, test scores and report cards.
• School picture day is next Wednesday the 18th!  Please send in order forms if you would like to order school pictures.
• An information sheet regarding classrooms being peanut and nut free this year.
• Any students who checked out library books over the summer need to return these books asap!
• Please call or e-mail me if your child will be out for the day, late coming in, picked up early or if you need anything related to Voyager house.

Katie Fieldsend       

871-6148       

KFieldsend@cssu.org

Voyager House News:

• Very important!!!  Voyager and 5-8 Curriculum Night - Tuesday, September 17th

           

For curriculum night parents will start on their student's team (6:30-7:30) and then  go to the auditorium from 7:30-8:00 pm for a big picture overview.

The Voyager teachers will review the website, student schedule, curriculum, homework, Jupiter Grades, reporting and answer questions.

• Advisory Groups:  Voyager 5th and 6th graders each have a 7th or 8th grade mentor.  Among other mentor mentee get togethers, we have placed each mentor and mentee together in an advisory group so that they can begin his/her two year journey with his/her mentor or continue it from last year.  We will continue to schedule time into advisory for mentees to be mentored!  Our first theme of the advisory year is Healthy ME!  Find out what kind of healthy activity your child is participating in next week!

• Literature Groups:  We began literature groups this week on our theme, Peace and Social Justice.  Ask your Voyager student what they are reading.  

One Half of the Equation:  News from the ⅚ side

The Schedule!  I’m sure you are all wondering what your kiddo does each day.  Here’s the good news...they are busy!  Aside from a few little edits to the schedule, our learning blocks are as follows:

8:10 5th Grade Skills; 6th Grade Related Arts and World Language

8:50 Related Arts and World Language

9:30 6th Grade Math; 5th Grade Humanities

10:30 5th Grade Math; 6th Grade Humanities

11:30 Literature and Advisory

11:50 Guided Study Hall (5th Grade Language to begin Oct)

12:30 Lunch and Recess

1:15 and 2:00 Science and Humanities multiage

Mr. Merrill’s 5/6 Humanities Wrap Up

This week students organized their Humanities binder.  The binder has 4 dividers, current (work), past (work), class tools, and readings.  We also made a reading response notebook with special tabs to be used for  whole class literature books, read alouds, and independent reading activities.  Student composition books were covered with a collage for writing inspiration, and tabs were also added for entries, writing strategies, and a personal spelling list.  The other spiral will be used as a Humanities notebook, for current events, notes, and vocabulary.  

In the morning, Humanities class is divided by grade level.  The focus of this period will be on reading and writing instruction.  The work we do will be connected to the literature, historical, global, and current events that we will be studying throughout the school year.  In the afternoon, the Humanities class is multiage, and lessons will have a “social studies” focus, be project oriented, but continue to emphasize the writing and reading instruction from the morning’s work.  

This week, students studied great peacemakers, writing and creating an illustrated “Dream for Peace” poem, and started research on a group project.  The project is to create a Peace Quilt (paper) that celebrates and identifies the 5 W’s (who, what, when, where, why) of a great peacemaker’s accomplishments.  

This assignment, along with the handouts will be available on Jupiter Grades next week.  Homework will be posted in Jupiter Grades, which will be reviewed at our open house on Tuesday.

Ms. O’s Math and Science Shout Out

Math 5:  Students in 5th grade kicked off the year with a little algebra!  Cube sequences has been our focus this week...how do we identify a pattern in a growing sequence of cubes so that we can generalize it for future cube sequences?  Students have been building and counting and seeing into the future (my determining the 201st arrangement pattern) and have been doing very well!  There is more to come, but our next stop will be in building math models for multiplication.

Our Math Habit of Interaction goals focus on the following habits:  Private Reasoning Time, Explaining my Reasoning, and Listening to Understand.  All students made a goal for this first trimester and will be self-assessing progress on this goal. So far our classroom has been quiet, quiet, and then loud, loud ( in a good way).  

Kathy Rossier is a co-teacher in our room.  We are lucky to have such expertise and support!

