TA’s Notes:
***Please do not send in any food to be shared among Voyager students***
Thank you to all who attended Voyager’s Family Night and a big thank you to those who donated raffle prizes and food & drink for the social part!
This night would be not be the great night it was without parent support!!
**Voyager’s Polar Express Elves are raising money for Vermont kids through the Vermont Children’s Trust Foundation. Any amount helps- please consider donating through this link:
Thank you for your support!**
8th grade trip paperwork and deposit is now due! Please contact me at KFieldsend@cssu.org if you need another set of papers for your 8th grader.
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
Monday - Independent Reading Cafe and Current Events (WKET News Quiz and a mini lesson on Pearl Harbor Day).
Tuesday - Folktale Literature Circles: Students read another folktale in their circle group and took responsibility for a new role in the discussion.
Culture Mini Unit Introduction: Students explored cultural groups, elements of culture and the importance of culture. Student created a concept map to connect these components of culture.
Wednesday - We completed our Folktale Literature Circle discussions and had a great mini lesson and activity on our Booster Cell Challenge - How to get the attention of our peers at the right time and in the right way.
Thursday - Scholastic News Activity: Students read an article about the behaviors that chimpanzees and humans have in common. They worked on identifying the main ideas of the story and writing a summary of the article.
Trout int the Classroom: Students were introduced to the life cycle of the Brook Trout and the work that we will be doing to raise our trout starting in January.
Friday - Narrative writing: Students evaluated a piece of writing using a checklist and then evaluated their own writing; setting goals for their next piece of writing based on the checklist.
Culture Unit: Students compared their daily life activities to 10 other people from around the world. We used interviews that asked people from around the world about their daily life.
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
Math 5 Highlights
- Getting comfortable with decimals in the thousandths and ten thousandths.
- Discovering the connection between decimals, the Base Ten System, and the metric system.
- Conversions from millimeters to centimeters and investigation of the ruler
- Decimal addition and subtraction proficiency for all on assessment
Math 6 Highlights
- Modeling decimals
- Serious work on long division and the standard algorithm
- The knowledge that ¾ means 3 divide 4. All fractions are division.
- Understanding how fractions can be renamed as decimals and decimals as fractions
- Fraction and decimal problems in context
- Public records on strategies for renaming fractions
- Comparing and ordering fractions and decimals on positive and negative side.
- Review of absolute value
Science ⅚ Highlights
- Newton’s Law of Inertia (1st Law of Motion) and Newton’s Second Law of Motion, CHECK!
- We had lots of fun with cards, coins, and balls this week and last. We are finally able to explain why a motorcycle can tear a table cloth off a long dining table without interrupting the table setting! See photos below.
- Got a STAR WARS fix by watching Yoda and Luke train in the swamp. “Use the force, you will Luke Skywalker.” Only Luke cannot, because his starfighter is too big. Ask your child to explain this one, using Newton’s Second Law.
- Learned about a Newton, a measure of force. Talked about balanced and unbalanced forces and how they move or don’t move objects.
The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
This week during our morning classes we continued on with our mini grammar unit. As we moved out of learning about sentence variety and the 4 types of sentences, we moved into a short unit focused on verb tenses and verb tense consistency. We practiced identifying verbs in a variety of tenses; we used journal writes to apply our practice, and we even had a few relay races and rounds of BINGO. These in class activities helped us in a variety of ways. We were able to practice our spelling, identification, and use of verbs in their appropriate tenses. We ended the week by sharing our journal writes from earlier in the week!
Our afternoon classes have been completely dedicated to our Vermont Impact projects. We have been focusing on trying to answer the question: How has VT made an impact on the world? Each student has been researching and writing an informational LEAF paragraph or 5 paragraph essay to answer this question. This week most students were able to complete their first drafts and participate in a quick peer edit. All of the writing pieces will be due next Tuesday. As we move into our final full week before vacation, students will be focusing on the more hands-on aspect of this project which is geared toward Vermont tourism. Students will be taking their research and writing pieces to create a video, book, brochure, or other project of their creation to attract tourists and visitors to our state! With persuasive techniques and great facts, students will be using the best of the best in Vermont to create some fun and artistic pieces!
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP7
This week 7th graders continued their exploration of similarity of geometric figures. We explored scale factor and the relationship between linear measurement such as perimeter and the area of an image that is enlarged or reduced. We dusted off our shape sets and investigated whether these figures would tesselate or could create a “rep”-tile. A “rep”-tile is a figure that is made up of identical similar figures.
An example of a “rep”- tile.
CMP8
The 8th graders are at the end of the “Looking for Pythagoras” Unit. We are working to become more fluid with all the different methods of finding the length of line segments, the side lengths of right triangles and the perimeter of irregular polygons. Students created review questions for their peers, we also worked on the Unit Test Review. We will play Jeopardy on Monday and the Unit Test will be on Tuesday.
Science 7th/8th
We began our week by watching a segment of the NOVA “Great Transformation Evolution” series. This fascinating video looked at the development of life on the planet and the evolution of man and animal species through time. They are currently working on an evolution, adaptation and natural selection project. Students will create a 6 panel graphic cartoon, animation or other media that answers the science focus question and models change over time. This project will be presented next week.
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