Week of January 27

Ski and Ride Academic Reminder:  If your child does Ski and Ride on Fridays, we would like to encourage you to support (and maybe nag a little!) about work completion.  We will try to check in all homework by Wednesdays so that you can plan each week as to whether your child should go or not.  Thanks!

CMP8

How do parabolas reflect their quadratic equations?  Using the IPad and the Desmos graphing calculator, we explored a series of quadratic functions to see what would happen when we changed the coefficients in front of the variables.  We then investigated tables from linear, exponential and quadratic equations to see what patterns we could find with first and second differences.  Finally, we explored jumping and falling objects using the rate of acceleration.  We will be finishing up this unit in the next week.

CMP7

Rates, ratios and proportions were the order of business in class this week. Students used proportions to find unit rates and solve problems with unknown values.  We investigated the “constant of proportionality” and reviewed for our Comparing and Scaling Unit Test that took place on Friday.

Science 7th/8th

What role do the organelles play in the life of the cell?  What happens if an organelle doesn’t function properly?   We saw an excellent Ted talk on the history of cell theory and read and took notes on cellular reproduction.  Students participated in a microscope lab on mitosis. Finally we saw some excerpts from the BBC movie on the “Secret Life of Cells.”  It was a very science filled week.   

The Week in Ms.Wesnak’s Room

7/8 Humanities: As this week unfolded so did both of our final projects for the trimester. For AM Humanities we’ve been focusing on stories. We’ve been asking questions such as: What is a story? How can stories be told? What makes a great story? To answer these questions we’ve been taking a look at plays and how stories are told through play form. We’ve looked at Broadway musicals through the PBS program “Broadway: The American Musical”, and learned about some of the stories that took the stage through 20th Century History. We learned about how important the characters and setting are in a play, and we also learned about how song and dialogue can tell the audience a lot about the story. After our work with musicals we took a closer look at what some may call one of the best stories of all time, and it just so happened to be originally written in play form. This story is “Romeo and Juliet”. Our classes took a look at one scene in particular: The Balcony Scene. Students did partner readings in class, and some took part in a performance for our class. We then learned that one story with a great plotline can be performed and told in many different ways, including being retold by garden gnomes in the movie “Gnomeo and Juliet”. Students are now working on their final project which is to work in a group and write their own historical fiction 5-minute play! So far I am hearing some very interesting and fun ideas! This project will be due after the Voyager Play Unit. What’s more fun than 1 project? 2 projects! Our PM Humanities classes are working on their Cold War projects. These projects are giving our students the chance to take a look at a specific person or event from the Cold War and learn a bit more about it! Students will be sharing out their gained knowledge through an interactive class presentation. Each presentation has to include a Google Drive Presentation covering the 5 W’s of their topic, a whole class activity, and the group needs to provide the class with some kind of handout. Students have been working very hard in their groups for this, and I can’t wait to see the outcome next week! Look for some of the presentations on the 7/8 Humanities website!

The Week in Ms. O’s

Math 5:  Multiplication menus and division.  Ask your child to solve 457 divide 13.  It will give you a sense why conceptual scaffolding works so well for students.  It’s been a week of practicing and relying on this strategy to understand the mechanics of a partial quotient method.

Math 6:  Students in 6th grade had their 3rd studio class of the year on Wednesday and experienced a lot of disequilibrium as a result of fraction division.  Now don’t go telling your kids that we multiply by the reciprocal.  We are building trust in the equivalent fractions strategy which may lead to some deeper understanding of the algorithm we all learned but can not explain!  Try doing it!  It’s impossible!  Students are ugghhing about math reflections.  Teacher advice:  They are learning how to explain their thinking and are doing an amazing job!  Just roll your eyes and ignore them!  

Science ⅚:  I apologize for missing so much class this week!  I had three professional days in a row and they all affected pm classes.  In my absence, students built some understanding of the physics and engineering of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.  Awesome videos on NBC Learn.  

We ended our week attending an UP CLOSE Circus.  Students worked with materials to see what changed when viewing objects through these materials.  Without telling them as much, we are moving toward microscopes and why they were such an important engineering innovation for seeing the MICRO World, our new theme and unit.

February 6 NEED Volunteers:  Want to help monitor some microscope stations? Two time slots:  9:30-11:30 and 1:10-2:50.  Let me know if you can help!

