Week of November 18

Friday Fun Day!!!!

Students today enjoyed a change of pace with a variety of fun activities, many of which were lead by our fabulous 8th graders. The day started out with academics. When students transitioned back to Voyager house they enjoyed stations, some with brain teasers like the puzzle room, trivia and tennis ball challenge, where teamwork enabled students to dump a milk carton worth of balls into buckets. Students also enjoyed the panache of Paris by entering into the transformed project room. They enjoyed hot chocolate served by waiters and waitresses, enjoyed some coloring time, and were all soothed by the soft lighting. Physically, students were challenged by trick shots on the basketball court and relay turkey challenges. In the afternoon, the students found even more fun with the rooms set up with two different movies, a craft room with Thanksgiving themed fun, a work room for students to catch up, and our new, yearly tradition on Voyager house: The Thankful Wall. The Thankful wall was a family tradition of the Sherman household and will hopefully be a reoccuring tradition on house. Ask your son or daughter what they were thankful for today… A big thank you to all the students and staff who helped put on today. It was great fun.    

Voyager Family Night and Talent Show at WCS - Tuesday, December 10th, 6:30 - 8:30 pm!

Voyager Family Night and Talent show at WCS is a wonderful gathering where students and families of Voyager get together to share snacks and conversation in the cafeteria, then move to the auditorium to share some fun open-mike performances.  Students can sign up for a performance spot with Ms. Quatt if they are interested. In the past, performances have included small-group singing/dance, poetry recital, playing a song on the piano, reading a short story, demonstrating magic tricks or a guitar performance.  It is a fun family night and great way to meet all the awesome kids and families who are part of the Voyager community.

There is a suggested $10 donation at the door -- at the end of the evening we will hold a door raffle of prizes that include movie tickets, pizza gift cards and other fun family gifts.  This is a major fundraising opportunity for the house, so if you are feeling generous, please make any-sized donation you'd like!  The money will go directly towards the end-of-year field trip fund for all students.  This fund will greatly reduce the amount asked of parents to pay for the field trip.

We do ask that families bring a small snack to share, based on the core class your child is in.  This year, Mr. Merrill and Ms. O'Brien's class are asked to bring 'savory snacks' which should be hand-held.  We do not have access to the kitchen, so everything must be 'ready' and 'easy to eat.'  We will have plates and napkins, but no knives or forks.  Ms. Wesnak and Ms. Quatt's class are asked to bring 'sweet snacks' or hand-held deserts.

Here is a link to the Voyager wiki where you can sign up!

 http://voyagerfap.wikispaces.com/

We look forward to seeing you there!!!!

Voyager FAP

Mr. Merrill’s ⅚ Humanities Wrap Up

This week students were introduced to the concept of Manifest Destiny.  Using the painting “American Progress”, students created a list of factors that made up the westward movement and then wrote a definition for manifest destiny.  We then looked at a list of different events of the 19th century that contributed to westward movement and started to identify the motivations, problems, and results of the period.  We wrapped up the week with a JIGSAW activity.  In groups, students researched and became experts on a person from the westward movement and then put together a short presentation to teach other students about that person.  Ask your student who they researched and what he or she learned.

Ms. Q's Corner

CMP8  

Students were challenged this week to consider integral and rational exponents in relation to exponential growth and decay.  We practiced with the rules governing  exponent use and the connection between radicals and fractional exponents.  We reviewed  major concepts of decay and growth and rounded out the week with the Growing, Growing, Growing Unit Test.  After Thanksgiving Break we will begin our unit on the Pythagorean Theorem.

CMP7

Students began constructing similar figures from coordinate  points on a coordinate grid.  We created the Wump family of cartoon characters and discovered what happens when you change the coefficient in  front of the x and y coordinate or add/ subtract numbers to the x and y coordinates.  We investigated scale factor and explored what happens to the side measurements of a geometric figure when you scale up or down and what change occurs to the area of the figure.  

Science 7/8

This week we investigated the ipad app "Educreations".  This presentation application allows students to import pictures, diagrams and drawings, along with the recorded explanation of their work.  We found some success and failure with this application, but all students were flexible in finding an application that would allow them to communicate their  earth science concepts.  These concepts included:  Formation of the earth, the rock cycle,  constructive and destructive forces, plate tectonics and more.  After break we will begin delving into geology with rock identification and lab experiments.

News from Ms. O

• Math 5 - This week students reviewed assessments and split off into two groups.  Some students received additional instruction on the concepts we worked on over the last few weeks and others did extension tasks and enrichment.  We had some zinger problem solving pieces that really pushed students.  We also began our investigation into Geometry by looking at the terms that are geometric in nature  and began to look at attributes of polygons.  We will continue this work through the next winter break.

