Week of October 26th - 30th

TA’s Notes:

***Please do not send in any food to be shared among Voyager students***

Voyager is sponsoring the Book & Media Sale at the Craft Fair again, Saturday, Nov. 7th here at WCS.  We can only make a profit if we have good merchandise to sell.  Please start gathering books and other media (DVDs, Videos, Music CD's, old records, puzzles) and send them in with your students or place them in the large collection boxes located in front offices of both WCS and ABS.  We are storing them in the Voyager Project room.

We also need volunteers to set-up and sell during the Craft Fair.  Responsible students can help with this!  We ask for at least one adult to be present during a block with students selling.

Please sign up here:​

Book & Media Sale Sign Up

​

Dates to Remember:

December 9th:  Voyager Family Night 6-8pm

March 26th: Voyager Recycle Sale

May 6th: Voyager Dance

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

Students are settling into our Reading Cafe Monday routine. Many students are able to “get lost” in their books and are building their reading stamina. In our literature group books, we focused on characterization this week. For our reading practice, students selected a character and read in character - this was a lot of fun. We also started to identify the scary characters and how the author reveals them to us.

We continued our Narrative writing work, learning about strategies for generating personal narratives and using them to write a story. Students are recording these strategies and techniques in their Writer’s Notebooks, and brainstorming ideas as well. By this point, students have 2 - 3 different stories that they have written in their notebooks. Sharing stories is always a great part of the class.

During our afternoon Humanities time, students took an assessment on the 5 Themes of Geography, matching themes to real geography situations. We also started a 5 Themes Google Slides project this week. Students were grouped by region and  selected a state to make a theme based slide show. We spent some time in the library and online (using library electronic resources) researching with organizers due on Tuesday next week.

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

Math 5:  Students are working with ratio tables in very sophisticated ways.  We have learned that the ratio table strategy is versatile enough to: solve multidigit multiplication problems, simplify fractions, answer questions like “what is the better buy?”, predict future values like if tomatoes cost $2.35 per pound, how much will it cost to get 5 pounds?, and find common denominators for fractions when one must add or subtract them.  I

On Monday, students will be bringing home their first unit work.  Please be looking for it.  This will give you a chance to see actual unit assessments and entrance and exit tasks as well as all the other stuff.  

Math 6:  This week we began our new unit, Comparing Bits and Pieces. See the Parent site linked here:  http://mymathuniverse.com/programs/cmp3/channels/8.  This whole unit is on the bits and pieces or fractions of numbers.  There is a strong emphasis on ratios. I will provide a lot of additional information to students on this topic.  This week we began looking at “for every” statements as a way to compare numbers.  For every 11 girls there are 10 boys. This statement compares the number of boys to the number of girls.  

On Monday, students will be bringing home their first unit work.  Please be looking for it.  This will give you a chance to see actual unit assessments and entrance and exit tasks as well as all the other stuff.  

⅚ Science:  We completed our unit on electricity and magnetism and are now full steam ahead in a force and motion unit.  Our anchoring phenomenon was this...students were invited to a fancy dining table arranged with glasses and plates and candlesticks and flatware.  They are about to get down to business and eat their Thanksgiving dinner, when a man on a motorcycle backs up, ties the tablecloth to the back of the motorcycle and steps on the gas!  He swipes the tablecloth out from beneath the dishware and the meal continues on!  We all know this trick, but what is the science behind it?  The unit will work to explain that phenomenon and many others!  To begin...Students collected data on things in motion and worked to explain the question, how do you know that something is in motion?  We then engaged in a stations approach to learning, but pushing and pulling, or applying forces, to things to put them into motion, or to cease motion.  It was fun!

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

CMP7

This week we have been wrestling with positive and negative numbers and strategies to add and subtract them.  We continue to utilize visual models and began to form rules for working with inverse operations.  For example: When you add a number you can subtract it’s opposite and when you subtract a number you can add its opposite. Students played several fun card games including “25” where students added and subtracted positive (black) and negative (red) card values to get to 25. They also played positive and negative integer war in teams of two.  