Math 6:  Students have been assigned a Unit Project, in which they much write a children’s book about a special number they have chosen.  The book’s theme is what makes my number unique?  We dived headfirst into attributes of a number this week by playing two games, the Factor Game and the Product Game.  While some attributes like odd and even may be review, we have learned new math language like abundant, deficient, composite, prime, and perfect numbers.  Students will use these features to describe their number and introduce it to the world in book form.

We will be addressing the photo blog from the summer through some themed studies on specific math concepts that we might find in nature.  If your Voyager did not do the summer blog, they should work on taking pictures and posting them on the blog so that next week, we can pick that project up again.

Our Math Habit of Interaction goals focus on the following habits:  Private Reasoning Time, Explaining my Reasoning, and Listening to Understand.  All students made a goal for this first trimester and will be self-assessing progress on this goal. So far our classroom has been quiet, quiet, and then loud, loud ( in a good way).  

Math Homework Check-in

Many parents have been patiently awaiting our homework policy and schedule.  The students are finally in a routine and so they are ready to invite you in.  

• 5th grade math students have received both Home Connection packets and Practice packets in advance.  By providing students with a stapled packet, students who struggle with the daily papers here and there can receive all of the assignments and just do them when they are assigned. It’s a no mess solution!   It keeps binders neater and prevents the paper scatter that we have all experienced in our children’s backpacks! Occasionally students will have math homework in a book, but this will not happen very often.  There is plenty of homework in the unit packets you see in their math/science binder.  You should expect math homework on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday each week.  Students will also be expected to do FASTT math or Fraction Nation 4 times a week.  All homework is due the next day unless otherwise indicated.  

• 6th grade math students are in the 6th grade Connected Math book, Prime Time.  This book is not a book students can write in.  Therefore all homework should be done in the learning log (the math spiral).  6th graders have also received a practice skills packet.  Homework is assigned daily, Monday-Thursday and is dependent on progress in class.  At the end of each investigation, there is a series of 40-50 problems and students will have 5-8 problems, due the next day, unless otherwise indicated.  6th graders are also still responsible for achieving computational fluency and are therefore required to do 4 days a week of online enrichment in this area.  Student FASTT Math, Fraction Nation, and soon Kahn Academy have been customized depending on the growth your child needs in this area or the enrichment they are ready for!  

Science ⅚:  No Homework as of this moment!  We began our unit on Earth’s Systems with a memory test!  How many objects can you remember from the table filled with objects made or originating from materials from Earth’s surface?  Some students were able to remember up to 20 objects and then guess the theme!  We took a short journey to the center of the Earth with the question in mind, could we actually do it?  We spent the rest of the week learning about the geosphere (the Earth’s physical structure) and the hydrosphere (water on Earth) as it relates to the Earth’s crust.  Students are responsible for learning new vocabulary like geosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere, in addition to knowing the layers of the Earth.  Onto earthquakes and volcanoes in the coming weeks.

The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room - Humanities 7/8

This week has been busy, but has been such a great start to the year. We started the week off with our usual IRM (Independent Reading Monday) during our Morning Humanities, and followed it up with Current Events in the afternoon. This will be a weekly thing in Humanities as a way to ease our minds and bodies into the week. As our first full week continued we began our work on the first graded writing piece of the year: My Summer Vacation in a LEAF! Students are being asked to write about their summer vacations via the LEAF paragraph format. In class students were given time to work, but also time to discuss major parts of the paragraph such as the lead sentence/hook and transition words. This writing piece will be the first graded writing piece of the year! During our afternoon classes we have been discussing global peace. Students are being asked to put on a “chef hat” as they prepare a recipe for global peace, as one of our first projects of the school year! As prep for our first major unit of the year, all of WCS is starting with a mini unit on peace by focusing on Peace Day and the Peace One Day project. We have discussed topics such as why is Peace Day important, and could something like this actually work? We also looked at photographs and discussed the consequences of war. Today we kicked off our studies on the United Nations and its connection to the Peace One Day project. Please talk to your student about Peace Day and what the goal of Peace Day is. It would even be fun to come up with an activity to do on Peace Day (which is Saturday, September 21st) to celebrate!!

