Week of October 24th - 28th

TA’s Notes:

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

Dates to Remember:

Friday, Nov. 4th - Voyager’s Book & Media Sale Set-up

Saturday, Nov. 5th - Voyager’s Book & Media Sale

Wednesday, Dec. 7th- Voyager Family Night in WCS Auditorium

Sunday, Dec. 11th - 11:30am - 4:00pm Polar Express Elves

It’s almost time for the Voyager Book & Media Sale!!
It’s happening Saturday, Nov 5th-

Merchandise can still be dropped off in the front lobby of WCS or in Voyager’s project room.

Volunteers are still needed for Saturday and final clean-up Saturday afternoon.   

Sign Up Sheet Here

ALL funds raised go directly to Voyager house.

Please try and support this fundraiser by helping out or shopping at the Book & Media Sale!

Lauren Palmer (a former Voyager student and CVU graduate)  is directing/running an adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part One performing at the Off Center for the Dramatic Arts in Burlington on November 17th, 18th, and 19th (7:00, 7:00, and 2:00 respectively). All actors/actresses are youth (ages 12-15) from the surrounding communities. You can go to the website: hourglassyouththeatre.weebly.com for more information.

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

This week’s highlights:

• We started a new mystery literature group round. 5th graders are reading Closed for the Season and 6th graders are reading Tangerine.
• We prepared for our field trip by learning about the VT State House and structure of the VT government.
• We wrote letters to our local representatives with our ideas for bills to introduce in the next session.
• Students learned about the judicial branch and participated in a Pro Se (do it yourself) Court using a real Supreme Court case - Chicago vs Morales.
• We went to the VT State House and VT Historical Society Museum on Friday. Students took a tour of the State House, participated in a mock trial in the VT Supreme Court room and completed a scavenger hunt in the museum.

The Week in Mr. G’s Room (⅞ Humanities):

This week we presented our “Trends of Democratization” slides, wrapping up our unit on the American Revolution and Democracy. Then students were hard at work preparing for National Novel Writing Month. They worked on character, conflict, plot, setting and dialogue. We will officially begin writing on Monday. Students have set their own daily, weekly, and total word count goals. The objective for the month of November will be to write as much as possible. Editing and revision will happen later in the year.

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

CMP8

This week we put the finishing touches on our understanding of inverse variations, line of best fit and solving multi-step algebraic equations.  We created a class record, reviewed our notes and took a practice test.  The Thinking With Mathematical Models test was given on Thursday with many finishing up on Friday.  Our next exciting topic is......Exponents and the rules they follow. Over the next week we will explore what exponents represent numerically and learn how to do mathematical operations with them.

CMP7

The 7th graders have been doing a great job at getting down to business in math class. At one point they were able to transition from our “brain break” in 40 seconds.  They have earned lots of Smart Cells for on-task behavior.  Kudos to the class!  This week we completed our geometry review, took a practice test and talked about how to study for a unit test.  The Shapes and Designs test was given on Thursday with many students completing it on Friday.  We move on to positive and negative integers next.  

Science 7th/8th

It's time to put away the glue guns, mousetraps, wooden axles and wheels.  We had our final competition on both Wednesday and Thursday this week.  Although many cars did not travel far, we learned a lot about creating a solution to transforming the potential energy of a mousetrap to the kinetic energy of movement.  Students took notes on their colleagues car results, gave observational feedback, students considered all the variable changes they made and did a final exit task after our discussion.  The lab report is due from each student on Monday next week.

