Friday, December 19, 2014

Friday, December 12, 2014

Bottled Water Presentations to 3/4 Houses


Week of December 8th - 12th

TA’s Notes:

VOYAGER NIGHT HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED FOR WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17TH!
Snacks and Mingling: 6:30-7:00 in the Dining Room
Performances: 7:00-8:30ish in the Auditorium

After school with Ms. Sherman:

Reading continues on Wednesdays. I am encouraging students to join us for some experiences with difficult readings to gain strategies. Last week was a very small group and am hoping to see more students this coming Wednesday, December 17th. Hope to see you there!

The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
In Reading Cafe students searched for Tier 2 words to add to their word lists and continued to write and reflect in the “Me as a Reader” section of their Reading Response Notebooks. In Current Events this week, we talked about the protests in Ferguson and NYC. Students discussed the differences between a riot and a protest, and wrote about peaceful ways in which they can protest and get their message out.
We are starting to focus on informational writing for the 2nd trimester. We used an article on American Indians to practice responding to text questions. Students spent some time revising their work from last week. Revision focused on responding to all parts of the question, citing evidence from the text, and explaining how the evidence supports the response. Students had some more practice with this later in the week.
For the last two weeks, we have been “setting the stage” for our study of Colonial America. We started by mapping and learning about the theory of how the first Americans arrived in North Ameirca. We then moved on to exploration, mapping the European claims to North America in the 16th and 17th centuries and discussing reasons for the claims. To wrap up the week, we completed two historical reenactments. The first was on the first contact between French explorers on Lake Champlain in 1609 and Algonquin Indians. The second was a reenactment based on Samuel De Champlain’s journal entry on the battle with an Iroquoian war party on the lake. Both events were extremely significant to the history of North America for the next 150 years. We will be processing the reenactments next week.
We will not be starting another literature group round until after the break. Now is a great time for your student to pick a great independent reading book to take them through the vacation.

IMG_5825.JPG
Historical Reenactment - Champlain and Algonquins vs. Iroquois
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):

Math 5:  Students have finally wrapped up our unit on fraction addition and subtraction.  It was a unit filled with a lot of related math topics like finding a fraction of a whole number, using ratios to determine the better buy, and multi-digit multiplication.  I wouldn’t have seen the wisdom in combining all of these in a fraction unit, but I have to say, they complemented each other well!  Students have become much more versatile at solving problems, by having all of these skills and abilities.  This next unit will bring us more comfort in multiplying and dividing whole numbers and is an introduction to decimals.  Bridges will continue to build number sense by reinforcing the halving, doubling strategy, ten times more or less, etc.

It’s Computer Science week, so today, we decided not to use computers!  Of course, this one appealed to me!  After one person wrote code, the other person decoded the code in order to build a cup stack!  I decided to do this instead of a computer code, because I felt as though it would promote the ideas of coding while still engaging the body!  It was so fun!  Ask your student about it!

Moby Max is a really important part of learning for the week.  Many students lost valuable points on final grades first trimester because of low scores on Moby.  Please encourage this..students have 7 days to complete 1 hour of the program. About 10 minutes a day!  

Math 6:  This week, students took a final assessment for the Comparing Bits unit and ended the week practicing and mastering the traditional algorithms for multiplication and division of whole numbers.  We practiced and practiced, which I realize is so very important.  We need to practice more!  We have just wrapped up Comparing Bits and Pieces and are moving on to our next book, Let’s be Rational.  The goals of this book are:  to build proficiency in all operations with fractions.  It is implied that students have had enough work with addition and subtraction, so this topic is covered briefly.  The majority of the book focuses on multiplication and division and moves students toward the algorithms to solve any kind of problem involving these two operations.  

It’s Computer Science week, so today, we decided not to use computers!  Of course, this one appealed to me!  After one person wrote code, the other person decoded the code in order to build a cup stack!  I decided to do this instead of a computer code, because I felt as though it would promote the ideas of coding while still engaging the body!  It was so fun!  Ask your student about it!

Moby Max is a really important part of learning for the week.  Many students lost valuable points on final grades first trimester because of low scores on Moby.  Please encourage this..students have 7 days to complete 1 hour of the program. About 10 minutes a day!  