• Math 6 - We took a sidebar from the ratio and fractions unit to discuss and practice multi-digit multiplication and long division.  Some students practiced taking numbers to the thousandth place value while others were just making sense of a remainder.  The standard algorithms are not tested, but they can be really valuable when working on deeper math concepts (so I say right?). Students seem to love mastering this and, well, mastery breeds confidence.  We’ll get back to Comparing Bits after the break.
• Science ⅚ - We ended our geology/earth systems unit with two days of study review and an assessment designed to measure a student’s ability to apply the concepts we learned.  You can see these results on Jupiter Grades.  We will dip into electricity and magnets after the Thanksgiving break, a series of opportunities that will lead to an engineering task challenge.

The Week in Ms.Wesnak’s Room

7/8 Humanities: This week we took some time to do a variety of journal writes ranging in perspective and topic. We also got into some great challenges using our subscription to Jr. Scholastic Magazine! We started off our week with our usual Independent Reading Mondays and Current Events in the afternoon. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday our morning class was filled with a variety of timed journal writes ranging in topics and time limits. A large variety of students shared their work this week, which really brought new voices to our classroom. Students also were asked to write a poem about what they are thankful for. I encouraged students to write something that could be shared with their family at Thanksgiving, so some of your kids may be bringing home a piece of writing to be shared! We also tried writing from a variety of different perspectives! This proved to be a bit of a challenge for some students, so we will continue our work with perspective writing in the 2nd trimester. In the afternoon students took on another global challenge using only 1 issue of Jr.Scholastic. They had to answer questions and clues that took them on a trip across the world testing their global geography! They also had to learn the capitals of many countries, and then apply all of this knowledge to decode a secret message! On Thursday we got into the most recent issue of Jr. Scholastic and put our new knowledge to the test in a very exciting game of Jeopardy. Students were allowed to take notes while they read, which proved to be quite important for their team during our Jeopardy game. Students really enjoyed this activity and the use of the interactive materials that Jr. Scholastic provides online, so we will continue with this in the 2nd trimester. Thank you for a WONDERFUL 1st trimester, and for going on this global adventure with the 7th and 8th grade community! Happy Thanksgiving :)

Week of November 11

Mr. Merrill’s ⅚ Humanities Wrap Up

O the Joy!  We completed the westward journey of Lewis and Clark, noting the changing landscape (Great Plains, Rockies, Coastal Range and Columbia River area) and the incredible story of Sacagawea and her impact on the journey.  We will be moving on to part 2 of this lesson next week - Westward Expanision.

Students also selected a favorite writing piece from their Writer’s notebook to post on our Kidblog.  Students self and peer edited, and commented on other witing once published.  Students will be wrapping up their mystery and spook literature group round next week.  A final constructed response will be written based on our big question:  How does the setting of your book create a story of mystery and spook?

Ms. Q's Corner

CMP8

This week student's grappled with exponential decay, decay factors and rates.  We explored how medication loses it potency over time and that the decay factor is less than 1.  We reviewed positive and negative exponents,  rules of exponent use, and became more familiar with square and cube root tabs on our graphing calculator.  Next week we will review exponential growth and decay in order to prepare for  our Growing, Growing , Growing Unit Test.

CMP7

Becoming more fluid with utilizing positive and negative integers with all mathematical operations was the name of the game this week.  We introduced the distributive property and practiced moving from factored form to expanded form.  We played positive/negative integer bingo and reviewed for our unit test that took place on Thursday.

Science 7/8

We were eggcited to perform our eggcellent egg bungee on Monday.  Using the app "Fast Camera" we captured the bounce of our bungee jumping eggs to see which egg came the closest to the ground without touching.  Many jumpers didn't make it and that's no yolk.  On Tuesday and Wednesday we began our engineering task write-up.  We began our study of Earth science with exploring the app called "Educreations".  Students will be utilizing this tool to explain major concepts to their classmates.