CMP8

8th graders explored the relationship between growth factors and growth rate by looking at population change and compounded interest.  We compared exponential growth when starting values varied and utilized strategies to find the y intercept of our exponential functions when our tables began with an “x” value of 1.  We looked at Vermont’s population and the very low growth rate of  .02%.  We  figured that it would take over 3,400 years for Vermont to double it’s population at its present rate.  Students began a partner quiz and finished the week with an exponent card game.

Science 7th/8th

We began the week with a quick review of meiosis and spent time investigating the Learn Genetics website through the University of Utah.  We took a tour of all the components of genetics, including: DNA, chromosomes, genes, traits, proteins and heredity.  We surveyed the class to see what dominant and recessive traits our class possessed like tongue rolling, eye color, hair color and many others.  We discussed how traits are passed from parents to offspring.  We graphed the class data to see the prevalence of specific traits in class. Finally, we completed an investigation on dragon inheritance. We selected chromosomes from a male and female dragon to produce a baby dragon with all sorts of traits, like horns, fire breathing, spiked tails and varied color.

Week of October 19-23

TA’s Notes:

***Please do not send in any food to be shared among Voyager students***

Voyager is sponsoring the Book & Media Sale at the Craft Fair again, Saturday, Nov. 7th here at WCS.  We can only make a profit if we have good merchandise to sell.  Please start gathering books and other media (DVDs, Videos, Music CD's, old records, puzzles) and send them in with your students or place them in the large collection boxes located in front offices of both WCS and ABS.  We are storing them in the Voyager Project room.

We also need volunteers to set-up and sell during the Craft Fair.  Responsible students can help with this!  We ask for at least one adult to be present during a block with students selling.

Please sign up here:​

Book & Media Sale Sign Up

​

Dates to Remember:

December 9th:  Voyager Family Night 6-8pm

March 26th: Voyager Recycle Sale

May 6th: Voyager Dance

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

We had our first independent Reading Cafe on Monday. Students read an independent book and updated their Reading Response notebooks. We encouraged students to read deeply and build reading stamina during the school year. We also kicked off our new literature round - Mystery and Suspense. 5th graders are reading - Closed for the Season and 6th graders are reading - Coraline. Students will have weekly reading assignments and will be working in their Reading Response notebooks - gathering evidence, tier 2 words,  and reading strategies. This week we discussed the literary device - setting and we drew a picture of the setting and made connections to how it enhances the mood of the book. Next week we will be working on character maps.

Narrative writing will be our next writing unit. We started by asking students to write their best “small moment” story and dig deep to use writing strategies that they have used in the past. Writer’s workshops will begin next week.

We also continued our review of the 5 Themes of Geography. We created word maps for many land and water forms including: isthmus, strait, sound, gulf, canyon, and archipelago. We wrapped up the week with an exciting game of jeopardy that reviewed all of the themes. Next week students will have an assessment on the themes and start a theme based project.

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

Math 5:  Fifth graders worked this week on taking the understanding of clocks, money and fractions and addition and subtraction to the next step: Adding and Subtracting with common denominators.  For some students, this is a return to a generalization they have heard before - that you must have common denominators to add or subtract fractions.  But for others, this is still a developing understanding.  The clock and money models provide a great opportunity for understanding addition and subtraction of fractions.  If you have the problem ¾ + ⅕, you can use money to solve this problem.  ¾ = 0.75 and ⅕ = 0.20, so you will end up with 0.95!  But how does this relate to common denominator?  Well, 0.75 = 75/100 and 0.20 = 20/100, so 75/100 + 20/100 = 95/100.  And there you have the common denominator!  This is an easy example but it is the jumping point for discovering how to find a common denominator for any pair of fractions you are adding or subtracting.

Clarification:  Each month we have a rotation of learning.  The first two weeks are spelling/vocab and the second two weeks, students are given time in school to work on Moby Max.  Students are still asked to do one hour per week of Moby Max, even on the vocab weeks.  Please encourage your child, during vocab weeks, to work on their online math learning!  These are the weeks that the scores have been lower!  Also, when students play their math games on Moby, those minutes don’t count towards their overall minutes for the week.

Math 6:  We finished up Prime Time this week by reviewing the last 6 weeks of learning and taking our final assessment.  We will be cleaning out our work from the unit and sending it home on Monday.  Please look out for this work!