Week of October 17-21

TA’s Notes:

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

Dates to Remember:

Wednesday, October 26th - 9:30 - 10:30 Picture Retake Day! (Original photos went out Friday)

Friday, October 28th - ⅚ Field Trip to State House, Supreme Court and VT Historical Museum

Friday, Nov. 4th - Voyager’s Book & Media Sale Set-up

Saturday, Nov. 5th - Voyager’s Book & Media Sale

Wednesday, Dec. 7th- Voyager Family Night in WCS Auditorium

Sunday, Dec. 11th - 11:30am - 4:00pm Polar Express Elves

Ms. Sherman:

⅞ have been working hard with their new PBIS plan. Make sure you touch base with your son or daughter about the positive incentive plan that is taking place on Voyager house. In addition, the 8th grade is working towards a special night to connect as a “family” so encourage them to hand in their contracts and do their best to stay eligible for this fun night. (Hosted by Courtney Sherman and Katie Fieldsend)

Homework club is up and running on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So far we have only seen a very few students attend and we encourage more to show as we have several students on house that could benefit from extra support and time for work completion.

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

We started the week with book talks. Students presented on books that they read independently over the past three weeks. There was a nice variety of genres and a lot of enthusiasm for their choices.

We also read the preamble of the constitution this week. Small groups took a phrase, defined it, and shared why they thought the phrase is important. We decided that the preamble lays out the purpose of our government. We then discussed what the framers did to limit the power of government, which led us to the 3 branches of government. Students used a BrainPop video and a textbook titled “We the People” to research the three branches and learn what makes up each branch and their powers. We played 3 branches of government jeopardy to practice our new learning.

After learning about how a bill becomes a law, we held a mock public hearing. A representative and his staff went back to their congressional district to seek feedback on a bill that would prevent smoking in public areas. Students were placed in groups (health advocates and supporters of the tobacco industry) and had to convince the representative and her staff to take their position. We reflected on the idea of the common good and discussed how that played into the representative’s decision.

Reminder - Montpelier Field Trip permission slips were sent home this week, please be sure to sign and return with your student. We go on Friday, October 28th. Details are on the form.

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

Math 5:  This week was filled with work related to finding fractions of a whole number.  We used this understanding to solve addition and subtraction of fraction problems.  What is ½ + ⅔ ?  Students used the Mr. Miles trail problem to figure out the length of a trail that would allow them to solve this problem easily.  Students were able to see that a trail that is 6 miles long would allow them to find halves and thirds easily.  Therefore, ½ of 6 is 3, so that distance is 3/6 of the trail and ⅔ of 6 is 4 or 4/6 of the trail, so 3/6 + 4/6 = 7/6 or 1 ⅙ of the trail or 7 kilometers.  This method was formalized as the common denominator strategy for adding and subtracting.  We also did some work with ratios in problems called “Better Buy.”  Which is the better buy 4 cans of beans for $5 or 6 cans of beans for $7?  Now you can take them shopping and know that they will save you $$!    

Math 6: 6th Graders spent the weak renaming fractions and decimals as percents. This was a good connection to all of the ratio work we have done, because it allowed us to see ratios represented as fractions, decimals, and percents.  We used visual models, like percent bars and the strategy of 10% and 1% to find percents of a number.  We began a review process Friday for Comparing Bits and will take our assessment next Wednesday.

Science ⅚:  This week we dove into our eating relationships tag game by looking at producers and how they make food for themselves.  Although the concept of Photosynthesis is left to middle and high school standards, we did talk about it and how plants use this process as a recipe for making sugars, so that it can go about its daily functions.  Students learned that ‘photo’ means light and ‘synthe’ means to put together making the translation to put together light or use light to make food. We went on to further develop the role producers play in the food chain and how energy is transferred from one organism to the next based on eating relationships.  We played a food chain game online and created a food web with a ball of yard.  All of this modeling is in service to explaining our anchoring phenomenon, the albatross with plastics in its belly.  How does the death of this organism help us understand food chains and the importance of monitoring the health of food chains in all ecosystems.

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

CMP8

This week we explored inverse variation word problems.  Students needed to write an equation about the situation, populate a table, create a labeled graph and explain the relationship between the independent and dependent variable.  We also took a stroll down memory lane to practice our PEMDAS skills and worked through multi-step algebraic equations.  We took notes on Commutative, Associative, Distributive and Identity properties and helped “Aunt Sally” out with her PEMDAS errors.    Next week will conclude our “Thinking With Mathematical Models” unit, so students should plan on an assessment near the end of the week.

