SBAC House Updates: Voyager House ONLY! (Does not apply to other houses). The ⅞ testing window for SBAC begins on April 1. The ⅚ testing window for SBAC begins on May 4. We ask two things of families and students: please leave cell phones at home during this time. Phones that are on will interfere with our WiFi connectivity. Also, please secure earbuds for your child. If you do not own those, you are welcome to buy a set or borrow a set here at school. We will continue to remind you of this on the Voice.
TA’s Notes:
The DANCE was super! Thanks for all of your support and work!
After school with Ms. Sherman:
Reading club continues to meet on Wednesdays from 3:00-4:00. Below are the rest of the dates.
February 11th
February 18th (last day of Reading club)
Reminder- Below are after school offerings on Voyager House
Monday- Math with Ms. O’Brien
Tuesday- Homework Club with Ms. Percy
Wednesday- Reading Club with Ms. Sherman
Thursday- Homework Club with Ms. Percy
-Writing Workshop (⅞) with Ms. Wesnak
-Math Help (⅞) with Ms. Quatt
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
This week we wrapped up script writing for our Instructional Survival Videos. Students completed typing their 3 column script drafts, and the content revision process. Students worked in small groups to read aloud specific parts of their scripts (ex. hook) and used “I like, I wish” statements to suggest revisions. We then did some self editing, and started to organize our filming schedule for next week. Students should bring in any materials they will need for video making by Tuesday next week.
The Stock Market Game is on! Students are on teams, have roles, and have started researching to build their portfolios. All decisions must have team consensus before any transactions can occur. By week 5, each team must have spent $50,000 on 5 different stocks. Weekly meetings will give teams a chance to report out on research and make decisions on next steps. A weekly evaulation/log will be required of every student. Have a discussion with your student about the stock market, companies, and your own investments. Students will be learning about diversification, risk, mutual funds, and bonds next week. They are able to purchase funds and bonds in the game.
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
Math 5: This week, we worked hard on long division problems that have no remainder and the documentation necessary to show and explain strategies for solving them. Students learned the names of the three terms in a division problem and matched each term to the dimensions and area of a rectangle. We also compared our own work to work that was modeled well and found that we needed to work a little harder to justify our reasoning in a diagram so that it can stand alone as an explanation. Thursday and Friday were review days for our upcoming assessment on Tuesday.
Math 6: We wrapped up our Let’s Be Rational book on operations with fractions and I’m still noticing some confusion, mostly with identifying operations in word problems. How do you know what operation to use in order to solve a problem? It actually takes some careful reading and an ability to identify words and contextual clues for operations. A problem like “she used ⅔ of the 2 pounds of blueberries” is very different than “she used ⅔ of a pound for the muffins, how many pounds did she have left if she had 2 pounds to start” which is again different from “each muffin requires ⅔ pounds. She has 2 pounds. How many muffins can she make?” Are you thoroughly confused? We will continue to work on this skill as we enter a quick unit on decimals, which will be very skill based, but also about identifying operations.
⅚ Science: More modeling! We did some additional modeling this week on moon phases and identified which phase our moon is in for solar and lunar eclipses. During our long block this week we identified why objects appear to be the same size when they aren’t! The activity we did this week began with this challenge: make the spherical objects appear to be the same size. Students were given 3-4 objects and had to figure out how you could get them to appear the same size from a given viewer’s eye. Students strung themselves across the classroom and down the hall in order to make a marble, golfball, field hockey ball and basketball appear to be the same size and some groups kept mathematical data to then talk about with the group. Discoveries? A ball that is twice as large in diameter would need to be twice as far away in order for it to appear the same size as a ball that is two times smaller and two times closer!
Makeup Day: Friday long block students who are not skiing had the opportunity to make up work. Hopefully for some, that opportunity cleared some of those missing Jupiter Grade assignments. It was quiet on house and many students were super focused.