Science ⅚:  We have had an interesting week of learning about gravity.  After dropping objects, keeping detailed logs of which object hits the ground first, attending a scientists’ meeting, watching Felix Baumgartner jump 2 ½ miles from Earth, and discussing how gravity affects masses, we are all feeling better about knowing just a little bit more about this invisible force we call gravity.  Our long block this week was an opportunity to pull things together, read a little, view educational videos in order to transfer our understanding of gravity here on Earth to how gravity works in space.  Have you ever wondered why the moon has less gravity than Earth, or how we know that gravity is a two way attraction, or just why it is that no matter where you are on Earth, things fall downward (or toward the center of the planet)?  These are the kinds of questions that students have been trying to answer.  Next week, we are building rockets and launching them on Thursday.  If you did not receive the first email to come, join in, help out, you are still of course welcome to come. We will put you to work!

The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):

This week has been filled to the brim with poetry practice and beginning our study of WWI!

Our morning time together has been spent studying poetry. This is a great 2 week unit that will finish up just in time for the Winter Break. We started this week by reading some of the classics by poets such as William Carlos Williams, Maya Angelou, Emily Dickinson, and Robert Frost. By looking at these poems we were able to get great insight into how different all poems can be. They do not all have to be profound or rich in detail. Some poems can be simple, short, and still provide imagery or a message to their audience. We have been starting each class with poetic journal writing, followed by practice of new poetic forms, and finishing with group challenges. All of this in-class practice has been in preparation for our poetry quiz on Friday! After taking their poetry quiz students will be given their “Poetic License”, which will give them creative freedoms when working on their poetry books next week. Students have been writing some wonderful pieces of poetry with details that have painted beautiful images. I’m really looking forward to their poetry books next week!

During our afternoons together students have been working hard on their WWI projects. The 7/8 community is working in groups of 3-4 to create a museum exhibit focusing on a topic related to WWI. Students are using photographs, maps, creating great posters or trifolds, and some are even creating artifacts or models. This will be a great showcase of work! Some of the topics students are studying for their WWI exhibit are the Battle of Argonne, the Treaty of Versailles, the Zimmermann Telegram, Inventions, Weapons, Participating Countries and Why, and The Life of a Soldier.  All of these topics and more will be displayed in Voyager’s first, History and Space Museum! The museum will be open on Friday, December 19th and parents, guardians, and families are welcome to come! The museum will also feature our, “Faces of America” exhibit featuring our American portraits and definitions of what it means to be an American. During the early opening, from 7:45-8:15, we will have coffee available for adults who are stopping by on their way to work! Please join us at the museum opening!!

The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):

CMP8
The past two weeks have been busy ones.  We completed our “Looking for Pythagoras” unit where we learned to use the Pythagorean Theorem to find an unknown side of a right triangle. We constructed both a visual model and learned why and when to use the a2 + b2 =c2 equation. We played a bristling game of jeopardy and took the unit test on Tuesday.  We are now moving into quadratic equations; another type of nonlinear function that are parabolic in shape.  We began by investigating the similarities and differences between these functions and linear, inverse variation and exponential functions.

CMP7
We have been hard at work in our 7th grade math class finishing up our “Stretching and Shrinking Unit”.  Students are using ratios/proportions and scale factor to find missing lengths of geometric figures. We also investigated the connection between scale factor of similar images and the change in area.  We experimented with using mirrors in order to measure the height of an object indirectly.  Next week will bring our unit test and our “Blow it Up” project.   
Science 7th/8th
Students have been working in teams of four to create a space exhibit that tells a story or asks and answers an essential question with pictures, interactive models and words. Some topics include: What are stars? What are black holes or wormholes? What are exoplanets? Our classroom will become a walk into space and the museum opens on Friday, December 19th  7:45- 8:15 a.m. as part of the Voyager 7th/8th History and Space Museum.  Come stop by on your way to work!

Friday, December 5, 2014

Water Bottle Sales Pitch


Week of December 1

Report Cards
Please look for grade cards today!  Please return folders if indicated.


Water Bottle Project

5th, 6th, and 7th grade students on Voyager have worked hard to put their learning into action!  Enter the bottles!  Students designed and ordered these bottles as a community action in order to reduce single use water bottle purchases.  

Cost:  $6.00

Checks:  Make out to WCS

Ordering Details: Students should complete a slip and deposit in Ms. Fieldsend’s in box.  Water bottles will be delivered, once order and payment are received.

Thanks for your support!