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.
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.
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