The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room

7/8 Humanities: In conversation with a few students at the end of the day on Friday, we summed up our week as quite puzzling! This week our main focus was wrapping up our global studies unit. As usual we started off the week by doing some Independent Reading and writing in our Reading Journals, followed by current events in the afternoon. As the week continued on, we started tackling our BIG question for this unit which was: Who am I in the global puzzle? Students began tackling this question in the morning by doing a “Who Am I” or “About Me” poem. This poem had a pretty strict format, but still gave room for students to be creative. It motivated and encouraged students to do a lot of reflection on themselves as members of not only the Vermont community but the global community. Some students even shared their work with the class on Friday morning. In the afternoon our time together was spent on a table challenge. Students were asked to work with their table group (their “family” from the global village) to put together a 550 piece jigsaw puzzle without the cover and without talking. At the end of the class period they would have to break down the puzzle, so the next class would have to start from scratch. This challenge was to symbolize a number of things, but most importantly it was to symbolize how the world has to work together to solve problems. Sometimes when solving a problem you don’t know what it’s going to look like at the end, so you have to guess. Sometimes you won’t be able to communicate with everyone you’re working with, so you have to figure out new pathways in which to communicate. Sometimes after many minutes, hours, or days of hard work you have to break it all down to start from scratch. We had some great discussion in class about the symbolism of this puzzle project, and as a class we really made some deep, big picture connections. To wrap-up the week, on Friday the students put together their own puzzle. Each student was given a blank puzzle piece that they had to decorate to symbolize themselves. At the end of the day the students had to find the remaining pieces to their puzzle by working with all of the 7/8 community to put all of the pieces together. The outcome was several beautifully collaged puzzles with each student of the Voyager community being represented by the their own piece. As students were leaving on Friday I asked a couple students how they would sum up this week. Some words or phrases they used were “big picture”, “mind puzzling”, “lots of reflection”, “gained perspective”. It was a great week in Humanities, and by Friday we had really put together all of the pieces of our global unit.

News from Ms. O

The Hot Zone Literature Group: Students in this literature group are working towards finishing a very long and detailed book on the Ebola virus.  I have extended the deadline for the project to the Monday after break.  The book should be finished upon returning from Thanksgiving break and the Public Health Announcement on a contagious disease of their choice will be due the Tuesday after break.  

Math 5:  Students completed Unit 2 today with an end of unit assessment. This culminates our intensive work on multiplication and just touched the surface of our division work for the year.  We will come back to division when we pick up fractions in a couple of units. We will begin geometry next week and continue this until December break.  

Math 6: We are in the midst of ratio understanding...BEWARE!  We are not all there yet, in understanding ratios that is, but are moving in the direction of deeper understanding of proportional reasoning.  We will pick up this work again next week, by introducing integers (positive and negative numbers and absolute value).  This will help students understand more about bits and pieces of numbers (some fraction, decimal and percent work) and how to compare their magnitude.

Science ⅚:  We ended our week of looking at constructive and destructive forces with a Demonstration Fair.  Students presented models that demonstrated a constructive and destructive force that could apply to the forces acting on the Earth’s surface. We had sedimentary sandwiches, exploding ketchup volcanoes, converging cookie plates, sandy dune construction, gravity riddled eroding embankments, and stream beds among others.  It was crazy!  Sometimes I wonder if having all this fun can also be called learning!  Many students did an excellent job researching a simple constructive/destructive force and can now see, perhaps what they may not have had I just told them, what makes the Earth’s crust changeable.  Yet another piece of evidence of the changing Earth!  We have a test on Wednesday.  We will spend Monday building our study guide, Tuesday doing active review, and Wednesday taking an assessment.  It

Week of November 4

THANKS

A big thank you to those parents who donated books, canvassed neighborhoods, and set up and staffed the Voyager Media Sale at the Craft Fair.  Amazing team effort!  We raised a total of $941.00 that will go directly to reducing the cost of the end-of-year, overnight, in-state field trip for ALL Voyager families.  Great example of how a small contribution of time and effort can yield great results that benefit all of our students!  If you did not have a chance to participate, there will be more opportunities in the coming months.

Thank you!

Voyager FAP

Ms. Q’s Corner

CMP8

What is the difference between a growth factor and growth rate?  How does the initial value impact on the rate of growth in an exponential function.  What is compound growth and how can we ever save money with such low interest rates!!  We explored and and challenged our thinking on our understanding of growth.  Students are learning to write exponential equations effortlessly.  They have been working hard and are now delving into the mysteries of exponential decay.  

CMP7

We continued our review of the algorithms used for subtracting negative integers.  We looked at the ways that you can get a similar value by adding and subtracting.(You can sing the words...”like signs add and different signs subtract....”)  We rounded off our week with reviewing the algorithm of multiplying and dividing positive and negative integers.( You can meditate on the words “If you love to love, you love. If you love to hate, you hate” etc.)These are devices that remind us how to keep the correct sign when using positive and negative numbers while multiplying and dividing.

Science 7/8th

We completed the Chemistry test on Monday and jumped right into our engineering task.  The problem: How to keep a bungee egg from breaking when pushed off a platform.  Through trials and data collection students worked to find the proper length of bungee to make it a fun ride for the egg without cracking the egg’s skull.  It was eggciting to watch!  The final plunge is on Monday. Students will write up their findings for this task next week.