Upcoming Due Date:  The Prime Time Number Story is due on Monday.  Ask your child to make sure they are making the final touches on their story.  They all received feedback on their story from both me and two peers.  

Clarification:  Each month we have a rotation of learning.  The first two weeks are spelling/vocab and the second two weeks, students are given time in school to work on Moby Max.  Students are still asked to do one hour per week of Moby Max, even on the vocab weeks.  Please encourage your child, during vocab weeks, to work on their online math learning!  These are the weeks that the scores have been lower!  Also, when students play their math games on Moby, those minutes don’t count towards their overall minutes for the week.

Science ⅚:  We wrapped up our electricity and magnetism unit this week by finishing our vocabulary word maps and preparing and taking an assessment.  We have learned so much!  Students mapped a series of new Tier III words from this unit by defining the words and then describing the association or relationship between those words. They are really impressive especially due to the fact that they were not allowed to use the internet.  Their understandings all came from experiences in the classroom and even they were surprised at how much they have learned.  We hope you saw last week’s photos on the exciting telegraph stations we set up.  The telegraphs, made by Dan Fleming, our engineer in residence, were a great way for students to see how the science of electromagnetism, was applied to a real life, engineered mechanism, that changed the technology of communication.  We had two telegraph stations separated by 50 ft of wire over which we sent electrical pulses, or dots and dashes, just like people in the mid 1800’s.  It was cool!

Coming up:  VEEP, Vermont Energy Education Program, is coming to our classroom on Tuesday!  A great extension to our learning about motors and generators.  I am speaking to the VEEP rep this weekend about timing, but I will let you know in case you want to drop by!

The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):

To start our week in AM Humanities students continued their work with Ms. Baker by creating their individual art pieces for our large art installation which will take place the week before Thanksgiving. Keep an eye out for a formal invitation in your email! As we moved through our week we continued our work with informational writing by beginning our Global Village work and forming our families. Students took a look at a great time lapse video from one man’s travels around the globe. He travelled to 17 different countries over the course of 348 days! Working with their families, students picked their countries for the Global Village. This year we will have families from countries such as Iceland, Egypt, Thailand, and more! Students also got started on their research for their informational writing piece. This will be a 5 paragraph essay and each student will be writing about a specific topic in regards to their country. Some of the topics include: People, History, Geography,and The Arts. Students are really pushing and building their research skills, as they are not allowed to use Google yet! We have spent 2 of our classes so far in the library, and students have been finding some great information and taking strong notes. Students are really having to dig through the books and readings to find answers. They are also having to think critically and creatively in order to pull and synthesize information from a variety of sources. This has been great practice in researching and is providing the students with a wealth of information and knowledge for the Global Village!

Our afternoon classes were dedicated to reflecting on the Model United Nations debates, and building a bridge to our Global Village Unit. Students were put to the challenge with their Global Village families to participate in the Global Puzzle Simulation! Students were given a 550 piece jigsaw puzzle to solve in a 40 minute class. There were many restrictions given to the students as well, such as they couldn’t talk, they couldn’t see the cover, they had time limits, and at the end of their class period they had to break down all of the work they had done. The purpose behind this simulation was to showcase all aspects of problem solving on a personal level and a global level. On the personal level this was a great way for our Global Village families to bond and work together to solve a common problem by using all members of the group. On the global level this was a great way to simulate how it is important for all countries to work together, and to understand that each country represents a separate piece in the global puzzle. By having students not be able to talk, this was a great way to simulate how when there are people from different countries trying to communicate to solve problems, it can be difficult to get ideas across fluently and completely with common understanding. The puzzles themselves represented global problems, and by not giving the students the cover to the box of the puzzle they were left not knowing what the outcome or solution would look like. Students had to guess and make predictions as to what the solution to their problem would look like, much like what happens in the real world. Sometimes, you just don’t know what problems will come your way or what the exact solution is going to look like in the end. Overall, we had a great experience and students really enjoyed this simulation! We are all very excited to continue on our global journey!

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

CMP7

This week we began our investigation into positive and negative integers by using different models such as number lines and red and black chip boards. We did a fun experiment where we placed an ice cube in water and graphed the progress using our new Go Temp! Temperature probes.  Our question was whether the temperature change was linear or nonlinear. We also looked at temperature moving in a negative direction and formed an equation to show our results.

