TA’s Notes:
***Please do not send in any food to be shared among Voyager students***
No School- April 18th - 22nd
Voyager is hosting May’s school dance!!
Dance is Friday, May 6th. Money raised from this directly funds our house Field Trip budget so please help out! Parent chaperones, food & drink donations and money raising events truly help make this an exciting fundraiser for our team.
We need lots of help- please look at Voyager Dance Sign Up Sheet for ways you can help make this a success!
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
Students wrapped up the argument writing unit this week. Students researched school related issues on teams, learned argument writing techniques and strategies, took a position, and used a graphic organizer to complete an argument paper. In the afternoon period, students worked on teams to prepare and perform in a debate competition. Faculty and community members with expertise on the issues were invited to watch the debates and then speak about the issue with the students. The issues were: more PE time, participation trophies, fining the parents of bullies’, grading participation in class, and volunteer requirements in schools.
We also had a great book talk session on Friday morning. Students have been reading a self selected book and completed a book talk organizer to use as guide for their talk. Many great titles were shared.
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
From Ms. O: Last week we had the opportunity to connect with Mark Fleming, Head of Pathology at Boston Children’s Hospital. Mark is Dan’s son, the engineer who dedicates several times a week in our classroom, sharing his expertise of science and engineering with the students. Students prepared for the conference call by learning more about blood and cells and Mark’s specialty in Sickle Cell and Leukemia. I have attached a few photos of blood Mark collected just that morning from a patient!
In addition I have posted a few photos from the presentations about the human body! I did not see all presentations, so send one in if you would like to share it publicly.
The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
8th Grade Challenge Presentations- Monday, April 26th
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP 7
This week students learned more strategies around solving multi-step algebraic equations. We reviewed the distributive property, PEMDAS, and explored what solutions mean in the context of a problem. Understanding how to graph the intersection of two equations is a preview for next year’s solving systems of equations.
We ended the week with rotations where we practiced everything linear.
CMP8
This week we began systems of inequalities. We focused on solving inequalities like equalities and then graphing them. Exploring the numbers of miles we drive and the CO2 that our cars produce, we were able to form inequalities to show the relationship between CO2 and the cars we use. We also investigated what would happen if we cut our CO2 by 20% and how that constraint influenced the number of miles we could drive. Conversely we observed what would happen if we were able to cut our driving miles by 10%. We rounded the week off with a TED talk by Bill Gates on the quest for creating a 0 emission world.
Science 7th/8th
The main focus of this week was revision of the Cold/Hot Pact Engineering Task. After being given their revisions and an exemplar to review, students needed to go back to their work to add data analysis, connect with the overarching science concepts and create accurate drawings. We briefly looked at gas laws with a series of demonstrations using temperature, volume and pressure to complete our chemistry study. Finally, we began with vocabulary and general information gathering on our next unit, which is geology.
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