Ms. Q’s Corner

CMP8

Over the past few weeks we have reviewed number systems, commutative, associative and distributive properties of multiplication and division, multi-step algebraic problems, order of operations, mixed number operations and exponent rules.  These topics are preparing us for the upcoming NECAP tests and also retooling our mathematical minds for our first CMP unit Thinking With Mathematical Models.  Students had a quiz on Friday for the first full week of classes.

CMP7

The 7th graders revved up their mathematical minds with the introduction of number sets and how they interface. We reviewed mathematical operations using positive and negative integers and practiced solving multi-step equations using PEMDAS (Order of Operations).  We reviewed geometry vocabulary and constructed some geometric figures.  All of these topics are part of our NECAP review and a great place to start before jumping into our first  CMP book called Variables and Patterns.  Students took a brief quiz on Friday.

7/8 Science

What do engineers do?  We became student engineers and worked to solve a problem through design engineering. The problem: How can we transport GI Joe/Jane safely from a high cliff,  over a valley of seething lava, to a plateau where he/she will be rescued? Using a variety of strategies students designed, tested and redesigned an evacuation system to get their comrade out of danger.  We discussed the scientific principles observed in our devices, and the design successes and failures.

Voyager Grading System

Introduction:  Voyager House uses an online grading system, Jupiter Grades, in order to help a student understand the expectations and commitments of learning in their classrooms.  The grading system clearly outlines how an assignment is categorized and helps students, parents, and teachers see student strengths and areas for growth.  This grading system works across all core subject areas and learning settings and has been adopted in all Voyager grades 5-8.

Assignment Categorization:  Voyager students will see each assignment categorized according to the 4 categories listed below:  

• Accountability:  This category is all about a student’s ability to do what is expected both in the classroom and independently.  We will categorize homework here, as well as being prepared to learn, peer review activities, self-assessments, oral participation in the class, among others.
• Practice:  This category is designed to measure a student’s commitment to classwork, first drafts, graded homework, science journals, short writing pieces, and online practice like FASTT Math or Kahn Academy.
• Performance:  This category captures performance on projects, presentations, major writing pieces, science fair, lab reports.  
• Quiz/Test:  This category includes quizzes and tests in a given core area.

Assignments categorized under accountability, practice, performance, and tests will be scored on a 4 point scoring system.  See details below.

• Accountability (0-4) - Homework completion, prepared to learn (completed and on time = 4, on time and nearly complete = 3, late or incomplete = 2, significantly late = 1, never turned in = 0)
• Practice (0-4) - Classwork, graded hw, drafts, journaling, science journal, short writing pieces, math additional practices (rubrics)
• Performance (0-4) - Projects, presentations, major writing pieces, science fair, lab reports (rubrics)
• Test/Quiz - (0-4) The percentile grade will be noted in the comment section, so that you can see where you fall in the grade range.

These 4 categories will be weighted! The weight of each category will vary from Math/Science to Humanities due to the high number of tests in Math and high level of projects/major writing pieces in Humanities. Students and families will be made aware of these weights. In addition to getting information on each of the four categories, your child will receive an overall cumulative score for the core subject area.

Scoring Specifics in a 0-4 Scoring System

4: 95-100 - Exceeds Expectation,

3: 85-94 - Meets Expectation

2: 75-84 - Working Towards Proficiency

1: 74 and Below - Needs Assistance to Meet Expectation

0: Never turned in by end of trimester

Jupiter Grades Abbreviations to Know:

/: Missing or not completed

EX: Excused from the assignment

ABS: Absent; due upon return or shortly thereafter

Reporting/Grade Reports:

We are still a standards-based house. Our teaching and rubrics reflect and implement standards. Our grade reports reflect performance and are influenced by the standards we meet in class. At the end of each trimester students will take home a large manilla folder that will be filled with all of their work and reflections from the trimester, along with their final Grade Report. Parents and guardians are expected to receive the envelope, review the work and Grade Report with their child, and then return the EMPTY envelope to school. Grade reports will still have a narrative about what each class achieved during the trimester and will also have a list of key standards met. Grade reports for each trimester will include the following:

• A narrative about the class
• A list of key standards met
• One overall grade for the class
• Four  individual grades, one for each of the four categories
• Comments from the teacher