CMP8

Mold growth, invasive plant species and Burmese pythons were the order of business this week in math class as we explored exponential functions in nature.   Through the week we formulated the exponential growth equation which is y = a (bx), where “a” is the y intercept and b is the growth factor.  So for example in Hurricane Katrina if 100 pythons were released by mistake, at a growth factor of 1.5, you would triple your number in three years.  It is frightening! Students also created crafty exponent rule books to refer to as we work through our exponential growth unit.

Science 7th/8th

This week we began with making models of the phases of the cell cycle which included interphase, mitosis and cytokinesis.  Students had different pieces of candy from Twizzlers, Smarties, marshmallows and Skittles to form a nuclear membrane, centrioles, spindle fibers and the chromatids.  We took pictures of our steps and labeled the process in which our cells divide to make identical copies.  We had a Cellular Biology and Microscopy Review doing a speed dating format where students moved around the room to form dyad pairs to discuss compelling topics like: “How to focus a microscope?” or “How are plant cells and animals cells similar and different?” We completed our unit test.  Our next mini-unit will be on genetics and heredity.  Be prepared for questions and surveys about traits that your family may possess.

Week of Oct 13th - 16th

TA’s Notes:

***Please do not send in any food to be shared among Voyager students***

Book & Media Collection

Voyager House will be organizing the book and media sale at this year's Craft Fair, Nov. 7th.

Please consider donating:

• Gently used best sellers or decent books (no textbooks or dated ‘travel’ books)
• Children's chapter and picture books
• Music CD's
• Movie DVD's

Items can be dropped off in Voyager’s Project Room or bins at WCS & ABS

Any questions, please contact Katie Fieldsend at KFieldsend@cssu.org

Save the Date:  Wednesday, December 9th- Voyager Family Night 6-8pm

FAP UPDATE

The FAP Advisory Council held its first monthly meeting of this school year on October 8th.  FAP is Williston's equivalent of a parent-teacher organization.  We meet each month, our meetings our open to all, and you will receive an email like this every month with highlights of the meeting and a link to the FAP website for the full minutes.  Check the full minutes in a PDF format by clicking HERE.  Below are a few meeting highlights:

Administration Report:  Greg Marino, our District Principal, talked about communication strategies for our schools, including Facebook and Twitter, about SBAC results which families of current 4th-8th graders should have received in the mail in the last 10 days and the exciting new Disk Golf Course.  Please check the full minutes for more information on these topics.

Williston Annual Fund:  This fund pays for your children's school field trips, among other educational items.  Current donations total $10, 328, which is less than one-third of our target.  So PLEASE SEND IN YOUR DONATION TODAY or you can do it online by clicking HERE.

Educational Grants:  FAP approved nearly $7,500 in educational grants for enhanced learning activities in our Williston Schools.  Please check out the full minutes for more information on this.

24th Annual Craft Fair at Williston Central School -- Saturday, November 7th, 9:30 am to 4:00 pm:  This first big FAP fundraiser is attended by hundreds of area residents.  We welcome back both crafters who come year after year and many new crafters this year.  AND the Media/Book Sale is back, sponsored by Voyager House!  We also need your help with this event; opportunities to help SET UP, HELP CRAFTERS UNPACK VEHICLES, AND HELP SERVE FOOD TO CRAFTERS.  WE ALSO NEED HELP IN THE KITCHEN THIS YEAR!!  Please CLICK HERE if you can donate an hour or two of your time to this event.  THANK YOU!

Scholastic Book Fair in the Williston Central School Dining Room — Monday, November 9th-Friday, November 13th:  Look for more information on this important school fundraiser in the School Bell.  This event needs parent help too!  Whether you want to help set up, clean up or help with sales in 2 hour shifts during the week, whatever time you can dedicate is appreciated.  Here is the SIGN UP LINK.

Parent Presentation:  How to Understand and Reduce Anxiety in Children with Dr. Paul Foxman, Ph.D., Tuesday, November 10th from 6:30 – 8:00 in the WCS Auditorium:  Join us for an evening with psychologist and anxiety expert, Dr. Paul Foxman, Ph.D., Founder and Director of the Center for Anxiety Disorders in Vermont, and author of The Worried Child and Dancing with Fear.  Dr. Foxman will help parents learn:  How, why and when anxiety develops in children: The different forms of anxiety; What parents can do to reduce stress and anxiety; and When and how to refer for professional help.  If you need additional information about this event, please contact Chris Ford, WCS Guidance Counselor at cford@cssu.org.