Mr. Merrill’s ⅚ Humanities Wrap Up

The mounting tensions between the North and the South in the 1850’s eventually thrust the United States into Civil War. This week, students explored slavery and some of the important concepts and events leading up to disunion.  We used primary documents - photos of slave quarters, Reward posters, and excepts from slave narratives to discuss life as a slave and the resistance movement during this period of time.  Students created word maps for some important vocabulary words, responded to prompts in their writer’s notebooks, and completed the Mission US - Flight to Freedom game.  Students had a vocabulary quiz and an “As I See It” discussion on Friday to wrap up the week.

Week of January 20

Literature Groups:  Slavery and the Holocaust have been topics of conversation in all literature groups this week.  There have been very meaningful conversations happening with students around these topics.  We have appreciated the interest and care with which students have been talking about these tragic historical events.  Please ask your child about what they are reading and learning during lit group time.

Advisory:  Many advisory groups have been focusing on character strength and we are moving toward a project where students will identify someone in the world (past, present, and maybe even you!) who they admire because of his/her strength of character. Ask about advisory time.

Mr. Merrill’s Humanities ⅚ Wrap Up

This week students focused on completing their informative writing papers.  Students completed a first draft, self and peer edited, received teacher feedback, and revised their papers.  We also started to prepare for our next unit - The Road to Disunion and the Civil War.  We will start with the issue of slavery.   Students participated in a number of activities that focused on cause and effect and the concept of resistance.  We looked at both real life examples and historical events to better understand these concepts.  We will be using the Mission US - Flight to Freedom multimedia interactive game to put students in the shoes of a 14 year old slave, when choosing to resist will have both individual and history making consequences.

The Week with Ms. O

Math 5:  This week we wrapped up Unit 3 with some revisions to our assessment and have moved on to estimation and division.  Our focus questions for the week were ‘how do we estimate and then compare that estimate to the actual solution to a problem?”  We spent many days estimating for simpler division problems like 26 divided by 4 and then moved into multiplication menus, designed to help us problem solve division problems that are more sophisticated like 108 divided by 15.   

Math 6:  We spent this week making sense of fraction of fraction problems and then searching for generalizations that might always be true.  For example with the problem ½ of ½, we stated a conjecture that this problem has a solution that is smaller than both original fractions.  This may not always be true, like in the case 1 ⅓ of ⅘.  We also conjectured that “groups of” might indicate multiplication and that maybe even the word “of” might mean multiplication.  We did not skip right to the algorithm for multiplying fractions but have arrived at that ourselves, through multiple solutions to a problem, searching for regularity (using 3 groups of 12 an example where multiplication is the operation to use to solve), and focusing on mathematical models to explain thinking.  These topics and others we are discussing this year, are designed to build deep conceptual understanding for use in upper level math.  Don’t be afraid to drop a fraction multiplication problem on the table and see what your son or daughter can do!

Science ⅚:  We worked hard on our Interactive Word Maps, a way to make associations with words in science rather than just getting a list and defining it.  They are great!  Amazing what those kiddos learn!  We have also taken a science assessment this week on Electromagnetism and will move on to microscopes/cells/human body concepts next!

Special Request:  I need helpers to come in and work with the UVM Project Micro team.  They are scheduled for February 6 from 9:30-11:30 and 1:10-2:50.  If you would be willing to staff a station, we could use your help!  Email me!

Ms Q's Corner

CMP8

What ways can we ascertain the "x" intercept, "y" intercept, line of symmetry and maximum or minimum point of a parabola.  We looked for strategies to seamlessly move about the landscape of quadratics.  We  created a public record of our work and explored  a pattern of triangular number which is an example of a quadratic function.

CMP7

This week our class explored unit rates and how they can be interpreted.  For example, we can determine the gas mileage of a car by finding the unit rate of miles per gallon.   However, we could also interpret the unit rate of a gallons per mile. We rounded out the week with  a check-up and began looking at the cost of cars related to mark-ups and commissions.

Science 7/8th

This week we delved into how materials pass in and out of cells and  the concepts of diffusion and osmosis.  Students performed a series of experiments using plant and  animal cells placed in different media. (saline or sugar solutions)  Using the microscopic evidences we were able to see what happens to cells  when the  external environment is changed and how osmosis works to try to reach equilibrium  inside and outside of the cell.  After the series of experiments, students created a claim and evidence statement and had a “scientist meeting” to discuss their findings.

