Notes from Ms. Sherman-
Last week it seems that the after school permission slip did not make it to the Voyager voice. Hopefully, this week it shows up correctly. Below is a list of after school opportunities this week.
Homework Center- Monday and Wednesday 3:00-4:30
Organization with Ms. Sherman- 3:00-4:00
⅞ Math Help with Ms. Quatt- 3:00-4:00
After School on Voyager House Permission Slip
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
Conference Note: ⅚ teachers would like to know if you are planning to meet on conference day, October 17th. If you are not planning to schedule a conference on that day, please email your core teacher. This will allow us to offer longer conferences to parents who would like one.
There will be other times available for parents who are not making a conference on conference day.
⅚ Humanities:
Our week kicked off with Reading Cafe. Students searched for Tier 2 words (fancy words) to add to the word lists in their Reading Response Notebook. We will be making word maps and doing other activities with these words throughout the school year. For our current events activity, students worked in teams to find examples of local, national, and international news stories in the Burlington Free Press. Students cut out the articles and taped them to the chart at the front of the classroom.
We kicked off our preparation for the Candidate Forum with an introduction to the candidates and offices of the upcoming election. The students selected candidates to create a campaign poster for, researching the key issues for their candidate. The students were excited to learn that a number of major candidates and current office holders will be attending the forum.
We are also wrapping up our rule writing assignment. Students are preparing to send letters to our principal with suggestions for some rule changes. They self and peer edited their work, and used a letter generator to prepare a formal letter. Ms. Parks has agreed to speak to the students about the process for making rules in our building.
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
Conference Note: ⅚ teachers would like to know if you are planning to meet on conference day, October 17th. If you are not planning to schedule a conference on that day, please email your core teacher. This will allow us to offer longer conferences to parents who would like one.
There will be other times available for parents who are not making a conference on conference day.
Math 5: This week students began deliberate conversations about factors and mutiples. We played games where students needed to apply understanding of factors and multiples and then worked making factor lists. We also learned how to use our factor lists to categorize a number as either prime or composite.
Students completed a quick quiz to assess their current comfort level with the material taught thus far. Look forward to seeing those scores on Jupiter Grades.
Math 6: We have been busy! Students are working on problem solving using common factors and multiples. Last week we looked at events that happen at the same time...a common multiples strategy would be perfect! and situations when fair sharing is required...a common factors strategy would be perfect here! These are difficult problems to understand; they go beyond making factor and multiples lists! They require a deep understanding of why those strategies work. If we have 30 people attending a barbecue and hotdogs are packaged in sets of 12 and buns in packages of 8, and we wanted everyone to have the same amount with no leftovers, how might we determine how many packages we need of each?
Our next concept/skill is prime factorizations, and students began looking at factor strings for 840 today. This skill will factor in to our previous work on common factors and multiples and bring new meaning to our work. The goal is to get to generalizing so that we can find efficient strategies for solving these kinds of problems that goes beyond making mile long lists of multiples.
Students are making progress on our Special Number project. We used a graphic organizer yesterday to map out our story. The focus is on the properties of numbers, so don’t be shy about asking your child how they are progressing on this project. Due Date: October 15
Science ⅚: More and more plants! Our grass is growing (for an engineering task next week on green roof technology) and our fall veggies are enjoying the warm sunshine! Students are monitoring growth and recording this in their science notebook while learning about the importance of plants on Earth. Plants hold important roles beyond their value to us and others as food, and the fact that they provide oxygen for us. The engineering task will hold some important learning about the role plants play in cooling the environment. If you would like to join us to watch the engineering task next week, feel free to come in. Mr. Merrill’s testing day is Thursday beginning at 1:15 and Ms. O’s testing day is Friday at 1:15. Let me know if you would like to come.
The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
This week’s Voice brought to you by: Grace Colbeth one of our 8th Grade Students!