Our next meeting is on Thursday, November 12th at 8:15 am at Williston Central School.  We hope you can attend!!!

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

Students worked really hard on their LEAF Constructed Responses this week. The question - what are the characteristics of a hero? Is Malala a hero? Defend your answer. We dug deep into our Reading Response Notebooks for evidence from our read aloud of the book I Am Malala. Students brainstormed characteristics of a hero and matched those characteristics up with Malala’s actions for the evidence of their paper. We also worked on including a well connected lead, analysis, and a finisher. Self/peer assessments using a LEAF rubric, followed by self/peer editing were the final components of our drafting process.

Our field trip to the Grand Isle Fish Hatchery was a great way for us to kick off our Trout in the Classroom project. We learned about each stage of the process which we will be doing once our eggs arrive in January on a smaller scale.

Students also had a chance to watch the ⅞ Model United Nations debates. Students represented countries and debated current hot topics. The ⅚ students enjoyed watching and were asked to take a stand on the topic being debated.

Also, ask your student about the country coordinates competition and finding exact location!

The Week in Ms O's Room:














The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):

Due to our incredible students being extremely dedicated to their Model United Nations debates, we do not have any “Tweet the Week” statements, but here is an overview of our classes.

During our morning classes we have been getting started on our class literature groups and beginning our Global unit! For our literature groups, 8th graders are reading “The Day of the Pelican” by Katherine Paterson, and our 7th graders have just started “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins. Both classes will be focusing on themes of social justice and social injustices. 8th graders have already read 100 pages in “The Day of the Pelican” and completed a written response to their reading. Students have also been following a character of their choice and keeping track of their actions, emotions, and personal choices. Based on the notes students took in their books for their reading, we began creating character maps to represent their character of study. During the rest of our classes we have been talking about informational writing. What does it mean to write an informational piece? What are some forms or types of informational writing? Where can informational writing be found? These are just some of the questions we have been tackling in class. To answer these questions we have been digging into informational texts to see what makes them different from other pieces of texts. We have also found that informational writing includes a lot of facts and data, so we have been practicing our note-taking skills and discussing note-taking strategies. Students practiced their note-taking skills by watching the global adventure of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and discussing its connection to our unit and its big themes. Students have also been practicing taking notes on informational videos and nonfiction text by taking part in a postcard unit using a program through Scholastic called Global Trek. Through the program students have been able to “travel” around the world exploring different countries of their choice and building information postcards. These postcards will be on display during our Global Village in November.

Our afternoon classes have been extremely focused on researching and building arguments for our Model United Nations debate. I have been SO impressed with the level of dedication, professional attitudes and behaviors, and the overall high level of preparedness from our 7th and 8th grade community. Their arguments and debates have been clear, concrete, creative, supported, and strong. Their voices have been confident and they have been quoting statistics, data, historical evidence, and using current events to help build arguments and create resolutions. We are extremely proud of all of their hard work! Enjoy the photos!

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

CMP7

The last two weeks students have been concluding the geometry unit Shapes and Designs.  We created a class record that captured our understanding of the properties of polygons.  We played an exciting game of jeopardy and then completed the Shapes and Designs Unit test.  Our next area of study is positive and negative integers.  We investigated our number system by defining different sets of real numbers which include, natural, whole, integers, rational, and irrational numbers.  This puts us in a great place for exploring positive and negative numbers and mathematical operations which utilize them

CMP8

After completing the Thinking with Mathematical Models Unit Test, we took a pause to review Order of Operations and exponent rules.  Being more familiar with exponents is very helpful  while learning about and working with exponential functions.  We investigated math problems with voting ballots and a fictional reward scheme using rubas. (Kingdom of Montarek’s currency) We explored exponential functions through graphs, tables and equations.  We began to formulate ideas around growth factor and patterns in a table and graph.  