The Week in Ms.Wesnak’s Room

7/8 Humanities: This week in Humanities we started our work around stories/narratives and looking at 20th Century history through the lens of The Cold War. In the afternoon classes we started off by having students walk through our “20th Century Timeline Gallery”. Students were able to actually see how long some wars went on for, noticing that some spanned decades. Students took notice of not only wars and conflicts, but of inventions and natural disasters spanning from 1900 - present day. Once our gallery walk was complete we started to dig into our study on The Cold War. Students all viewed a documentary while taking notes, and read an article from Junior Scholastic. In class we discussed should it really have been called a “war”? What other name would work for this major time period and all of the events that it consisted of? Students have also started to realize that The Cold War was the common denominator for a lot of other events and conflicts from our history. In the morning classes our studies have been focused around stories, and how stories can be told in a variety of ways. For our narrative unit we are focusing on how stories are told through plays and musicals. We are using the PBS series “Broadway: The American Musical” as the backbone of our studies. We started by listening to songs from “Oklahoma!” and “The Sound of Music” focusing on how songs can explain the characters and setting of a story. We also learned that plays can also teach some lessons from our own history, and can be used to help showcase the times. Students took a stab at creating their own Broadway show in the challenge titled “Insta-Broadway”. In this challenge table groups were asked to create a musical based on a historical event from a decade that they picked from our “Bowl of Fate”. Students were guided in their work to build this musical by creating the staples that are included in any story: the Plot (beginning, middle, end), the characters, the setting, and the lesson or moral. The 8th Graders even got to the final step, which was to write a song to go with their Insta-Broadway production! Yes, some of them even performed!

Week of January 13

Reminder: No school Monday, Jan 20th in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day

FAPAC January Meeting Highlights

To: Voyager Parents

From: Monica Hutt, FAPAC Representative

Happy NewYear! The FAP  held  its January meeting on Thursday, January 9, 2014. As the parent-teacher organization for Williston schools, the FAP meetings are open to all. We will send highlights of the meeting each month but if you are interested in reviewing the complete minutes, you can read them HERE. The following are just a few highlights from our meeting.

Administration Report

Walter Nardelli, District Principal, talked with the group about the school budget and the intent of the administration to minimize any potential increases.  Please see the full minutes for more on this very important topic.

SPARK Academy sign up is happening now for the next 5 week Enrichment session; there are many exciting opportunities for student enrichment through the program.

Amazon Opportunity

We have an agreement with Amazon, every time you shop, at no cost to you, money is donated to the Williston FAP. To help generate that revenue, use this link:  AmazonLink:

Williston Annual Fund

Contributions are still coming in. The Annual Fund funds field trips for every child in Williston in addition to other programs.   In order to keep these opportunities available to every Williston student, please make your donation online now by clicking HERE.

Upcoming FAP Events

January 22, 2014 6:30-8:00 p.m.- Technological Empowerment: Parenting with Technology- This will be a presentation focused on media and its impact on our kids. Also included: workshop and 1:1 support on parental controls on your own devices.  

Save the Date- May 17, 2014 -Williston Runs for Education! 5k Run and Walk and Kids Fun Run

Save the Date- Lake Monsters for Williston families on Sunday, June 29, 2014

CHAMPLAIN VALLEY UNION HIGH SCHOOL - AN INVITATION

To 8th Grade Parents and Students of the Class of 2018

8th Grade Student & Parent Night

Champlain Valley Union High School

CVU Gym, Thursday, January 30, 6-8 p.m.

This evening will provide you and your son/daughter an introduction to the academic and elective programs they will experience in the 9th grade.

Mr. Merrill’s ⅚ Humanities Wrap Up

This week students completed their research for the informational writing piece, completed an outline and started typing.  The focus of the paper is on the events that contributed to the growth and expansion of the United States.  Students selected three topics to focus on and build their case.  Ask your student which three events he/she selected for the paper.  Students will be using a google doc to write their papers.  Feedback from teachers, along with a self and peer editing activity will be the next steps before students work on a final draft late next week.  

Ms. Q’s Corner

CMP8

Q: How does a ghost solve a quadratic equation?

A: By completing the scare.

This week our fearless CMP8 students forged on in our understanding or quadratic equations in our Frogs Fleas and Painted Cubes unit.  Students wrote equivalent expanded and factored equations and became more fluent going from one form to another.  Using visual models we “completed the square” to make sense of the terms within a quadratic equations.  We took a pause on Friday to put quadratics in action by building and firing marshmallow catapults.

