TA’s Notes:
FAP! Give us a hand and help us keep our strong Voyager traditions in place!
After School with Ms. Sherman- Organization 101: Next week, Voyager house will have it’s first organization session. Students will check their binders to make sure they have functional sections set up, take a look at their planner situation (brainstorm other methods,) have a look at their cubbies, and much more. Attached is a permission slip- please make sure that your son or daughter brings in a slip.
WHEN: Wednesday, September 24th
TIME: 3:00-4:00 (students can stay on Voyager house to do homework until the activity bus at 4:30)
Jupiter Grades : Students received a letter with parent and student login information. If you require another copy of this information, please email your student’s core teacher.
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
We started our week off with Reading Cafe, introducing our “Me as a Reader” section in the Reading Response Notebook. After reading, students reflected on what they noticed about themselves during the reading period and made a list of observations. For current events, students watched untitled news segments from CNN Student News and were asked to give each story a title based on the the information provided.
For our writing, students completed a first draft LEAF on the rule that they would like to change in school. The LEAF piece includes a Lead, Evidence, Analysis, and a Finisher. We discussed elements of persuasive writing, including: position, audience, factual support, word choice, and ethos - credibility. Students will type this draft on a google doc and decide how to publish this work next week.
We concluded our mock election this week with an election day vote. There was a lot of enthusiasm for the election, with great political party and candidate support from all students.
At the end of the election, we reviewed all of the work the students did in preparation for the vote.
They created a party platform, selected a candidate, created campaign materials, and made election rules for the final vote on a candidate and a policy.
Next week, students will be learning about the actual candidates, offices, and issues of the upcoming election and begin to make campaign posters for our WCS Candidate Forum.
The Week in Ms. O’s Room ( Math 5, Math 6 & ⅚ Science):
Please note: Math Club with Ms. O will begin on Monday, from 3-4 PM. Students may be picked up after 4 PM or stay in the homework club on house until the late bus departs at 4:30 PM. Ideal group size is no more than 8-10 students. If you would like your child to participate, please let me know. It can be a consistent, every week experience for your child, or it can be on a drop in basis. I may recommend your child to this experience or you may enroll your child. It is not a homework session, but is based on class instruction and foundational concepts to support classroom instruction.
Math 5: This was a week of Problem Strings! Problem Strings are a series of related computational problems that teach specific strategies for operating on numbers (it’s not open number surgery! Just adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing). We worked on two strategies this week, Doubling and Halving, and Ten Times, More or Less. Students are building generalizations about numbers that work every time! We also went back to the Brad’s Baseballs Problem to look more closely at volume and at surface area in order to measure the square units of cardboard necessary for each box design (for 24 baseballs).
Ongoing practice... writing a generalization...it’s hard! But practicing means that we are able to know what mathematicians know about numbers! AND...how to engage in Private Reasoning Time and Turn and Talk situations.
More intros to Moby Max! More on Moby Max next week...
Math 6: The week began with some review on the Factor and Product games and a quick quiz on factors. This quiz will be returned on Monday. We also began the second investigation of Prime Time, which involves finding common multiples of two numbers. Ask your 6th grader about the ferris wheel and cicada problem!
Students will be using Moby Max this year and should take the FACT Master and Placement test by early next week! More info on this soon...
Students chose a book this week as a mentor text for their Special Number Project. We will storyboard next week so students have the elements of a good children’s book and then work toward a first draft.
We also added a second entry to our Patterns in Nature Blog. At some point, I will invite you to comment on your child’s blog entry, so that you can see how their writing about mathematics is improving over time.
Science ⅚ - This week we researched a biome of our choice and reported out to the class about what makes each biome unique. It was an interesting practice of pursuing research for a very short time period and then learning how to speak in front of others! We ended our week with an introduction to plants in order to answer the question, how do plants get energy? Students planted grass for an upcoming engineering task and will be taking data on the rate at which green mountain grass seed grows. We will move from these observations to a discussion about how plants get energy for themselves through the process of photosynthesis and how this energy is then transferred through the food web.
The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
This week the 7th and 8th graders really started digging into political parties and the history of our country. During our morning time together our week started off with Independent Reading and responding to text through our Reading Logs. On Tuesday all of the students took a quick quiz to showcase their knowledge of punctuating titles of various works and how to use the right (not write) word in a sentence. As the week continued on we started talking about heroes. Students created stories about heroes in their writing journals and many students wanted to share their first draft writing. This was really great to see so early in the year, and it says a lot about the safe and comfortable learning environment our students have created in Humanities. Students also brainstormed some of the most common heroes, and many lists were taken up with none other than: political figures. This was a perfect transition into learning about the political parties and the role they place in our society. Students practiced close reading strategies on a couple articles, defined terms such as conservative and liberal, and even placed varying positions on political issues on the political spectrum! As we continue on our political path students will be focusing their studies on the current Vermont candidates running for a spot in the House of Representatives, and creating questions for the upcoming Candidate Forum!
During our afternoon time together our week started off with current events. Besides just watching CNN Student News, we watched an additional story featuring a top football player from Georgia. The students were really taken with his story, so if you are interested in watching it here is the link: College Football Star's Novel Story . As the week went on students discussed how our country’s history can have an impact on how we define being an American today. Students created lists of important documents, people, and events; they discovered that all of their lists had a few things in common. One of those things was every student listed the Declaration of Independence as one of the most important documents in our country’s history. From here we started our digging to understand what this document is really about. Over the period of 3 days students learned about the history and making of the Declaration of Independence, listened, read, and even re-read the document. Using dictionaries to define unknown words and discussions with their partner to find understanding, students were able to summarize each section and even break down several of the listed complaints about King George. The amount of work, critical thinking, and analyzation the students did was impressive! Our next tackle will be The Constitution and The Bill of Rights!
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP8
This week in 8th grade math we worked on finding the slope and y-intercept from two points, tables and graphs. Students had to access their understanding of where a line crosses the y and how to find that point when the table or points do not show the coordinate where “x” is zero. We also practiced how to find the y- intercept by plugging a point into the slope intercept form to find “b” which calls students to solve a multi-step process. We began exploring inequalities, which will be a major topic as the year goes on.
CMP7
Students completed their beautiful tessellations and described what form and transformations that their pattern showed. They are displayed on the bulletin board in my room. They were well done! We also had a Geometry lab, where students rotated through 12 stations and utilized protractors and rulers to solve problems and create a variety of geometric figures. One big goal for the Shapes and Designs Unit is to see the relationships, patterns and rules that govern regular and non-regular polygons. We rounded out the week with exploring the internal sum of irregular polygons.
Science 7th/8th
Students were asked to consider what factors allow seeds to grow, where plants get their mass to grow from seeds to trees and what energy fuels these processes. Using our brand new microscopes, we observed and drew plant cells and animal cells. We created closed environments to grow seedlings to explore whether the container will gain, lose or maintain mass. Students researched questions about cellular respiration and photosynthesis and shared their research with the class..
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