TA’s Notes:
The Voyager Recycle Sale was a huge success!! $1,508.92 was raised!
Thank you to all students and parents who helped volunteer their time for this event. A special thank you to Leigh Samuels and Sarah Forbes for organizing everything and bringing it all together!!
Water Bottle Update: If you are in charge of Opening Day, coaching a lacrosse team, or just in need of some hydration, we still have water bottles that need to go this year! They are $6 a piece and they are really good bottles! Please feel free to purchase a few more and ask friends or family if they would like one or two. My son tried to con me into a 12$ look alike the other day because he liked the green. I told him he gets the green one that says, Get Your Tap On! It’s a great deal and replenishes our budget which is in the red because of the purchase! No pressure! Thanks for considering another dozen, hint, hint! Colleen
Washington DC: Washington DC Trip Slideshow
We have posted a link to the DC family meeting for 8th Grade parents. If you haven’t taken a look, please do! It provides you with additional links to what to bring and what to expect! I will be working over vacation to get some final things in order. We will not get a picture with Senators, they are on recess the week we are there. We will get to meet with some staffers on the steps though. Too bad! It will be super fun! Can’t wait! Colleen
Upcoming Field Trip Dates:
Thursday, May 14th - ⅚ trip to Lewis Creek and Lake Iroquois for trout release and water study.
Friday, May 15th - 5-8 trip to Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center for a special Flynn Theatre sponsored performance about WWII.
Friday, May 29th - 5-7 trip to Mt. Independence and Ft. Ticonderoga - late afternoon return time.
Permission slips, chaperon requests, and more details will be sent out after spring break. There is one other trip in the works - TBA.
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
The spring schedule is starting to ramp up. Students completed an on demand writing assessment on Tuesday. This task is an informational writing activity to measure growth from fall to spring. Next week, we will be administering a reading assessment (called the DRP) to measure comprehension. We also had our first practice round for the upcoming SBAC assessment in May. Students practiced one of the three components of the assessment. We will be practicing the other two next week.
We are wrapping up our historical fiction literature group round next week. Students will be using a LEAF note organizer to write a final LEAF. We are noticing that some students are not keeping up with the reading assignments which is making it difficult to have an effective book discussion. Students are expected to read for 20 minutes a night and have a reading assignment following every literature group meeting. Our next literature group round will be starting after vacation.
We had a great historical performance art activity for our afternoon block periods this week. A teaching artist from the Flynn helped us create an audio performance of the capture of Ft. Ticonderoga by Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys. It was a very interactive academic and group learning experience.
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
Math 5: This is a two week update! I have had this science and engineering class on Friday/Saturday for the last three weeks and it crushes my ability to get this out on time. So sorry. So, where are we? We spent last week working on some SBAC prep. We learned how to log in and answered some training questions. This particular test was to prep students on the tools of the SBAC. How to use a calculator, drag a point on a coordinate graph, etc. They seemed to do okay with it. We will have 2 more hours of orientation and practice before April 30. We also began Unit 5; the focus is on multiplication and division of fractions. Our work this week was to build a bank of strategies and compare them. Ultimately we want to get to the point where we can find rules that work every time. The focus this week is fraction of a whole and fraction of a fraction problems.
Math 6: This is a two week update! I have had this science and engineering class on Friday/Saturday for the last three weeks and it crushes my ability to get this out on time. So sorry. So, where are we? We spent last week working on some SBAC prep. We learned how to log in and answered some training questions. This particular test was to prep students on the tools of the SBAC. How to use a calculator, drag a point on a coordinate graph, etc. They seemed to do okay with it. We will have 2 more hours of orientation and practice before April 30. Algebra is rolling in like a slow, easy riding wave! We have been working on building tables and graphing and will now step out of Quadrant 1 and look at negative numbers on the coordinate plane, and how to write equations for relationships we see in tables and graphs. This will introduce students to slope, y intercept and the linear equation. We will keep it simple and successful! Also, we did expose students to one step equations this week as a way to build this equation sense.
Science ⅚: Can matter change? If so, in what ways? Can it be lost or gained? This is the focus this week. We spent Monday and Tuesday looking at changes to matter and trying to say something about the kind of change that has take place. The latter part of the week was spent discuss and proving the Law of Conservation of Mass. There has been a lot of inquiry and we have had some variability in student’s ability to handle this hands-on exploration. I have been a little naggy, but we have lost a couple of thermometers and beakers to accidental mishaps. Accidents happen, but put a plug in for listening during science. We will continue with the highly engaging work next week when we look at chemical reactions.
The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
As the producer of this year’s school musical, my words for the week are...
GREASE is the word!!
I’ll catch up with everyone next week with a double issue on what has been happening in 7/8 Humanities!!!
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP8
This week we developed strategies for finding solutions for quadratic expressions. This is the same thing as finding x intercepts and finding the roots of an equation. We played Dr. Math and looked for errors that "students" made when solving multi-step equations; we exposed some common misconceptions along the way. We are moving away from "Say it With Symbols" and I plan to add a few questions to our next assessment that reviews the content we covered. Next week we will begin a new unit called "It’s in the System".
CMP7
The 7th graders played a game of Dr. Math like the 8th graders, but this time Dr. Math was trying to resolve errors in balancing algebraic equations. We talked about the reasonableness of an answer and the misconceptions that happen when solving for an unknown variable.
We took a trip around school to measure the rise and run of stairs as we explored the meaning of slope. Creating a ratio between the rise and run of the stair we were able to mathematically compare the slope of the stairs to the regulated ratio that contractors are supposed to use when building stairs. The concept of the ratio between rise and run gives us the slope or “m” in our y= mx + b. We hope to finish this unit next week.
Science 7th/8th
What is a renewable resource and how can we find a way to create a sustainable system? This week students read, completed vocabulary lists, and began exploring the dynamics of inputs and outputs on a natural resource system. We became managers and lumberjacks for a small forest. We explored what happens when you cut more than you replace and also creating a system that balances growth and harvesting. With the roll of the die the forest was also impacted by ice storms, invasive pests, drought, but also warm, wet and sunny seasons. We also had the opportunity to play some online sustainability games which included finding our ecological footprint, creating a sustainable household, fishing responsibly and creating a city that conserves and uses energy wisely.
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