CMP7

The highlight of the week was the introduction of O.J. concentrate to our 7th graders. They had no point of reference for the CMP example of creating a ratio between juice concentrate and water, so we made some juice.  We also made scientific conjectures about the increase in volume to our juice solution when using solid concentrate versus powder concentrate.    We worked on solving problems by setting up proportions.  We ended the week with a fun proportion game.

Science 7th/8th

We began our week with the completion of our Geology Unit Test and the beginning of our Biology unit.  Students read and highlighted a chapter on cells, organelles and cellular functions.  We reviewed the parts of a microscope, practiced making slides and focusing our specimens on low, medium and high power.  We continued our microscope practice with a lab that explored cells and tissues.  Our big science question was: How does the form of a cell or tissue relate to its function?

This Week in Ms. O’s Class

Math 5:  We are completing our Geometry investigations today with our end of Unit 3 Assessment.  We did plenty of review in class and students are ready to move on to fractions.  We’ve had lots of practice and there’s been plenty of new learning about rotational and reflective symmetry, area, volume and surface area, and properties of polygons.  

Math 6:  This week, we began our new book, Let’s Be Rational, all about fraction operations.  5th and 6th grade lays a nice foundation for this reviewed learning (addition and subtraction) and this new learning about multiplication and division of fractions.  We have done some really deep thinking about what it means to take a fraction of a fraction, building generalizations about the resulting quantity (student conjectures are that the resulting number will always be smaller, but then we have some questions about negative fractions still…) and trying to match an operation with fraction of fraction problems.  We did arrive yesterday at take ½ of a number seems to be the same as dividing by 2!  But we are still yet unsure about what to do with fractions that are not unit fractions, like taking ⅔ of ¾.  The exploration continues.

I wanted to express my pleasure with the efforts of your sixth grade student!  I have noticed a big commitment to writing in math, whether in class to show and explain thinking or in end of investigation reflections.  Research about writing shows that writing in all learning areas has long term, positive effects on writing proficiency.  Please continue to encourage writing in mathematics.  It makes a difference!

⅚ Science: This week has been a whirlwind of writing, electrical generation, and summary!  We are closing in on some end of unit projects as we close out our electricity and magnetism unit.  I have been so pleased at the progress students have made on understanding foundational concepts in electromagnetism.  You wouldn’t believe just how expert the students sound, like they have been physical scientists and engineers.  We had one exploration this week, in the midst of our report writing ( a collaborative project with Mr. Merrill) and in our Word Wizarding through yet another Map it! Project.  Yesterday, we looked at electrical generation in a Shakelight (a flashlight that you shake in order to generate electricity, a hand crank generator that lights an LED, and a wind turbine that generates voltage.  It was a new understanding that moving magnets around a coil can generate electricity.  This added new value to our work with motors, because generators are the opposite energy transfer.  Motors take chemical energy or electrical energy to move a magnet to then move something else (mechanical) while a generator takes mechanical energy to generate electrical energy.  Pretty cool gadgets.  Science assessment next Wednesday.  Review in ongoing.

The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room - Brought to you by Doug Schmidt

**Quick Note from Ms.W** : As you may have noticed, for 7/8 Humanities we will be having guest student writers each week. I hope you enjoy their perspective and wrap-up of the week!  

7/8 Humanities: Hello everyone! This week started as normal with Independent Reading Monday and CNN Student News in the Humanities classes. Although, some 8th grade chorus students were away at CVU for the kick off to 9th grade chorus during the morning class period. In the Tuesday A.M. class, we released the new big question “How does the written word change our perspective of history and light the path to our global future?” In the P.M. class, all students reflected on the 1960’s stations. For 8th grades, that was before the CVU meeting in the auditorium. They grow up so fast! In the Wednesday-Friday A.M. classes, all students had a work day on their interview/eyewitness to history projects. In the P.M. classes, all students started working on their group timeline project. Each group is making a timeline for 1 decade from 1900 to the present day. On Thursday of this week, 8th grade band members took a trip to CVU for the kick off to 9th grade band. They were gone through the A.M. class period. That was our week! We have no school on Monday which means we will be missing our time with Carl Azuz :(. Have a happy long weekend!

Telegraph Office of 1844

Week of January 6

Mr. Merrill’s ⅚ Humanities Wrap Up

Students started the week with our usual reading cafe and current events activities.  Along with updating their book lists, students identified tier 2 words from their reading to represent in Frayer models.  We also completed pre and post activities in preparation for our field trip to the Flynn Theater.  For our Aladdin experience, we considered the production elements (masks, puppetry, and magic), the history of the story and the art of storytelling.  We also used a variety of matinee activities to prepare students for watching a performance that has little dialogue.  After the performance, we reflected on the plot and themes of the production, diagraming and making connections along the way.  Finally, we started our Westward Expansion informational writing project. Students were introduced to our electronic and print resources in the library, thanks to Karen Hennig.  They also started the research portion of the process, which will wrap up early next week.  

