Week of April 7

Reminder for Adam’s Market Pie pick-up!!!  Pick-up your pre-ordered pie at Adam’s Farm Market on April 17th or 18th between 10am-5pm!

Water Festival - Monday, April 14

Apple Prommasakul, our Thai Scholar, will be leading us in the Water Festival on Monday, a great Thai tradition.  Students should wear a colorful shirt for the event and be prepared to get a little wet.

Williston Central School Fundraisers:

• Sterling Night at Ramunto’s  Tuesday, April 15th

Ramuntos will donate a percentage of orders all day.  Eat in or Take Out. No Coupon required.

• Swift’s Mother’s Day Flower Sale Order your 10” hanging flower baskets for pick-up at Adams Farm Market between 5/7 and 5/11.  You may select from the hundreds of baskets available in solid or a combination of colors.  Order forms available in the School Bell or in WCS & ABS front office  $24.00 each.

WCS Dialogue Night- rescheduled for Wednesday, April 16th 6-7:45pm WCS Dining Room.  For the pizza part of the evening, 6-6:15PM, please RSVP to Sarah,

SAP Counselor, sklionsky@cssu.org or 871-6079, by Monday 4/14- co-sponsored by FAP

We will provide students with a homework pass for the night!  Encourage your child to go!

Ms. Q’s Corner

CMP8

This week we took a pause from our new investigation “It’s in the System” to reintroduce exponent rules, solving algebraic equations with fractions and simplifying equations with polynomials.  This review will help in transforming  linear equations from slope intercept form to standard form.  Knowing how to transform an equation will allow students to begin finding solutions to systems of linear equations.  This week the  Algebra Final  was set for  Friday, June 6th.

CMP7

We are coming to the completion of “Moving Straight Ahead” with emphasis on creating equations from points, graphs and tables.  We also investigated how a linear function can be translated by changing the coefficient or slope of the line and by changing the y-intercept.  We observed how you can tell from an equation if the line is parallel or perpendicular.  Next week students will be taking the unit assessment.

  

Science 7th/8th

We began the week with the kickoff of our PSA  project. Working alone or with a partner, students researched a genetic or infectious disease, created a short well written script and filmed their 30 second- 120 second spot.

Students utilized a variety of media apps to get their word across.

Notes from Ms. Sherman-

Celebrating Voyager 8th Graders

This Friday, Ms. Sherman and Ms. Wesnak, your fearless teachers, are hosting an 8th grade celebration night. The night will be a great way for our 8th grade family to come together to reflect on their time as Voyager students, indulge in some great eats, and have some merriment after hours. We both look forward to seeing you there and celebrating! We would like to say thank you to all the 8th grade families for providing transportation to and from the school.

The Week in Ms. O’s

Math 5:  Students have been perfectly the art of addition and subtraction of fractions.  Students are working hard on two basic principles:  Least Common Multiple and Greatest Common Factor.  When do I use the LCM?  The GCF?  I have been psyched and amazed at the versatility students are showing with fraction operations and excited to move forward with multiplication and division.  Late in the week we began looking at decimals.  We have made the leap seamlessly!  Students understand that decimals are fractions with denominators of 10, 100, 1000, and are revisiting ideas of magnitude in our base ten number system.  

Math 6:  We wrapped up our Data about Us book this week!  The concepts covered in this book have been a little challenging in that students had to decide on the story of the data based on measures of center (mode, median and mean) and measures of variability (range and interquartile range).  Although most students come to sixth grade knowing how to find mode and median, students are now asked to decide which measure of middle to use.  What if the data is skewed, symmetrical, clustered, which measure of middle is best?  Are there any outliers and how do they affect the mean?  I think many students have made long term changes in their understanding of data.  Tough unit!  On to Variables and Patterns, our first significant dip into algebra concepts before the big 7th grade year in linear and nonlinear equations.

Science ⅚:

Students wrapped up their iMovies this week and should have posted to the WCS you tube site.  Feel free to take a look at them.  I found myself laughing hysterically (and learning too) while watching some the other night.  I was amazed at the ease with which they made the movies, now I am hoping that they are rich in science.  I will assess these over break.  I will also be sure to let you know if your child has not uploaded to youtube.  Could mean they aren’t done.  

We are doing a mini integrated unit in science and humanities on tapped and bottled water.  We began our first science investigation on Friday looking at natural filter systems.  Students will be engineering the best filter system they can on Monday and Tuesday.  This is based on the science they investigate on natural materials and their filtering quality.  We will move on to other investigations around plastics and water on Earth.

Mr. Merrill’s ⅚ Humanities Wrap Up

Should the show go on? Whether or not to keep killer whales in marine parks was the focus of our debate this week. Common core standards include speaking and listening skills, and debate.  The debate format we used reflected the argument writing format that we are using in class, giving students another way to practice their argument organizing skills. Students also completed persuasive letters, with the hope that area tree nurseries will support our community service project of planting trees at Camp Abnaki in June.  

In preparation for our final argument writing piece, students learned to take Cornell notes. They will be using a library wiki to find articles, video, and podcasts to complete their research next week.  Students also shared in creating a huge Google presentation titled, “Bodies of Water Around the World”.  A very impressive digital slide show!

The Week in Ms.Wesnak’s Room

7/8 Humanities - This week in Humanities students continued their work around geography by working on their argumentative writing piece and studying U.S. geography. During our morning time together students were given a thorough outline of the argumentative essay, a checklist for argumentative writing, and class time to work on their writing. This was all in prep for their peer edit day on Tuesday. Their final draft will be due on the Friday before vacation, and when we return from vacation the battle between the GPS and a Paper Map will be brought to the debate floor! During our afternoon time students took a quiz on the Western and Midwestern regions of the United States on Monday. As the week went on we learned about the 5 Themes of Geography and specifically zoned in on the theme of “Place”, which includes physical and human characteristics. Students came up with a list of global physical characteristics, and we also labeled some physical characteristics of the U.S. on a map. Students also took a look at various maps of the United States. We compared and contrasted maps of climate, vegetation, land use, and energy/mineral resources. We also looked at the relationship between climate and vegetation, and climate and land use. This is all in preparation for our Road Trip U.S.A. project which will launch next week!

***We also had a special guest visitor in our classroom this week! Jade Dobson, a 6th Grade Teacher from Auckland, New Zealand came to visit Vermont and our classroom this week. She shared out information on New Zealand and the Maori culture. Students learned a lot and also laughed a lot during her time in our classroom. Why was Jade here you might ask? Well, I’m very happy to announce that our Humanities class will be taking part in a global project with Jade’s school in New Zealand! Jade will be our contact teacher in New Zealand, and we will be working with her and her students on a variety of projects. One of our first projects will be around current events and global geography. Students will be offered chances to Skype with Jade’s students, we will be sharing videos through our school youtube channels, sharing google documents to complete projects together, and also sharing our writing and thoughts through Kidblog. A permission slip and further information about the project and how we were given this great opportunity will be going home next week!! Kia Ora!