TA’s Notes:
***Please do not send in any food to be shared among Voyager students***
Last day of School- Friday, June 10th Half-Day (dismissal is 11:55am)
*****8th Grader Parents*****
Graduation ticket order form link was in an email that went out April 29th. Tickets can only be ordered online. If you need assistance with this please let me know
8th grade trip: All 8th graders going on trip to Canada need to turn in asap:
- Passport, birth certificate or certified copy of birth certificate (if you would like your student to hold documentation until day of trip please let me know- they will be responsible for remembering day of)
- Photocopy of birth certificate (I will make a copy from birth certificates I receive- this is needed as extra back-up for getting back into country and is needed for those students using passports or holding documentation until day of trip)
- Letter of consent signed by all guardians
- Emergency contact info for day & evening
Any questions please contact me at KFieldsend@cssu.org or 871-6148
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
SBAC testing took up most of our week, but we did take a break on Wednesday to prepare for our overnight field trip to Button Bay State Park. Students met with their chaperone/tent groups to organize camping supplies, breakfast/snacks, and prepare for a skit the night of our trip. We also watched the ⅞ chorus and band concert that morning.
Next week we will be working on a mini Civil War unit/project and taking some time before our trip to learn about Rokeby and its connection to the Underground Railroad.
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
Our week was swallowed up by SBAC testing, so not a lot of class time! I did do a fair amount of conferencing this week one on one. This allowed me to better assess where students are at mathematically. 6th Grade will formally begin Variables and Patterns on Monday, a very important pre algebra unit. 5th Grade is doing a project based math instructional sequence on Solar Energy. It is a very math heavy unit and draws on the mathematical details of energy. It does end in a solar design project. It will be lots of fun!
Science: Please bring in consumables for an Art Project. Students will be doing an art project to celebrate the coloration in the Grand Prismatic Pool. We need any objects that can be glued that are red, blue, yellow, orange, green, and brown. It is best if these items are smallish, like 1 square inch or less, and are not important to you! It can be small colored cut outs from magazines, fabric, glass beads, or old board game pieces. We will have plenty of things in the class, but the diversity of items would be really fun. Send them in!
The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
This week has been loaded with great, fun, creative work in both our AM and PM Humanities classes.
During our AM classes we continued on with our unit on myths and legends. Students focused on the Greek Gods and Goddesses by learning about 14 of the main Greek Gods and Goddesses through creating a small informational coloring book. Students then used these books in various ways in class. We used the books to help us make connections to our independent reading books on Monday. Students were asked to connect the main character in the book to a Greek God or Goddess by looking at their personality traits, hobbies, powers, and symbols. We then read our first Greek myth, “The Beginning of The World”. After reading this students were asked to look at how words were used in the myth and how the same words are used today. This activity allowed the students to make connections to how characters, stories, and even words from Greek mythology are still used today in various ways and forms. We then moved into “How the Seasons Came” and “How Evil Came Into the World”. These stories allowed us to compare, contrast, and map out the elements of a story in a myth or legend. Students did a great job with this and created thoughtful and analytical T-charts to report out the different elements in the story. Elements that were of most importance included: characters, setting, conflict, resolution, elements of magic or the supernatural, and identifying whether the story was a story of how something was created or not. On Friday students were introduced to their myths and legends writing project, which will be their final writing piece for AM Humanities. Students seem really excited and engaged in this writing piece as it is not only a narrative, but they get to write the story of how a famous, intriguing, or wild physical feature on our globe was created. So far students seem to be interested in writing about the creation of The Himalayas, natural pools in Jamaica, rainbow eucalyptus forests in Hawaii, the Great Barrier Reef, etc. This writing project tends to be a favorite, and I’m so excited to end the year with such a creative and collective writing task. Writing a myth or legend about how something on our globe was created is truly a reflection of our studies all year as it is asking students to create culturally connected stories that represent a feature on our planet.
During our PM Humanities classes students have been continuing their work with our Global Geography Unit. This week students worked in small groups to learn about 1 of the 7 continents and report out on a series of information/facts on large posters that we placed around our classroom. Students then did a silent “gallery walk”, where they were asked to walk around the class and observe trends, differences or commonalities between the continents. We then held a class discussion where we talked about what they noticed. Both classes ended up having great conversations about how climate impacts the population of a place or the migration of a people over time. The impacts that climate can have on population are very layered and students really pulled in the various themes of geography to help in discussing this topic. Students were then introduced to their final project for PM Humanities, which is the World Wildlife Fund: Endangered Places Project. Students are working with a partner for this project, and are doing some great work to get our poster campaign going! Our hope is to inform our school about the various endangered places on our planet, as most people are unaware that endangered places even exist! Most people when they think of something being endangered they immediately think of endangered species. With this project we hope to inform Voyager House and the WCS community of these beautiful but endangered places, and raise money to help protect them! One of the ways to help in protecting these environments is to donate to the World Wildlife Fund, and it just so happens that one way of donating is through adopting endangered species. We have a large list of species we’d like to adopt, so we are hoping to raise a lot of money! We will keep you posted on how we’re doing and which animal or animals we adopt! :)
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP7
This week in “Filling and Wrapping”, the 7th graders have been exploring the relationship between scale factor and the surface area and volume of the figure. We reviewed net drawing and explored how many different patterns can form a cube. (There are 11 nets!)
We also practiced forming 3-d drawings with isometric dot patterns.
CMP8
This week we continued our comprehensive review of the major concepts we learned this year. Students have been working diligently through their review packet and we will conclude our review next week as we prepare for Friday’s final exam. The 8th graders are trying hard and staying focused!
Science 7th/8th
This week we completed our minerals lab where we identified minerals performing a series of tests such as finding streak color, hardness, whether the mineral reacts with hydrochloric acid and density. These tests allowed us to access the mineral identification key. We were able to identify minerals such as pyrite, galena, sulfur, talc, mica, fluorite, quartz and others. On Tuesday, we began a mini-project where students had to research one concept, answer several questions and create an interactive model to portray the concept. The topics included; earthquakes, tsunami, constructive and destructive forces, volcanoes, landslides, continental drift and many more. On Friday afternoon we had a brief geology showcase so that students could share their information to the other class.
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