CMP7

What side lengths allow you to construct a quadrilateral?  Are there some dimensions that don’t allow you to build a four sided figure?  These questions and our trusty polystrips, allowed us to experiment with constructing all sorts of 4 sided figures.  Some were possible and some were not.  Just like our triangle exploration, you can’t always build what you want!  For example we found that any two sides of a triangle has to be larger than the third side.  It is the same thing with quadrilaterals.  If you add up any three sides it has to be greater than the fourth side in order to form a a closed figure.  Next week we will be finishing up our “Shapes and Designs” unit, so students should plan on an assessment near the end of the week.

Science 7th/8th

Mousetrap cars are finally being tested and refined. Next week we will compete, complete our lab report, and pull together what we’ve learned from our exploration of potential and kinetic energy, motion and forces and the engineering process.

Voyager Voice Week of October 10th - 14th

TA’s Notes:

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

Dates to Remember:

Saturday, October 15th, 8am - 11am Williston School Fall Fest

Thursday, October 20th - ⅞ Parent Conferences Thu 7/8 Conference

Friday, October 21st - ⅚ and ⅞ Parent Conferences (No School) 

Fri 5/6 Conference 

Fri 7/8 Conference 

Monday, October 24th - ⅚ Parent Conferences Mon 5/6 Conference

Wednesday, October 26th- 9:30 - 10:30 Picture Retake Day! (Original photos to be out before 10/26)

Friday, October 28th - ⅚ Field Trip to State House, Supreme Court and VT Historical Museum

Friday, Nov. 4th - Voyager’s Book & Media Sale Set-up

Saturday, Nov. 5th - Voyager’s Book & Media Sale

Wednesday, Dec. 7th- Voyager Family Night in WCS Auditorium

Sunday, Dec. 11th - 11:30am - 4:00pm Polar Express Elves

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

Students wrapped up their LEAF essays this week. They received some feedback on their drafts and then typed, revised, and edited a final draft.

Students should be prepared to present a book talk on Monday about a book recently completed. We will be starting a mystery/thriller literature group next week.

WCS Candidate Forum

Eight candidates for various Vermont offices came to WCS last Friday morning to field questions from our students.  The candidates include Senator Leahy, Congressman Peter Welch, Deb Bucknan (running for Attorney General), David Zuckerman (running for Lieutenant Governor), Scott Milne (running for US Senate), State Treasurer Beth Pearce, Randy Brock  (running for Lieutenant Governor), and Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan.

Seventh and eighth graders prepared questions and each team selected two students to address the candidates.  Charlotte DeSantos and Mia Kenney represented Voyager House and did a great job!.

Fifth and sixth graders created hand-drawn posters for the candidates which lined the hallways, the auditorium and the front of the stage.  Candidates signed many of these posters which students may now bring home. Ada Jones and Gabby Clark did the camera work for RETN. You can see the full forum here on the RETN website.

The panel responding to student questions

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

Math 5:  This week we focused on finding fractions of whole numbers.  We are doing modeling all the time, so students used square tiles and are moving to the double number line model in order to make connections and generalizations.  

Math 6:  Lots of fractions, decimals and percent work!  We are working hard to understand how fractions can be renamed as decimals and ultimately percents.  This foundational work is very necessary and so the focus on this will be ongoing. Also, we are still trying to get the hang of the traditional model for division. Feel free to practice at home!

Science ⅚:

Our week was filled with interesting events from a Google Hangout session with Kara Lavender Law, an oceanographer from Sea Education Association to tag games to learn about eating relationships.  Specifically students learned about the death of an albatross as it relates to ocean plastics and how Sea Education Association is compiling data sets to understand the state of plastics in our ocean and how they affect organisms in the ocean food chain.  The kids did a great job and asked great questions to Kara.  It was fun to meet a real scientist. In addition, we learned about producers, consumers, and decomposers and then modeled those eating relationships in a tag game.  More to come on this topic...