Science 7th/8th

The 7th/8th graders having been working hard to grasp how cells allow materials in and out of their semi-permeable membranes.  We did several experiments around diffusion and osmosis.  We had a very smelly situation in my classroom as we timed how long it took for each student to smell our Mango Passion air freshener.  We were able to see a linear trend in time and distance from the source.  We also discussed how scent diffuses from higher to lower concentration.  We shifted this idea to our Gummy Bear lab.  In this exploration we utilized a gummi bear as a model for a cell and placed it into several different solutions; salt water, sugar water and plain water.  We found that different solutions caused water to enter and to leave the Gummy bear, just as water leaves and enters the cell through a process called osmosis.  We finished the week with a quick overview of cell division. Using stained onion tip cells we searched  for different stages of mitosis.  Students reviewed in Google Classroom a unit overview for the upcoming test on Wednesday. 

Double Issue of Voice coming next week in response to 2 short weeks- Have a great long weekend!

Week of September 26th - October 2nd

TA’s Notes:

***Please do not send in any food to be shared among Voyager students***

Picture Retakes:  Morning of Monday, October 19th

Voyager House Needs You!!

We are still looking for at least 2 other fabulous volunteers to round out our FAP reps.  Responsibilities of this role shared by others is:

Organizing the Voyager Media Sale- November 7th

Assisting with Voyager Night- December evening

Overseeing the Recycle Sale in spring

Creating a successful May 6th Voyager sponsored dance

The success of Voyager House depends on and appreciates parent support and these events are all fun and exciting experiences for Voyager students and their families!

Please contact Katie Fieldsend if interested in learning how you can help!

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

We continued to make progress on our read aloud of I Am Malala. Students were also expected to do some reading of the book independently.  I have been really impressed with the engagement and interest the students have with this book. We will be wrapping up the book next week.

For our current events activity, students learned about the differences between local, national, and international news events. Students searched through newspapers to find examples of each. We also created our own Current Events Google Map, marking the locations, including a title and a one sentence summary of the event.  We will add events to this map throughout the school year.

Students also completed their first on demand writing assessment. The prompt was to write about something you feel strongly about and defend your position. These papers will be scored using a district rubric. The activity will be repeated in the spring.

We started our geogrpaphy unit on Wednesday. Students were introduced to the 5 themes of geography. We will be diving deeper into each theme over the next couple of weeks and our study will wrap up with a project that will use all 5 themes.

• I will not be available on Wednesday, October 7 for after school help.

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

Math 5:  Students continued to practice multiplication strategies this week on real world examples, like Sam’s Sewing Supplies and Lily’s Lacrosse balls.  It has been good to reinforce the value of a ratio table in solving BEST BUY problems and problems where the numbers are a little less friendly, like 47 x 36.  We also examined the differences between numerical expressions and equations.  The distinction becomes very important in algebra so it was a worthwhile set of conversations.  Final quiz on the unit was today! Lot of work to do on my part, so please look forward to updates on J grades by weekend’s end!

Math 6:  Our deep exploration into the use of prime factorizations resulted in some claims about numbers that were new to the discussion we have been having in class.  Specifically, we prime factorized to find all the factors of a number. This helps students strengthen multiplication skills and see that all numbers are unique (no other numbers share the same set of factors).  Factorizations also help us find common factors in problems where we are trying to figure out fair share problems.  Also, we discovered that factorizations help us find Greatest Common Factors and Least Common Multiples of a given pair of numbers.  We went back to ferris wheels, cicadas, and trail mix problems to rethink our ideas about those problems based on this new factorization understanding.   The question about whether primeness or compositeness might influence the strategies we use when finding GCF and LCM surfaced.  Yes, these properties matter when searching for GCF and LCM.  

Important:  The Special Number Project has been assigned with graphic organizer and rubric.  Graphic organizer is due on Tuesday and the children’s book is due on October 26th.  Please ask your Voyager what story they are modeling his/her math book after and help them get the ball rolling!  See Google Classroom.

Science ⅚:  Motors, motors, and generators!  We had a busy week of exploration of motors and generators.  Your Voyager is smart!  They discovered that motors, which transform electrical energy into mechanical energy, can be reversed to become a generator (transforms mechanical energy into electrical energy).  See photos below.