AM: We kicked off this week by settling into a IRM. After 40 minutes of reading, students were then asked to answer a few questions about what they read. On Tuesday we continued our work on political parties, and developing the students opinions on political issues. Taxes, defense, immigration, and energy were some of the main issues we discussed. Each student was given a handout titled “One Big Party?” that gave each student a chance to think independently (no pun intended) about their political stance on our countries big issues. A new project was launched “Where do I stand? A Political ME Party”. The project was designed to give a pair of students (or worked independently if they chose) a chance to create a new political party. We continued work on this all week, developing our stances on political issues. Today we ended the week voting on 2 political parties join our now 2-Party system. The hope was that we could vote in 2 new political parties to change our system to a Multi-Party system. Each student was given a ballot and the class to go around to each party’s pitches and decide on the one they thought was the best. We counted up the ballots and in 8th grade first place: _____ second place: ______ and in 7th grade first place: _____ and in second place: ______. The winning teams are being asked to create a political figure and “participate” in the November mock election.
PM: Current events Monday is how we always start our weeks! We watched CNN student news and debated for the remaining few minutes on court cases that were brought to the supreme courts. We continued our work on the Declaration of Independence and started a in-class project focusing on the 7 Basic Principles of the Constitution. We had about two class periods to work, and did a gallery walk enjoying posters that we made in the past few classes. We also took some time to reflect on our learning. To close the week, we launched another “project” we’d like to call “Political Speed Dating”. Every student was given a political figure that represents a different branch in the 3 branches of government at the state and national level. Students are being asked to learn about the branch of government that their political figure represents, so that on Monday they can conduct interviews with their classmates to learn about other branches. It should be a fun and entertaining class to come to after the weekend! Some students are even thinking about dressing up!
PM: Current events Monday is how we always start our weeks! We watched CNN student news and debated for the remaining few minutes on court cases that were brought to the supreme courts. We continued our work on the Declaration of Independence and started a in-class project focusing on the 7 Basic Principles of the Constitution. We had about two class periods to work, and did a gallery walk enjoying posters that we made in the past few classes. We also took some time to reflect on our learning. To close the week, we launched another “project” we’d like to call “Political Speed Dating”. Every student was given a political figure that represents a different branch in the 3 branches of government at the state and national level. Students are being asked to learn about the branch of government that their political figure represents, so that on Monday they can conduct interviews with their classmates to learn about other branches. It should be a fun and entertaining class to come to after the weekend! Some students are even thinking about dressing up!
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP8
This week our stellar mathematicians completed our review of the slope intercept form and began delving into non-linear functions. Students completed a partner quiz where they collaborated to show what they know about the main concepts we have been studying. Students utilized notes from their math journals and came to consensus about their responses. After the quiz we investigated a nonlinear function called inverse variation. Although we unsuccessfully conducted an experiment with pennies and the tipping point of a ruler to see an inverse variation, we were able to see examples of this relationship in the sides of a rectangle with a fixed area. We reviewed how to solve algebraic equations where fractions were involved.
CMP 7
There was an amazing show of perseverance and grit in class this week as we explored the relationship between exterior and interior angles of irregular and regular polygons to find a rule that we could use with all polygons. Students compared and contrasted convex and concave polygons and experimented with finding angle measurements algebraically and without protractors. I truly applaud the work our students did this week to move their math thinking forward. Students completed a Partner quiz and had an opportunity to utilize an IPad app called Hands on 1. This application allows students to balance single and multi-step algebraic equations.
Science 7th/8th
We finally laid our seedlings within the petri dishes to rest. We found that The Law of Conservation was not upheld with our “closed” systems, because they were not truly closed. Instead of our seedling mass remaining the same, they lost mass! We discussed what may have happened and how human errors occurred. We explored the flow of energy and matter in the ecosystem and played a fun game with producers, herbivores, carnivores and decomposers. We read several articles on the role of the sun’s energy in the ecosystem and how energy and mass move. Finally, we began our Energy Flow through the Ecosystem project which will investigate Next Generation Science Standards around ecology. Students will be working on models that explain the phenomena they are exploring and in turn they will engage the class.
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