Coming Soon!! A CVU senior will be running a rain barrel painting workshop on Thursday, February 19 at school. It will likely be an all day affair on the ⅚ side and if you like to design and paint things, we could use your help. The last time I did this, 3 students walked into me with very wet paintbrushes, so bring old clothes. Let Colleen know if you are interested in coming. Engineering Challenge day is on the 12th of March. This will be streamed online via our website, and your child will be participating in one of the 4 challenges offered. If you would like to see it in person, I can provide more details soon, but for now, mark it on your calendar.
Math Club: So sorry to do this for the next two weeks, but Math Club will not run, Monday, February 9 and Monday February 16. I will run two lunchtime/recess math clubs for anyone interested during this timeframe. Things will pick up again in March.
MobyMax: I seemed to have a grip on who has been using the EASY button on Moby. This week students may use the application as makeup for weeks missed. I have had a personal conference with most 5th graders and will have one with each 6th grader next week to discuss progress made. Thanks for your work at home addressing it and monitoring use.
The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
This week during our morning time together we had our mini grammar study on conjunctions. Yes, we did have Schoolhouse Rock’s, “Conjunction Junction” stuck in our heads for most of the week. Our main focus was on understanding the use of coordinating conjunctions. We looked at how they are used in sentences and how they are used with commas. Students participated in a lot of in-class guided practice, used conjunctions in their journal writes, completed practice for homework, and even participated in a conjunction challenge! By the end of the week all students took a short quiz on conjunctions to show their gained knowledge of using conjunctions with commas. Our next grammar study will be focused on subordinate conjunctions and semi-colons. These will all certainly come in handy when we get to our biography and personal narrative writing pieces!
Our afternoons have been focused on understanding and gaining a global perspective of World War II. Students have been using History.com’s interactive map to guide them through the many people, places, and events of this time period. We have been alternating between map work as a whole class with guided note-taking and discussion and partner work. Right now our events are focused on the Holocaust. Along with using the interactive map, we have been watching clips of interviews with Holocaust survivors, reading additional articles, and having great discussions in class. Although this is a tough time period to learn about, students have been really engaged in hearing about personal stories and digging into the wealth of information on the map. Students have also made comments about how eye-opening the material is, and how with every new piece of information they still can’t believe that this all happened. Learning about World War II is an extremely deep topic, and I encourage you to engage in conversation about what we are learning, discussing, and watching in class. Take a look at the map if you’ve got a chance! It’s very cool, and you could easily spend a lot of time on it!
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP8
This week based on a student’s searching and inquiry, we learned a novel way to figure out how to form a quadratic equation from a table that might not have the landmarks we have become accustomed to. It has certainly made a difference to have an additional tool in our math tool box to help us navigate quadratics. We also had the opportunity to build small catapults. In this investigation, we used the projectile motion to devise the quadratic equation and find the maximum point of our curve. We had some tricky calculations and found that we needed to review how to input our equations into the calculator. (- x2) We will finish this unit with a review and a unit test next week. Don’t forget Mobymax!
CMP7
This week the 7th graders learned a lot about commissions, mark-ups, buying and selling rates of cars. Mr. G. gave us some insight into restaurant work and how the money his makes is divided between himself and the different parties such as the hostess, the bartender, the dishwasher and the house. Seeing how percentages, ratios and proportions are used in day-to-day life was great!
We moved onto measurement conversion problems. Students rolled the die to select the methodology in which they would solve the problem: ratio/proportion, rate table or equation. We have completed the Comparing and Scaling book and will be having a review and unit test next week. Don’t forget Mobymax.
Science 7th/8th
Students completed their thermal energy demonstrations this week. They had the opportunity to see firsthand what it’s like to engage their classmates in the scientific process. Gathering materials, trying out the experiments, figuring out whether the class understood the scientific concept was a challenge for many. We also began our “Koke Chiller Challenge”, an engineering task where students create a container that will chill a room temperature beverage in 10 minutes. We will complete this project next week with a competition for the “Chillest”Chiller.
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