Friday, January 30, 2015

Week of January 26th - 30th

TA’s Notes:
  • Friday, February 6th, Voyager is sponsoring the Valentines Dance!  
We need a number of chaperones and we need everyone to donate to the concessions so our fundraiser is as successful as possible!  The concession funds we raise go to field trips and extracurricular educational activities, so please plan to help out with your time and a snack donation.

Math Help with Ms. Q and Writers Workshop with Ms. Wesnak are now on Thursdays from 3:00-4:25!

The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
This week, we wrapped up the Reading is an Investment reading logs, reading two money related picture books that generated some great discussion about how to use money.  We also read an article titled “Money and You” that focused on lessons young adults have learned about making smart financial choices. Students then created a money plan, considering all four ways of using money - save, invest, donate, and spend. They will also be making a poster to submit for the Financial Literacy Poster state competition.

Next week we will begin playing the Stock Market Game. The game requires students to work in teams and find consensus before making investment decisions. We practiced some consensus making techniques, as well as learned what a “company” is.  We will continue lessons about stocks, risk, diversification and investment strategy throughout the course of the game. Each team will have $100,000 to invest in stocks, bonds, and mutual funds and will invest “real time”.

Our survival scripts are coming along, students did some self and peer content revision and started to type their scripts into a 3 column script format - detailing video and audio scenes.
We will be rehearsing next week and starting to use the ipads to make our videos (hopefully by the end of the week).

The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
Math 5:  This week we practiced rounding decimals, placing them on number lines, and introduced division of whole numbers.  The new instruction this week was on division; how we know that a problem involves division and how we use base ten pieces to model that situation. We practiced writing story problems and solving others’ story problems.  

Math 6:  We practiced and practiced fraction operations and did many straight up computation problems involving fractions.  We also sleuthed problems where students needed to figure out which operation would help find the solution, rather than having me tell them, ‘these are division of fraction’ problems.  This is a really tough skill.  Students have received a list of words that indicate certain operations and they will be allowed to use this on assessments.  We do have a unit assessment coming...next Tuesday.  I will spend Friday and Monday building public records with students and practicing.  

Heads up:  We have modified the 6th grade curriculum for the rest of the year.  Decimal Operations and Covering and Surrounding will be taught in a slimmed down version in order to get to algebra and data and statistics two very important concepts for 7th grade and middle school.  This means that conceptual frameworks will be simplified and that we will be doing a lot of computation practice.    

Science ⅚:  This week we learned about the moon’s light and shadows.  In order to understand why the moon appears to change shape, we must learn about where the moon’s light comes from and the kinds of shadows that might exist in our Solar System.  We had the chance to confirm that the moon’s light is reflected light from the Sun.  What we see, when the moon is out and we can see it, is the Sun’s light reflecting off the surface of the Earth and the bouncing into our eyes.  When we cannot see parts of the moon, the part we cannot see is in self-shadow.  Cast shadows are next week!  We then spent 2 days modeling the moon’s phases in order to understand just what is happening out there and how what we see depends on the moon’s position in its orbit around the sun and whether we are inside or outside of its orbit.  Did you know?  That moon people see the Earth in the opposite phase that we see the Moon.  That if you are outside the Moon’s orbit of Earth that you would see the moon’s phases as folks on Earth would see as the moon is orbiting.  

Trout Fridays...today we will begin our research on a choice project.  If you would like to be invited to the Trout Google Site, please email Ms. O with your email address, so that you can watch things unfold in our tank!

The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
This week during our morning time together, we got back into Independent Reading Mondays. Students read for about 30 minutes and responded to their reading in their Reading Journals. As the week continued on we wrapped up our work with the read aloud Rules by completing a final reflection. Students were asked to respond to 1 out of 4 questions that had to do with making connections through imagery. By the middle of the week we were able to get into our next big writing unit which is around personal stories. Our big question for this trimester is: What is my story? As we move through the next couple of months we will be doing work around and with biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Students will be writing a biography on a person of their choice from 20th century history, and they will also be writing memoir (or personal narrative). To prepare for these pieces, we will be completing a grammar study on conjunctions and semi-colons, and we will also be practicing writing with detail, description, and the five senses. We ended our week with a fun journal write to get students thinking about people and the stories they carry or may share. Students were asked to write about 5 people, alive or dead, that they would have for dinner if given the chance. Responses ranged from professional athletes, hollywood stars, presidents, and classmates. If you were given the chance, who would your 5 people be?

