TA’s Notes:
***Please do not send in any food to be shared among Voyager students***
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
We continued our literature study of The Giver. Students started to make a storyboard in their Reading Response Notebook; identifying the exposition, conflict, and rising action in the book. Students also worked on vocabulary from the book and engaged in some great discussions about this utopian society.
We also kicked off our unit on Lewis and Clark. We started by learning about the Louisiana Purchase, and then we moved into a cooperative learning activity that provided students with background information about life in 1803, just before the launch of the expedition. Part of that work included comparing maps from that time period to maps today; students noticed many differences between the maps. We then took our orders from Thomas Jefferson and wrote our first journal entry as members of the Corps of Discovery, just about to start the Journey of Discovery.
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
Math 5: We did it! We made the leap to the traditional standard algorithm for multiplying two numbers. Bridges carefully builds students up to this algorithm by providing many strategies for solving problems and some students will lean on those strategies, because they know they work, before moving into the most efficient of them all: “my parents’ way.” The transition is clunky, because the standard algorithm is the least conceptual of all ways, but still honors place value and is recipe like. The recipe is good for students, because once in the habit, they can just follow it every time. We practiced this all week!
Math 6: We have moved solidly into division of fractions this week inventing strategies that work every time. The way we all learned to divide fractions, invert and multiply is where we will end up, but is not where we focused our week. When you help students, try to get them to lean on the work they have in their learning log.
Science ⅚: This week we looked at modeling air puppies based on an anchoring phenomenon of hot water in a plastic water bottle. See models below.
We began investigations of air puppies today! See some photos of our icy cold lemonade and the thought experiment performed to observe what will happen to the icy cold lemonade glass and the room temperature glass of water.
Message from one of our 5/6 Interns:
My name is Erin Kiely and I am from Hollis, NH. I am currently a senior attending the University of Vermont where I am majoring in middle level education and minoring in special education. This semester I am student teaching with Ms. O’Brien and will be spending some time in Mr. Merrill’s classroom as well. After February break, I will be leading a unit in Humanities on slavery with Ally Rice, another UVM intern. Later on in the year I will be doing my solo teaching in math and science. I have enjoyed the time I have spent here so far, and am looking forward to the rest of the year.
The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
This week during our morning classes we had a couple days of fun, creative writing with journal prompts, and ended the week focusing on identifying theme in literature. Students practiced identifying theme in a couple of different ways. First, they tried identifying theme in a variety of children’s books on Thursday, and on Friday they became movie critics and identified themes in movies by viewing different clips. Friday’s class was very fun and lively, and all students walked away with a clear understanding of theme and how it differs from the subject or topic of the story. As a class we came to the conclusion that theme is the underlying message or universal truth that the story is trying to tell us such as good vs evil or love conquers all.
In our afternoon classes students literally took a walk through 20th Century History with the help of our GIANT timeline of the 20th century. We looked for common trends, patterns, cause and effect examples, and we also examined how long certain wars were. Upon returning to class we discussed the 1960’s and how full that decade was with movements, wars, change, and innovation. This was the perfect transition into diving deeper into learning about the Vietnam War. We spent some time discussing geography and the impact it can have on a war specifically in Vietnam. We then viewed a documentary on the war and discussed how the war not only made an impact on the world but on the United States and the culture of our country. After having worked through station-based learning activities on the 1960’s, discussing the impact of the 60’s, and viewing/reflecting on the Vietnam War, students were introduced to their 1960’s project. This project will be for students (in pairs or independently) to create a historical fiction graphic novel using Pixton, which is an online comic builder. Students will be asked to synthesize the knowledge and information gained from our studies of the 60’s and apply them to a story of their own creation that takes place during that time period. We are taking this project step by step with students completing brainstorms, idea webs, character charts, and storyboards prior to starting on Pixton. We will also be fact checking our work to make sure that not only our dates and names are accurate to the time, but that our pop culture references, trends, and clothing match with the time period as well.
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP7
We began the week with a taste test of a variety of lemon/lime caffeine free sodas. We created mathematical statements comparing the different brands using ratios and percentages. We reviewed part to part and part to whole ratios when figuring out which orange juice was the most and least “orangey”. We did a lot of work around juice recipes, converting to different measures likes cups to ounces, and we used our scaling up and shrinking down to figure out how much concentrate and water was needed in a variety of situations. We finished off the week with ratio and proportion stations, biological sampling situations and pizza serving problems.
CMP8
This week we were impacted by the World Language Exams, so homework was kept to a minimum. We completed our Frogs, Fleas and Painted Cubes Unit by looking at the motion of frogs, fleas and basketball players and balls that are thrown from different heights. We learned about the force of gravity and the opposite force of an object being thrown.This motion creates a parabola and students have learned to create graphs and equations modeling this behavior. We completed the week with creating catapults. Using corks, slow motion cameras and tape measures, students worked to create equations of the flight. We ended with a FFPC jeopardy game to prepare for our unit test on Monday.
Science 7th/8th
We began the week with a recap of our Solubility Lab and a lively debate over whether salt placed in solution was a chemical or physical change? We then turned our attention to the Periodic Table of Elements. Students created color coded tables showing the different groupings within the table and how the table is organized. We began our Superhero/Super Villain Element Project. Over the next week students will research the physical and chemical properties of their selected element and create a superhero or villain with attributes that incorporate their element’s properties. They will write a brief “bio” and create a drawing that will be part of the class periodic table.
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