Week of May 19

The deadline to order Lake Monster tickets has been extended – order by Tuesday, May 27th !!!

Take Me Out to the Ballgame, an FAP community fundraising event, is Sunday June 29 – game starts at 5:05pm.

50% of ticket sales are donated back to the schools to support the students and faculty.

If you can’t go on June 29, you can exchange your tickets for another game.

Want to throw out the first pitch??  Details in next week’s School Bell.  Order forms in School Bell, at WCS or e-mail Voyager TA if needing form e-mailed to you!

Questions? Pam pniarchos@myfairpoint.net Thanks !

CMP8

This week in class we began reviewing major concepts from solving multi-step algebraic equations, using substitution and combination strategies to solve systems of linear equations, practicing equations with absolute value.  Students have access to the  Algebra Final Review a page put together by Ms. Milks to help coordinate our end-of-year work.  

CMP7

How does the volume of a cylinder, sphere and cone with the same radius and height compare?  We experimented with these three  figures by using clay and sand to compare the amount of space a sphere and cone took up in the cylinder.  We found that a sphere takes up 2/3 of the volume and a cone takes up 1/3.  We are at the end of the unit and will take the Filling and Wrapping assessment next week.

Science 7th/8th

This week we completed our dendrochronology investigation (measuring tree growth rings over hundreds of years) and looked closely at where carbon is stored in our environment.  We became carbon molecules to get a better picture of how carbon flows through its cycle.  Students prepared for their Climate Change assessment which took place on Friday.

Mr. Merrill’s ⅚ Humanities Wrap Up

We continued to work on narrative writing this week.  Students formulated some great ideas for their stories from the draft writing last week.  We started with our first drafts, focusing on grammar and style.  Mini lessons on sentence structure, word choice, and punctuation were followed by self editing time.  We moved on to narrative structure and writing techniques.  Students wrote exciting openings by using action, dialogue, or descriptions.  Characters came to life with details on looks, movement, and personalities.  Settings were created using alliteration, rhyme, similes, and/or metaphors.

We will be finishing the revision process next week with a peer commenting/editing period before typing the final story.

We also spent some time learning about the regions of the United States.  Students made a poster of a region to use as a tool to teach about the region to classmates.  We also played an online geography game to learn the location of states by region.

The Week in Ms.Wesnak’s Room

7/8 Humanities: This week seemed to just fly by! During our morning time together students started a unit on Greek Mythology. They read a myth titled “The Beginning of The World” and did some work with how some vocabulary terms were used in the myth and how they are used in present day. Students then moved on to learning about various Greek Gods and Goddesses. They created their own booklet of the Gods and Goddesses, and completed various journal writes using the ancient Greek culture as their inspiration. At the end of the week students were introduced to their final writing project of the year, which is to write an original myth or legend about the creation of a physical feature somewhere on the globe (example: Mt. Everest, Victoria Falls, Glaciers, The Amazon, Grand Canyon, Sahara). The final outcome will be a book of global myths or legends from around the world. Our afternoon time together this week was spent working on our Endangered Places project. Students were given time to peer edit in class or work on some aspect of their project. Paragraphs about their endangered place were due on Thursday and the educational posters were due Friday. The posters looked fantastic, and students are really excited about trying to raise awareness and gather donations about these diverse and beautiful places! If you are interested in donating there will be a donation jar located in my classroom. Our ultimate goal is to raise money to donate to the World Wildlife Fund, so we can adopt 1 (or more) animals. Hope everyone has a wonderful long weekend!

The Week in Ms. O’s

Math 5:  Working our way through multiplication of fractions.  We generated generalizations for fraction x fraction, fraction x whole number and multiplication of mixed numbers.  This is not an easy topic and will be one that is addressed next year as well.

Math 6:  We are digging deep into how to generate equations for linear relationships.  Dissecting the idea of slope and seeing slope in tables and graphs; making observations of data points in which x = 0; seeing that coordinate pairs that have x = 0 help us identify the y-intercept.  Once we can see slope and y-intercept we can then take on the equation that matches all linear relationships, y=ax +/- b.  This is a first exposure, so don’t panic! We will address this for the rest of the year.  And 7th grade math is...all about linearity and nonlinear relationships!  

Science ⅚:  We ended our week with a really exciting conservation project reestablishing a forest community along the Allen Brook as a way to prevent erosion and improve habitat for wetland inhabitants.  It is such a privilege to see our students in this setting:  kids become superstars!  We had a ball and we are saving the planet! Ha!  We also started adventures in motion and forces.  Pretty cool investigations of Newton’s Laws.

Voyager News!!!

We would like to congratulate Delaney Ruggles, Parker Soares and Boedy Leombruno for their great efforts at the Bocce tournament on May 22. Many students from WCS attended the Special Olympics/Unified Sports bocce tournament. Our students from Voyager returned with a silver and a gold medal! All three of the WCS teams medalled. Great Job!!! Thank you to all the adults and students that dedicated their time to supporting and participating with the Unified Sports program.