Our afternoon time together was filled with the World Wars. We started our week by wrapping up our study around World War I by completing our viewing of “The Great War” documentary. Students were able to gain a lot of knowledge and participate in great discussions by viewing this movie. We discussed the reasons for the war, how war is different now, the impact a war can have on a country, and the power of war. By the middle of the week we began to build the bridge between the 1st and 2nd World Wars by reading an article all about the events leading up to the war. This article was certainly a complex text, rich in sentence variety and vocabulary. The classes participated in a great “Pause and Play” read aloud. During a “Pause and Play” read aloud, we read and pause our reading as necessary. We may stop to answer/ask questions, find the definition of a new term, find a country on a map, or simply summarize what was said in the paragraph just read. Students were able to interact with their text by taking notes, finding new vocabulary words, and highlighting specific dates or events. On Friday we launched our World War II unit by looking at a series of books about World War II, watching a slideshow, and doing a reflection/prediction of our studies to come.

The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP8
This week our mission was to decipher patterns in different tables to decide the mathematical relationship between “x” and “y”.  We dusted off our notes on direct variation, exponential and inverse variations in order to interpret the relationship that we saw.  Students took a partner quiz and had an orientation on Mobymax.  Mobymax is an online math curriculum designed to target individual math needs. Your child is required to work on this program for 1 hour per week.  The program will be assessed weekly as a practice grade.  Students can receive a 4: for 60 minutes, 3: 50 minutes, 2: 40 minutes and a 1: 20-30 minutes.  They will have some time during our extended Thursday class to work on this curriculum.
CMP7
Moving from unit rate tables, students began to form equations that modeled their tables.  These proportional functions that we explored are called “direct variation” and form lines.  The mathematical relationship between two variables which can be expressed by an equation in which one variable is equal to a constant times the other. Such as a situation where your babysitter gets paid $5.00 an hour:  P= 5h.
Students took a partner quiz and had an orientation on Mobymax.  Mobymax is an online math curriculum designed to target individual math needs. Your child is required to work on this program for 1 hour per week.  The program will be assessed weekly as a practice grade.  Students can receive a 4: for 60 minutes, 3: 50 minutes, 2: 40 minutes and a 1: 20-30 minutes.  They will have some time during our extended Thursday class to work on this curriculum.
Science 7th/8th
This week 7th/8th graders are developing demonstrations to show thermal energy transfer.  Their topics are conduction, convection, radiation, specific heat, conductors and insulators.  Their mission is to teach the class through an interactive method that engages all in learning these concepts.  It has been fun seeing them grapple with how to make their curriculum accessible and interesting.

Friday, January 23, 2015

Week of January 20th - 23rd

TA’s Notes:
  • Friday, February 6th, Voyager is sponsoring the Valentines Dance!  
We need a number of chaperones and we need everyone to donate to the concessions so our fundraiser is as successful as possible!  The concession funds we raise go to field trips and extracurricular educational activities, so please plan to help out with your time and a snack donation.

  • Marko- Master Magician and Hypnotist: Friday February 13th, 6:30 pm
WCS Auditorium - sponsored by Swift House    General admission tickets are $8 each.

  • Williston Central School Yearbooks - Prices start at $30 each

Math Help with Ms. Q and Writers Workshop with Ms. Wesnak are now on Thursdays from 3:00-4:25!