The Week in Mr. G’s Room (⅞ Humanities):

This week in Humanities we started really digging into character creation in preparation for National Novel Writing Month this November. Students began creating their protagonists, antagonists, and supporting characters. In the afternoon we prepared presentations to explain “Trends of Democratization.”

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

CMP8

We are venturing into non-linear functions, specifically inverse variations.  An inverse variation is a function that creates a curve. In this function x is increasing while y is decreasing at a decreasing rate.  The equation for this function is xy = k(constant). A table for this function would look like this.

x	1/4	1/2	1	3/2	2
y	4	2	1	2/3	1/2

The graph would look like this.

CMP7

This week we explored the relationship between the internal and external angles of polygons. We found that the external sum of angles of any polygon is 360.

We also found that when you divide a polygon into triangles, you must subtract the internal angles that are around the central point. We finished the week with exploring the side lengths of triangles.

Science 7th/8th

This week we continued our engineering task by investigating how to use the mousetrap to power our cars. Students are working to build and test their cars. Next week we will continue testing, refining our models and finally competing. Students will do a final write-up on the physics of their car with emphasis on the learning targets of creating and following an experiment plan, graphing data, analyzing data and finally, connecting all of their findings to energy transformation.

Week of October 3rd - 7th

TA’s Notes:

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

Dates to Remember:

Wednesday, October 12th - No School

Thursday, October 13th - ⅚ SKYPE session with ocean plastics expert (Ecology Unit)

Saturday, October 15th, 8am - 11am Williston School Fall Fest

Thursday, October 20th - ⅞ Parent Conferences Thu 7/8 Conference

Friday, October 21st - ⅚ and ⅞ Parent Conferences (No School) 

 Fri 5/6 Conference

 Fri 7/8 Conference

                                                                                 

Monday, October 24th - ⅚ Parent Conferences Mon 5/6 Conference

Friday, October 28th - ⅚ Field Trip to State House, Supreme Court and VT Historical Museum

Friday, Nov. 4th - Voyager’s Book & Media Sale Set-up

Saturday, Nov. 5th - Voyager’s Book & Media Sale

Sunday, Dec. 11th - 11:30am - 4:00pm Polar Express Elves

 ______________________________________________

Although it’s only October, we're ready to sign up volunteer elves for the Polar Express on Sunday, December 11th from 11:30-4:00!  We will meet at 11:30 at the downtown Burlington train station. For more details see the "Polar Express Information Sheet".  Please note that we need all elves to stay through the entire shift.  

Please complete the sign-up form here for each elf in your family so we get the proper head count.  Parents, we need you as adult elf/chaperones, too!  

Thank you so much for reading and I hope you all can join us.  Please sign up by Friday, October 14th to guarantee the proper t-shirt size.  

______________________________________________

Voyager is sponsoring the Book & Media Sale at the Craft Fair again, Saturday, Nov. 5th here at WCS.  Please mark your calendar to attend and help at this event!

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 the front lobby of WCS.  

This fundraiser will benefit ALL Voyager students.  Plans are being made for an overnight end of year trip for the entire house but this can only happen if we raise the funds ourselves.  Our goal for this fundraiser is $1,000 so we need all the merchandise and support we can get.

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

This week students completed their first on demand writing assessment of the year. They were to pick an issue that they feel passionate about and write an argument piece. This will be scored using a common core rubric and measured against a similar on demand in the spring.

We continued our study of our national government and will be learning about the 3 branches of government, the presidential election process, political parties and more. There will be many activities on this content and on our state government over the next few weeks in preparation for our trip to the VT State House.

Finally, students watched the streamed WCS Candidate Forum and were very excited to see their posters on the stage and in the auditorium. The forum will be available for replay on RETN - retn.org/wsd.

