Voyager Family Night! Thank you to all who organized, donated food and participated in the Voyager Family Night! It was a great success as a fundraiser for Voyager and for FUN! The students did a terrific job and a great time was had by all! We raised some money too. Thanks to all who made donations that evening. And congrats to the prize winners.
Stocking Stuffers? Not sure what to stuff the stocking with??? How about pencils and erasers, a calculator, or some fine tip colored pencils? We have noticed our stash is dwindling fast, stuff for school!
Literature Group: Reading children's books and rewriting chapters for young adult version of the book.
Mr. Merrill’s ⅚ Hummanities Wrap Up
This week, as part of our Westward Expansion Unit, we focused on the plight of Native Americans as settlers moved west. We used the Mission US resources and the interactive game to consider what strategies the Cheyenne and other Plains Indians used to survive and adapt to the expansion of the United States. We used a variety of primary resources (pictures, and documents) in a jigsaw activity, to better understand the Cheyenne culture and the conflicts they faced. Students also had a vocabulary quiz on the Westward Expansion (key words) today.
In Mission 3: “A Cheyenne Odyssey,” players become Little Fox, a Northern Cheyenne boy whose life is changed by the encroachment of white settlers, railroads, and U.S. military expeditions. As buffalo diminish and the U.S. expands westward, players experience the Cheyenne's persistence through conflict and national transformation..
The Week in Ms. O’s Class
Math 5: We have been working our way through basic geometric principles like angles, congruence, symmetry, and the properties of circles. It is really important for students to learn the properties of polygons and know the names of different kinds of polygons. A lot of upper level geometry relies on this understanding (Pythagorus, finding area) and so building the language of geometry is important. We will be taking a quiz next week on the first part of this unit to assess current understanding.
Math 6: Students have been productively working on understandings that relate fractions, decimals, and percents. Percents seem to be a stumbling block for students, but the percent bar (which consequently looks like the fraction bar, yippee) has been helpful to students. When we have numbers out of 100, percent renaming is easy, but what happens when the whole is 30, 80 or oh no, 213! Students are working on applying the same strategy to harder to compute numbers. New learning for sure! Unit Assessment next week to complete the Comparing Bits and Pieces unit.
Science ⅚: Playing with electric current is fun. Oersted and Ampere did it and so did we! What is so great about electric current anyway? Well, yes lights and all, but if you didn’t know, electric current is magnetic. A compass moves when passed under a closed circuit and magnets attract to the wire in a complete circuit! We will be doing more quantitative analysis next week of the strength of electromagnets and the looking at the insides of motors and alternators. We have a generator too and an electromagnet that rings a bell (really a telegraph of sorts). After the holiday break we will build a telegraph and learn about its use to the world! It’s been really fun!
Ms. Q's Corner
CMP8 This week students used a proof to explore the Pythagorean Theorem. Students took a series of right triangle and square puzzle pieces and fit them into two congruent squares. The square puzzle pieces all had a side length that correlated with the two legs and the hypotenuse of a right triangle. Through our investigation we found that when the square of each leg was added, it had the same area as the square of the hypotenuse. Students began reviewing for the Unit Test by creating a public record of our understanding of square roots and their meaning, methods for finding area and perimeter of irregular polygons and how to find the legs and hypotenuse of a right triangle. Next week students will take the Looking for Pythagoras Unit Test.
CMP7 This week we created height-o-meters, a handheld device that allows you to record the angle of elevation of different objects. Using these devices we were able to use triangulation to find the height of objects around school. We also used similar triangles to find the distance across an unknown river and the heights of various objects. We reviewed ratios and proportions and cross multiplication. Next week we will have the unit test for Stretching and Shrinking.
Science 7th/8th
This week students explored the forces below, above and beyond the planet Earth. We watched a National Geographic video on Tectonic plates, explored Wegener’s theory of Continental Drift and used puzzles and models to investigate Pangaea, convergent and divergent plate movement and transform boundaries. We completed our week with creating cartoons on the water cycle.
The Week in Ms.Wesnak’s Room
7/8 Humanities: Our week started off with independent reading or research in the library, and current events with CNN Student News in the afternoon. As the week swiftly continued on our mornings were filled with journal writes of a wide variety! We also completed and put closure to our work on sentence diagramming, where our main focus was on identifying the subject, verb, adjective, and adverb in a sentence. Once we completed our sentence diagramming work we moved into working on verb tense consistency. We started off by reviewing the 3 main verb tenses: past, present, and future tense. We practiced identifying and using these tenses correctly in class, and for homework. We are also putting all of this practice to the test in our current writing piece for PM Humanities. Students have been trying to answer the question: How has Vermont made an impact on our world and/or our history? This topic is providing us with a great bridge between our global unit and our 20th century history unit. Students have been researching and writing an informative piece about ONE person, place, event, or product that has helped Vermont make an impact on the global community. No matter what topic students have been researching they have had to learn a bit about our state’s rich history and its people! This week students have been given class time to work on this piece, along with time to have their writing peer edited. Students were also introduced to Part 2 of this Vermont mini-unit, which includes working in small groups to produce a piece of advertising that could be used for Vermont Tourism. Groups are completing projects along the lines of ABC Books, video advertisements, educational posters that could be found at Vermont Informational Stops or Rest Areas, a children’s book about Vermont, or even a brochure. Students seem really excited about this project and are taking a variety of routes to complete it. I’m really excited to see the final outcome! We’ll be working on this all next week.
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