The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):

Tweet the Week:

• Hunger Games Lit; UN debate coming soon; Bowl of fate!
• #UnitedNations #HungerGames #Journaling
• Journal Writes; #GlobalGoals; Model U.N.
• #U.N.Debate Getting ready!
• #HungerGames #GlobalGoals - Be a Global Citizen!
• Model UN, #GlobalGoals, Hunger Games
• We soared through AM Humanities with “The Day of the Pelican”
• #DayOfThePelican #ModelU.N. - Can’t wait!, #UNDebate, #Peacemakers
• This week: GlobalGoals, Day of the Pelican, Country Select
• Day of the Global Pelican #Goals
• #GlobalGoalsWithSelfies

This week during our AM classes we started the week with our usual Literacy Rotations on Monday. We also started some great work on a creative art installation with MC Baker that we will be unveiling at an Open House Night in November. We are keeping this project under wraps (even for the students) until November, so we are working away piece by piece. On Tuesday we had a peer edit for our Peacemaker LEAF, and the final draft was due on Friday. Bridging the gap between Tuesday and Friday we spent our classes preparing for the first literature book for our morning classes. Our first unit of literature study is focusing on the theme of social justices and injustices. Our 7th graders will be reading “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins, and our 8th graders will be reading “The Day of the Pelican” by Vermont’s own, Katherine Paterson.

During our afternoon classes we continued our work on learning about the United Nations by kicking off the week by learning about the Global Goals for Sustainable Development that were adopted by the United Nations starting on Friday, September 25th. The hope is to achieve these goals by 2030! Our students took on the challenge of spreading the word to EVERYONE about the Global Goals by identifying one goal they are passionate about, creating a poster, and taking a picture of themselves with the poster and their goal group. These pictures will be shared through the Voyager Voice and displayed on the television screen in the front lobby of our school to help spread the word about the Global Goals. Still wondering what the Global Goals are? Take a look at this quick video: We The People For The Global Goals . During the rest of the week, we spent 2 class periods doing some station based learning on the United Nations by reading a variety of articles and answering questions in our writing journals. On Thursday and Friday our focus turned to our Model United Nations Debate unit! Students picked the countries they wished to represent. Students also began research to complete their country’s national profile through a document in Google Classroom. We have not released the debate topics yet, as we are focusing on building our background knowledge first. Students are getting really excited, and we are counting down the days to the debates! Debates will take place, with students dressed in “business attire”/ “professional attire”, in the WCS dining room in about 2 weeks!!

And now...some Global Goals:

   

   

       

   

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

CMP7

This week students explored side lengths of triangles and the relationship between angle measures.  There was a lot of discussion about why side lengths of a triangle have to be a certain length.  We explored triangles using manipulatives called polystrips.  These tools allowed us to construct  triangles to see what lengths work and what lengths do not.  There has been a lot of conjecture, but we are not quite in consensus with our thinking.  At the end of the week we began a geometry construction lab.  Using protractors and angle rules, students constructed triangles, polygons and angles.  They also worked through problems that were both new and review.  Students received their first assessment back called a “Check-up”.  

CMP8

Inverse variation, what it is, what it looks like in a table, graph and equation was the order of business this week.  An inverse variation is a function that resembles a curve.  In this function the x and y can be multiplied to find a constant (k).  For instance, if you have a fixed area of a rectangle set at 36 cm2, you could have a variety of lengths and widths, but when they are  multiplied  by each other they equal 36. So you could have dimensions like 1 x 36, 2 x 18, 3 x 12 etc. In this function as the length increase the y decreases.  We will be completing this investigation over the next week.

Science 7th/8th

Students completed their scaled cell models this week.  There were lots of varieties and lots of scales.  A common scale was 1 micron = .5 centimeters.  Students took the microscopic organelles to a level that could be seen and understood. There was some beautiful work done and they will be displayed on the house for the next week. From our models of “cells” we turned to specialized cells and tissues.  We have the fortune of great microscopes and slides and students drew sketches of blood, bone, muscle, lung, veins and arteries.  The emphasis was on the form of these cells and tissues and what function they perform in our body.  Students also had readings on chemical compounds in cells and how materials transport in and out of cells.  The 7th/8th grade scientists are getting very proficient at using the microscope!