Mr. Merrill’s ⅚ Humanities Wrap Up

We completed a number of self assessments this week in preparation for 1st trimester reporting.

Students self assessed their Reading Response Notebooks, Writer’s Notebooks, and filled out a Student Investment in Learning rubric.   I will also be assessing this work and the rubrics will be coming home as part of the 1st Trimester reporting.  

Students continued to blog, post, and comment on a 2nd Trimester Goal, identifying a timeline and steps to follow to reach the goal.  The Voyager ⅚ blogging community offered many supportive comments and thoughtful questions during the activity.  

Students wrapped up the week with a quiz on a number of the New Learning Categories that we have explored since starting the Lewis and Clark unit.  New vocabulary, geography, people, and events made up the content for the quiz.  

News from Ms. O

Math 5:  Students in 5th grade have been working on building conceptual understanding of division.  The construction of conceptual understanding of division lies in conceptual understanding of multiplication. We focused an immense amount of time on multiplication, so the step across the division bridge has been seamless!  We have spent the bulk of our week looking at problems like 36 /3, 42/3 and 53/4 as a way to build the framework for understanding problems like 384/12 and 156 /4.  Most of the comparison work has centered around trading base ten pieces, whether there is a remainder or not, and whether you can make a rectangular array.  The Unit test will take place before the trimester ends.

Math 6:  Students continue to build proportional reasoning understandings while exploring ratios, fractions, and rates.  We learned about unit rate this week, when one number in the comparison is a one.  We used that information to look at fair share scenarios, how much does each person get?  We also looked at situations when unequal shares are okay, like a large dog getting more food than a small dog.  This will lead us to a deeper sense of proportions. We used Kahn Academy in class today and I realized that many 6th graders are not on it, and they should be.  This is the best tool for pre-teaching concepts and solidifying skills.  Please encourage this self-directed learning at home.

⅚ Science:  We have been learning about the rock cycle and that it isn’t a cycle at all!  Cycles imply predictability and consistency, but the rock cycle is anything but that!  We went on an erosion walk to investigate sources of erosion, whether human made or natural and learned the reality of our maintenance staff here at school!  It is a lot of work to reverse the effects of erosion.  As we move forward we will  investigate how fossils are made and view some fossils we have here at school.  If you have a fossil at home, please send it in. We looked at some today. We will be careful with them!  We are coming to an end of this long investigation of Earth Systems.  There will be a unit test next week during the long block.  Next unit, an energy and engineering unit on electricity and magnetism.  

The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room

7/8 Humanities: Global Village Week!! This week all students dug deep into the cultures of their Global Village countries to expand, create, and transform what were once small classroom spaces into 12 beautiful global booths! Our humanities class started the week with our usual independent reading and discussions around current events. As the week went on students handed in their Informative Writing Pieces and did a little bit of journal writing. On Wednesday and Thursday we took over a large quantity of school iPads and began our work with an app called Haiku Deck. Haiku Deck is a wonderful presentation program that allows students access to gorgeous copyright free pictures and only allows them to use limited text on each slide. Some of our students said things like “Haiku Deck was very easy to use.”, and “It was really easy to understand and the picture search was really helpful.”. While students were creating their “decks” on iPads, other students were busy turning our classroom into an art studio by building sculptures, painting, creating cardboard cut-outs, collaging, and building large flags! The excitement level throughout the day on Friday was at a high, and they could not wait for the village to open up. Big thank you to all of the Voyager staff for participating in our Global Village, and a HUGE thank you to our 7th and 8th graders!! They really pushed themselves to put together projects and displays that they were proud of and excited to share. They built temples, created huts, learned dances, spoke a variety of languages, cooked, and created diverse environments representing cultures from all around the world!! This is something to really be proud of!! Thank you for an amazing project and day!! :)

Week of October 28

Mr. Merrill’s ⅚ Humanities Wrap Up

• Writing - This week students were introduced to Kidblog.  Students wrote about and posted their goal for the 2nd trimester.  The post was to include a specific, reasonable goal that had a timeline and informed the reader of the steps to reach the goal.  

• Reading and Literature Group -  Our “Big” question is - How does the setting of your book create a story of mystery and spook?  Ask your student about his/her book and the setting of the book.

• History/Geography:  Lewis and Clark

We looked at the route that Lewis and Clark took across the West.  Students had to figure out what landforms, rivers, and modern day states and cities The Corps of Discovery must have encountered on their trip.  Students used a variety of maps to work this out, and are now putting all of this new learning into a category chart.