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

Math 5:  Students took their Unit 1 Post Assessment this week.  Results will be sent home once proficiency scales are put onto Jumprope.  You will get the actual assessment, which you will see has been reviewed for correct and incorrect answers and students attempts to correct.  I will not be posting those on Google Classroom, so please be sure to ask your child about the assessment when I return them on Monday.  Unit 2 is a fraction and decimal unit and we begun our work this week looking at visual models for fractions and decimals.  Specifically we working with money and clocks as a way to add and subtract fractions.  Fractions is always a stretch for students; they just don’t seem to follow the same rules as whole numbers. We will monitor closely the many misconceptions that students have about these kinds of numbers and I will be directly addressing those misconceptions daily by asking, “what misconception does this student have when they solve a problem like this?” (eg. ½ + ½ = 2/4 because the student incorrectly added numerators and denominators).

Math 6:  Students had a chance to look back on their first Check Up for Comparing Bits and Pieces and make corrections.  It was a learning experience for many who publicly spoke about their mistakes, many of which were “I didn’t read the question correctly, or I only did part of the multi step problem.”  Students acknowledged that the math was not the issue but careful close reading.  Students will be working on this if they identified that as their one big problem.  We launched back into the unit involving ratios and fractions, by looking more closely at fractions and decimals.  I joked with them yesterday that they must get in the Halloween spirit and bring their fraction understanding back from the dead.  It’s true!  We must think about the rules we have learned about fractions to get back into the mode.  We will be wrapping up this unit soon with an end of unit assessment and then moving into more fractions in our next book, Let’s be Rational.

Science ⅚:  This week was dedicated to our Green Roof Investigation data.  We learned about what makes a good graph and spent time graphing 4 sets of data: green roof interior and exterior temperatures and black roof interior and exterior temperatures.  See photo below.

We then had several group discussions and a scientist meeting to make sense of the data.  In order to get to the place where we can observe data and then make inferences about it, we viewed several photos of natural phenomenon and then made observation statements.  Once done, we then said WHY do we see what we see?  This is the inference.  We then applied this same process to our data.  This takes a lot of discipline! Makes us all realize how often we jump to an inference, which could be wrong!  The last task was to get back to our key question, what makes plants so important?  Students are writing LEAF evidence statements about what we have learned, pulling one example from the investigation about plants and the other two evidence statements from research.  These are due on Tuesday!

The Week from Mr. G’s Room
This week in Humanities we reflected on the Revolutionary debates of 1776, and made connections between our simulation and the actual events that followed. We finished up our first lit group books, and we began talking about our novel projects for next month. What makes a book a good book, and what qualities do we want to work on for our own novels? 

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

CMP8

This week we looked at linear functions through graphs, tables and equations. Finding meaning within the context of the problem and looking for efficient strategies to find linear relationships was discussed.  We began to look at systems of linear equations and the meaning of the intersection point.  This is a point that both systems have in common, where both are equal.  Students worked together to complete a Partner Quiz.  This assessment will be graded using a learning target rubric.  Students will not get a %, but you will see if they met the target on a number of skills.  The assessment will come home next week with the rubric.

CMP7

This week we looked at polygons that can tile and those that don’t.  We created tessellations and learned about symmetry.( translation, rotation, reflection and glide) We also worked to create a class record of all the things we have learned so far.  These records are available for everyone to use day-to-day.

Science 7th/8th

Our engineering task has started in earnest. We are trying to figure out how to get a mousetrap to move a car 5 meters.  Students have begun their engineering task by stating the problem, doing background research on the physics of mousetraps, drawing a preliminary design and planning out how they are going to test their solution.  There will be a lot of trial and error, but in the end students should be able to scientifically describe how their car worked and what variables caused their car to succeed or fail.  Students will be expected to analyze their data, redesign their cars and then retest.  Data collection, graphing concisely will also be assessed in this task.