Announcements:
Our First Event is our Annual Family Night and Talent Show - December 10th, 6:30-8:30pm.
We'll begin our night in the cafeteria enjoying treats and drinks (Please see the link below to sign up to support our event).
A $10 donation per family is suggested and all who attend receive a raffle prize ticket.
We also have a new home site for FAP information. All of our event dates and information will be posted there as well.
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R E D R I B B O N WEEK
November 11th – November 13th 2014
Dear 5th-8th Grade Students and Families,
Red Ribbon Week is a national event designed to help kids make healthy choices. The red
ribbon is a symbol of living substance free. This year’s theme is “Love yourself-Be drug free.”
Here are four ways to get involved next week at WCS:
1. Red Ribbon Theme Days:
Tuesday (Nov 11th) - SHADE OUT DRUGS – Wear Sunglasses or crazy
Wednesday (Nov 12th) – Stay in the Game -Wear our school colors, blue +
gold, or sports gear
Thursday (Nov 13th) –Red – Get Real – Wear red
- Everyone that dresses up will get a ribbon that day during lunch.
- At the end of the three days, there will be prizes for anyone who has all three ribbons.
2. Fit Facts – Everyday, at lunch, there will be a “fit fact” question with raffled prizes from local
businesses. Look on the school SAP web page to review facts at home for a better chance to
3. Contract for Life – Parents and kids, read this over, talk about your expectations to be
substance free and safe and sign it together! Have your child bring in the signed form with
their name and house clearly marked. All contracts will be entered into a raffle for a prize from
a local business and will be returned to you after Red Ribbon Week. Contract For Life
4. Young Writer’s Project – In partnership with CY, Connecting Youth, Young Writers Project is
offering a special writing prompt that can be completed at home or in school. The prompt is
“How do you manage peer influence?” and the deadline for submission is Nov 17th. Selected
entries will win cash awards and prizes. For more information click on this link
www.youngwritersproject.org.
Thanks so much for your participation in Red Ribbon Week and for your help in getting the word out
–You are too S.M.A.R.T. to start!
Signed,
WCS Vermont Kids Against Tobacco (VKAT)
Ms. Sherman:
Just a reminder that organizational club will be running for only a few more weeks. Then the next session will start up in December for “tough reading 101.” This will be for all types of readers. The focus will be on difficult text and how to read them when they feel really hard. Send questions my way to: csherman@cssu.org
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
We kicked the week off with Reading Cafe and current events. Students completed a picture activity and read an article about Malala, the Nobel Peace Prize winner. On Tuesday, students participated in a mock public hearing, as a part of our study of the legislative branch. The hearing was on a bill that would prevent smoking in public places. Students played the Representative and her staff, or were members of a group (from clean air to the tobacco growers) that had to voice their opinions and concerns about the bill. On Wednesday afternoon we went to see the Swift house performance of Romeo and Juliet. In preparation of the performance, we had a read aloud of a Romeo and Juliet picture book.
On Thursday morning we studied voting. We watched a short BrainPop video on the subject and discussed a Burlington Free Article on Vermont’s low voter turnout. We then had a debate - “Should voting be required by law?” Students searched for reasons and facts to support their position and wrote a short opinion paper.
To end the week, we learned how to take Cornell Notes. This format is widely used and is an effective way to organize information. I modeled how to set up the notes in their Humanities notebook, and students learned how to use clues in the text to identify main ideas and find supporting details. We took notes on the legislative branch and will also take notes on the executive and judicial branches in preparation for an upcoming test. We also had a chance to play some fun icivics games on the 3 Branches of Government. Students had to use all three branches to make 10 laws.
Book Fair - ⅚ grade students will visit the Book Fair on Tuesday at 9:30.
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
Math 5- This week students worked on building a deeper sense of understanding of fractions. We spent many days using models to justify our thinking about addition and subtraction problems and also focusing on listening to understand. When a student is able to revoice what they heard their partner say, they are really considering the value of their ideas and how they are the same and different as their own. We had an assessment today on addition and subtraction of fractions based on the clock face and on the dollar bill. Hopefully things will look good. All signs point to proficiency, as we had a busy week of pulling small groups to address misconceptions and gaps in understanding.
Math 6 - Students are developing deeper understanding of ratios by learning about unit rates. Unit rates are ratios in which one of the two numbers being compared is a 1. We had a great visual of this ratio, one that we are all familiar with - 2 tomatoes for $3.00. We talked about the possible unit rates for this ratio. 1 tomato for $1.50 is a unit rate because one of the two numbers being related is a 1. How about the other ratio? Well, sometimes it’s not so neat and clean. ⅔ of a tomato for $1.00! We talked about that fact that some unit rates work better than others! Students completed a quick quiz today to assess learning in the unit thus far.