The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):

In Reading Cafe, we continued our “Rules” read aloud and also read a short picture story about money for the Reading as an Investment project. The timing for this is great, since we are starting our economics unit next week. We also went to see the Full House play “Hercules”, which was a lot of fun.
For our next project, students will be creating a Survival Instructional Video. Students used their acquired expertise to outline a video (goal, materials, steps) and started to write a script using prompts and checklists on a graphic organizer. The script will be scored as an informational writing piece. Once we complete our scripts, we will be learning how to use imovie to create our instructional videos.
We also kicked off our Trout in the Classroom project this week. We used our extended block period to learn about the differences between hatchery and wild trout (Ms. O’Brien taught about the trout life cycle). We also completed a packet on the Rivers of Vermont, learning about the different watersheds in our state. Students will be using Trout Journals to record their notes, reflect, and create diagrams and pictures until our trout release day in May.
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The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):

During our morning classes students have been engaging in great discussion around the book Rules. We have been starting our classes with short discussions around characters, plot development, and the importance of specific references made in the book. Some of these references include the importance of water, art, and family dynamics. Students have really been excited to talk about the book and share their opinions on the development of the characters. With the characters also being middle schoolers, students have been able to make great connections with the characters and what they are going through. I have also been impressed with how well they have been able to create full character maps that really look at each character deeply and from a variety of perspectives. Students are a little sad to see this read aloud come to a close, but it certainly has been a successful few weeks! We will be working on a LEAF paragraph based on the reading next week.

Our afternoon classes were spent bringing our Voyager Games Unit to a close. Students were given the expectations and a graphic organizer for their informational/how-to paper based on skills they learned in the unit. We started our writing process by talking about informal vs. formal writing. We created a great list of examples ranging from the informal examples of writing: text messages, personal blogs, status updates, etc. to the formal examples: applications, essays, reports, business emails. This brainstorm allowed us to re-focus on what is expected from students when handing in any type of writing for Ms.Q or I. After this brainstorm students began to think about what skills they felt confident in from the Voyager Games unit, and they had to pick one set of skills (such as building a shelter) to write about in their informational/how-to paper. All students are being asked to complete the graphic organizer before starting their first draft, and they will participate in a peer edit on Tuesday. On Friday, we stepped back to where we left off back in December with World War 1. We did a quick brainstorm, created a KWL (looking at what a student Knows, Wants to know, and Learned by the end of the study) chart, and began the documentary titled, “The Great War”. We will be moving into World War 2 next week, as with any lessons around war, we will be looking at photos, interviews, primary documents, and articles. If you have any additional resources that would benefit our classroom, discussions, or projects please feel free to contact me. While studying 20th Century history we look at events from a variety of perspectives, focusing on the idea that for every person there is an individual story. Our study of World War 2 tends to be a very powerful, emotional, and engaging for middle school students, so please encourage your child to talk with you about what we are up to once we get started.


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

CMP 8
This week we looked at some different quadratic functions through investigating triangular numbers and high fives between teams and classmates.  We observed tables of different equations to look for patterns and found that quadratic equations have some very interesting patterns in the y values from the first difference and second differences.  Students continued their practice with finding parabola landmarks from both the factored and expanded form. We also learned to find the minimum or maximum point through finding the line of symmetry.

CMP 7
This week was all about pizza.  We explored rate tables, unit rates and the constant of proportionality in relation to Howdy’s  and Royal’s Pizza Place.  We created tables and graphs to see if the cost for any number of pizzas was a linear or nonlinear function.  We teased out that a constant of proportionality could be seen as the slope of a line or rate of change.  We reviewed independent and dependent variables and found that a delivery charge for pizzas gave us the y-intercept.

Science 7th/8th
Happily we returned to a regular science schedule this week with a “hot” topic, thermal energy.  We began with our own definition of heat and temperature.  We watched some demonstrations where we explored what happens to mass, volume and density when solids, liquids and gases are heated.  Students completed their unit vocabulary matrix and highlighted and responded to several readings that focused on heat, temperature and heat transfer. Students created an experiment on thermal equilibrium.  Next week we will do more experiments on how heat transfers.