• Current Events - We discussed Local, National, and International news events.  Students worked in groups and had to find and cut out examples of each kind from a Burlington Free Press.  We then shared the week’s news by posting these news stories on a large chart at the front of the room.
  

Ms. Q’s Corner

CMP8

What do noxious weeds in Lake Victoria, mold growth  on bread and bacterial growth on your teeth have in common?  It's all about exponential growth!  All of these situations show increasing growth of a variable at an increasing rate.  We continued work within our Growing, Growing , Growing books to explore exponential tables, graphs and equations.  We also reviewed exponential rules and the fact that any number to the zero power is one. Growth factors and starting values were also investigated.

CMP7

We continued work within our  Accentuate the Negative books by using a variety of models to illustrate how to add and subtract positive and negative integers.  Such as when you add +12 + (-13) it is the same as subtracting 12-13.  Both of these number sentences come up with a number value of -1.  We learned about opposites and absolute value.

Science 7/8

We began the week with balancing equations and observing different types of chemical reactions which included synthesis, replacement and decomposition.  We  explored how atoms combine  using their valence electrons to form ionic and covalent bonds.  A very amazing demo where a solution was formed from ice tea mix (solute) and water (solvent) was truly tasty and riveting. We ended the week with a rousing jeopardy game and the chemistry unit test.

The Week in Ms.Wesnak’s Room

7/8 Humanities: This week in Humanities we started in the library continuing our research on our global village projects. Many students were overwhelmed by the wealth of knowledge that could be found in our own WCS Library. They used many books and took multiple pages of great notes! As the week continued we used our class time to work on our informative writing pieces. Students were provided an outline and an explanation of expectations. Students were also directed to a great organizational tool provided by the website ReadWriteThink. Many students used this tool because it enabled them to create a graphic organizer for their informative piece, which gave them a great headstart to their essay. As the week started to come to a close we took a break from all of our research, notes, and writing, and spent some time playing with words, writing in our journals, and listening to a read aloud. On Friday students took the time to have a “Family Meeting” and create a To-Do List of what is left to do in order to complete their project on time and to meet expectations. I also encouraged students to either sketch or imagine what they would like their display/interactive space to look like at the Global Village. By doing this students will have a better idea as to how much they may have to gather over the weekend and in early next week, to bring their space to life! Also, ask your child about the Global Village invitation! All students were given invitations to take home inviting you to our Global Village! We’d love for you to join and travel the globe by walking through our village. Don’t worry, passports will be provided! :)

News from Ms. O

Math 5 - Students have been moving aways from picture models of multiplication to the numbers only approaches for solving multi-digit multiplication problems.  We introduced partial products (also referred to bowtie method for a 2 digit x 2 digit), expanded form partial product (eg. 24 = 20 + 4), and the standard algorithm, which we all learned as kids!  The steps away  from the model were intentional and it was amazing how students moved from base ten paper, to open skeletal models, to the numbers only approaches as shared by teachers.  Students also were introduced to story problems involving multi-digit multiplication and to situations where we know one factor (dimension in a model), the area of the rectangle (the product), and don’t know the other dimension or factor.  This is the bridge to division, which will be our next topic of study.  I have given students to checkpoint assessments adding more data to indicate proficiency.  I’m back logged, so look forward to those scores by weekend’s end.

Math 6 - 6th graders have been working through our first investigation in Comparing Bits and Pieces. The introductory lessons were structured to introduce this idea of comparing numbers.  We sometimes call those comparisons ratios, if the comparison made is part to part.  An example of this would be the number of boys to the number of girls in a classroom.  At other times, those comparisons can be part to whole.  Students know that these comparisons are fractions and an example of this might be boys to number of students in class.  We are now fully into fractions and students are working to understand fundraising goals in terms of fraction of goal met and amount of money raised.  

⅚ Science - Beware!  We have entered the rock cycle!  The rock cycle is kind of a misnomer though because cycles imply predictability and the rock ‘cycle’ is anything but that.  Students journeyed as rocks making important claims like rocks change depending on the forces affecting them, that it takes a long time for rock to change, that rocks aren’t igneous forever, but can change to another rock type, like sedimentary AND no rock journey is the same.  We are yet again finding a way to fill in our Core Science Idea What evidence do we have that the Earth has changed in the past, is changing now, and will continue to change in the future?  We have answered questions like How are earthquakes, volcanoes, rocks, fossils, glacial scratches, convection currents all evidence that can help students answer that question and do so with scientific evidence.  On to fossils, erosion and weathering and water soon!