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)
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
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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.
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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 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.
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