Friday, January 16, 2015

Week of January 12th - 16th (see 2 posts below for more pics of week)

TA’s Notes:
  • No school Monday, January 19th
  • CVU’s Student and Parent Night rescheduled to Thursday, January 29th 6:30-8:30pm in CVU’s gym
  • Friday, February 6th, Voyager is sponsoring the Valentines Dance!  
We need a number of chaperones and we need everyone to donate to the concessions so our fundraiser is as successful as possible!  The concession funds we raise go to support Voyager’s field trips, so please plan to help out with your time and a snack donation.
Thank you for supporting your student! Click the link below to sign up for chaperoning and snacks.


Voyager Games:  The Voyager Games are complete!  Students did an amazing job collaborating with 12 family members, surviving some pretty cold conditions outside, and applying their learning to real world problem solving.  Ask your child about the games.  Photos are attached!

The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):

In Reading Cafe, we continued our read aloud of the book Rules. The book focuses on the themes of friendship, compassion, and understanding differences and supports our school wide effort to help our students become good people and citizens. Our study of informational text and writing lesson focused on close reading skills. Students practiced reading deeply (reading text more than once) for main ideas, specific information, and personal connections. Students also wrote a reflection on the challenges that they faced during our survival week.  Students brainstormed areas to help their teams improve for future challenges and went back with suggestions for team leaders.

The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):

Math 5:  This week we worked on writing decimals using words, translating words into decimals, comparing decimals, and ordering them.   The focus of our work has been on place value - what is the numeral’s value based on its place in the number?  The base ten model has been the method for justification and I have been requiring this modeling for their solutions.  We started work on rounding and students are working to apply old rounding principles to decimals.  We also completed a Check up for addition and subtraction of decimals.

Math 6:  This week, we focused on identifying what it means to find a fraction of fraction.  What is the magnitude of the solution to finding a fraction of a fraction?  Will the result always be smaller than the original numbers? We practiced drawing models that justify the solution for part of part problems and looked at whole numbers and groups of problems to see if we noticed any relationships amongst other kinds of problems that use the word ‘of’.  We confirmed that part of part problems are indeed multiplication and we can use the area model of multiplication to prove it.  By landing on this truth, we then looked at multiplying fractions, no matter what name we give the number:  impropers, mixed numbers, whole numbers and proper fractions.  Lots of fun!

Science ⅚:  The brook trout eggs have arrived and we are beginning the slow process of learning about them.  We worked on water testing this week!  

We will be exploring the moon next week.  Please encourage moon sightings, if possible.  The moon will be visible during the day in the next seven days.  Here is the moonrise/moonset schedule for the next seven days:

                 Moonrise             Moonset
Jan 16
3:12 AM
1:13 PM





Jan 17
4:13 AM
2:04 PM





Jan 18
5:13 AM
3:02 PM





Jan 19
6:08 AM
4:08 PM





Jan 20
6:58 AM
5:20 PM





Jan 21
7:42 AM
6:35 PM





Jan 22
8:22 AM
7:50 PM







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

CMP8
This week 8th graders are becoming more adept at writing quadratic equations in expanded and factored form.  We explored different forms of quadratic equations, how they are derived and what points you can find on the parabola based on the type of equation.  Students created class records on the quadratic form, parts of a parabola, the difference between factored and expanded forms, how coefficients change the parabola's shape and location on the grid.  Next week we will explore real life examples of quadratics.

CMP7
We began the week with a gallery walk of our completed “Blow it Up and Shrink it Down” projects.  They will go on display once they are laminated. In our Comparing and Scaling unit, 7th graders began exploring the differences between part to part and part to whole ratios. We figured out how much concentrate is needed to make an “orangey” juice.  We compared percentages to ratios and discussed when one form of comparison is better than the other and talked about how statistics can be utilized  in order to make a product seem more impressive.   Students practiced different strategies for solving unknown quantities by using the vertical, horizontal or cross product methods in solving proportions.  Understanding the meaning of percentages and how they are formed was reviewed and we connected some of our scaling concepts with our previous Stretching and Shrinking unit.  

7th/8th Science
Next week we will return to regular classes.

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Water Chemistry and Brook Trout




The Voyager Games Survival Unit