Science ⅚ - Students played a Predator Prey game Monday facilitated by Will Moody, an 8th grader, who was part of a team of writers working on modeling ecosystems at the ⅞ level. The game demonstrated overpopulation of the wolf population as well as what happens when populations become scarce. It was a Sharks and Minnows type game and the students had fun running around outside. We also introduced the topic of Natural Selection and model/simulated this for several days to understand how biological adaptations might influence the size and existence of populations. Students are responsible for building an Interactive Word Map to show that they understand vocabulary terms introduced during long block and an ability to associate those words to each other. Interactive word maps are used to remember important vocabulary by relating it. “Words need to be taught in relation to other words. Words representing concepts are not taught in a vacuum, but rather in contexts that illustrate how they are associated with other words and ideas.” (Content-Area Vocabulary: A Critical Key to Conceptual Learning by Janis M. Harmon and Karen D. Wood). This is the hope from this exercise. It will be done by Tuesday, a review for final assessment will take place Wednesday and then students will complete the final assessment during long block Thursday and Friday.
The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
This week in Humanities started like any other with our Independent Reading Mondays and CNN Student News. On Tuesday our 7/8 learning community took a fantastic trip to Montpelier for the “Under the Golden Dome” tour. All students were able to take a guided tour of our State House, participate in a mock trial in the Vermont Supreme Court, and view some great exhibits in the Vermont History Museum. Throughout the day I had students giving me really positive feedback on the experience, and that it was way more fun than they had thought! Students were able to make great connections to our curriculum, sit in the actual seats of our state justices, and ask really great questions that even stumped our tour guides. On Wednesday we returned to our normal learning schedule!
Our morning time together was filled with reading, leaving tracks in our text, and prepping for our debate on Tuesday. We’ve been continuing to focus on our big question, “What does it mean to be an American Citizen?” and next week we will be starting our big 5 paragraph argument essay. To prepare for our argument essay around youth immigration, students have been gathering a lot of research and knowledge through our class time together. Students have been reading articles in Jr. Scholastic Magazine and New York Times Upfront Magazine to prepare. We have had independent reading time with the articles, class read alouds, discussions, and pushing the “Why?”. Their knowledge is being put to the test first in a debate, taking place on Tuesday, around birthright citizenship in the U.S. Students have been working really hard to prepare for their debate, finding strong evidence, using persuasive speech, and working as a team.
Our afternoon time together has been packed with work time for our citizenship project. Students are having a lot of fun with this project already, so I cannot wait to see their data and reflections! By the end of the week all groups had created their citizenship tests and were very excited to start handing them out to adults!
Book Fair 7/8: 7th and 8th graders will be attending the FAP Book Fair on Thursday, November 13.
The Break-Away Project - Global Connections with New Zealand: This week some of our students took part in our 3rd Skype with Blockhouse Bay Intermediate School. During our Skype time together we’ve been talking about culture, cultural differences, current events, and national identity. In this week’s Skype we talked about how the new Prime Minister of New Zealand wants to create a new flag to represent New Zealand. We challenged students from Blockhouse Bay and WCS to create flags to represent each other’s country. WCS students created a new flag for New Zealand, and Blockhouse Bay created for the U.S. This was a very fun challenge and a very funny exchange. Students also talked about the ever-changing weather, pop culture, and upcoming school events. Our Voyager students had a great time and engaged in wonderful conversation. Our next Skype will be: Monday, November 10th.
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP8
What happens when your decay exponential model is not aperfect”? We explored how to find the trend of a decay curve and to find the decay factor and rate. We reviewed the rules governing exponents and enjoyed a pretty “cheesy” video to review the rules. We are finishing up this unit with fractional exponents and next week will bring the Growing, Growing, Growing Unit Test. Students should definitely review growth factor/rate and decay factor/rate in relation to tables and equations.
CMP7
This week we broadened our math operations to include the Distributive property. Students explored the factored and expanded form of expressions. We also investigated more complex equations using Order of Operations. We were a little flummoxed by the differences between the following exponents, (-2)2 and – 22. The parentheses make all the difference. We are finishing up Accentuate the Negative and will have a Unit Assessment next week. Students need to practice their rules of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing positive and negative numbers.
Science 7th/8th
This week we put on the finishing touches on our mousetrap engineering lab reports and began an investigation into Newton’s 2nd Law of Motion. We experimented by changing the mass of a moving car to see how its’ force moves a stationary car. This simulation is similar to waiting at a stoplight and someone plows into you from behind. We used similar toy cars and attached pennies to the exterior of the moving car before we sent it rolling down an elevated track. Students began to see the relationship that mass has in the force of an object. We conjectured whether the relationship between mass and the distance the stationary car travelled was linear or nonlinear
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