CMP8

This week was a bit abridged with our trip to the Flynn.  We continued to look at the anatomy of a quadratic equation and where quadratic functions are utilized.  The maximum point of a parabola and the x intercepts were explored.  The class will continue to create visual models in order to explain and solve quadratic relationships.

CMP7  

This week we completed our scale drawings.  The class has been working very hard to create similar and skewed drawings of their cartoons.   Their wonderful masterpieces will be going up in the house next week.  We began our new unit “Comparing and Scaling” which investigates ratios, rates and proportions.

Science 7/8

Filling in the geological gaps was the order of business this week.  Readings, discussion, videos and timelines were explored to pull together our understanding of earth's forces, rock cycle, water cycle and layers of earth.  Students worked on their review and created cards for the unit test.  This comprehensive unit test took place on Friday.

The Week in Ms.Wesnak’s Room - Brought to you by Halina Vercessi and Olivia Voth!

7/8 Humanities: This week in Humanities started with some good ole Independent Reading Monday and thoughtful book analysis. Along with the many wonders of the warm and fuzzy, Carl Azuz, in the afternoon. On Tuesday, in the AM, we had our “person and event” due for our interview essay. Later on, in PM, we started our rotation stations for our 60’s unit! Wednesday brought us on a trip to the Flynn where we experienced the colorful and magical adventures of “Aladdin and Other Enchanting Tales”. The wild magic tricks and intricate puppeteering brought us to a world where genies grant wishes and boxes of gold appear out of nowhere. 7/8 Humanities PM sent us back, once again, to the 1960s and so brings us over the hump of the week! Thursday delivered us a very FUN grammar quiz. The plus, we got to say bingo, and say “hello” in another language when we passed it in! We went back to the 60s in PM and completed our stations! There was one particular station that we couldn’t help but enjoy! Ms. Wesnak prepared for us one of her fantastical and famous simulations. This one was focused around showing us what it was like to be a soldier during the Vietnam War! Today is Friday! In the AM, we worked on preparing our interview questions for the lovely parents and grandparents and other random lucky associates out there who get to have a sophisticated conversation about 20th Century events with a 7th or 8th Grader. I hope you enjoyed that run-on sentence and have a lovely weekend!

-Olivia and Halina

The Week in Ms.O’s Class

Math 5: We are moving towards deep understanding in geometry and have begun the downhill slide toward the assessment.  We have spent this week doing some healthy review, reinstruction, and introducing new concepts related to 3-D solids, that I hope will lead to full proficiency on the assessment.  Kathy and I have continued to explore the coteaching model, so you may have heard that I gave up the reigns a few times this week to Kathy as I scanned the room and supported students individually.  Topics of Review this week...properties of polygons, the development of polygon riddles to reinforce our understanding of those properties.  New this week...the topic of 3-D measurement!  Introduction of attributes of geometric solids and a fun exploration of volume across a number of settings.  We built three dimensional solids with magna tiles, took them apart with zoam tools, measurement of liquid volume, measurement of rectangular prisms and the age old question of why do we care?!  Our assessment for Unit 3 will take place next Friday.

Math 6:  We began investigations in our new book, Let’s Be Rational.  This book extends and deepens our understanding of Comparing Bits and Pieces into operations with fractions.  There are rich problem solving pieces that strengthen skills practiced in the last unit and will move students into multiplication and division of fractions and how we know when to multiply and divide them.  I have already uncovered some misconceptions but also feel great about some of the prerequisite skills needed to do well in this area of math!  

Science ⅚:I didn’t really know if it would all work...the telegraph thing and all, but it did!  We set up two telegraph offices this week in our class and sent Morse Code back and forth to each other.  How does this relate?  A telegraph is an electromagnet and its use coincided with Westward Expansion, so the connection between science and social studies is seamless!  So cool!  Thanks to Dan for all of the hard work he has done in the spirit of building mechanisms with electromagnets!  We are moving into a writing piece for Social Studies which includes deep understanding of the telegraph, so we will be doing this writing in science class.  The last few weeks of science this month will be dedicated to natural resource understanding.