TA’s Notes:
***Please do not send in any food to be shared among Voyager students***
What holiday gift to get for you student? Pencils!!! Many students are short on pencils and could use a resupply.
Great job to all Voyager students who participated in our Voyager Family Night Variety Show!!
Thank you to the families who donated yummy treats & drinks and fabulous door prizes!! Fun was had by all!!
Dates to Remember:
Sunday, Dec. 11th, 11:30am - 4:00pm: Polar Express Elves (for those who signed up- email with details to follow soon)
Parents welcome at all Dec 21st events!
Wednesday, Dec 21st, 7:30 - 8:15am: 7/8 Meet the Authors Open House
Wednesday, Dec 21st, 9:30 - 11:50am: 5/6 Harry Potter Open House to celebrate unit Wednesday, Dec 21st, 1:15 - 2:30: 7/8 Physics Expo
Wednesday, Dec 21st, 2:05 - 2:45: 5/6 Quidditch Match in New Gym
No School: Fri, Dec 23rd - Mon, Jan 2nd
A Plea for Voyager House: Hello all wonderful Voyager families….sadly, our Keurig coffee maker has pretty much quit on us. We are wondering if anyone out there has one that is not in use or is about to be perhaps upgraded? If this sounds like you, would you kindly consider sending your gently used version our way so we can stay sufficiently caffeinated through the school day and beyond. Thank you in advance!
~Ms. Sherman on behalf of all Voyager staff.
P.S. I look forward to seeing all your shining faces at our Voyager night on Wednesday as well as those that will be helping out at the Polar Express!
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
Students worked in Literature Circles this week to wrap up our reading of Harry Potter. Students took on roles (Summarizer, Discussion Director, Word Wizard, Connector, Researcher, and Literary Luminary) and ownership of the discussion, holding each other accountable to share their work and participate in this student led activity. We also continued our script writing work, preparing for our final project. Students will be selecting a part of the book to turn into a screenplay and create their own short film.
To end the week, we watched the Harry Potter movie and will be comparing the book to the movie next week. The House Cup competition is still very close. We have awarded over 500 individual points for collaboration, problem solving, and on task work over the past two weeks. That is amazing engagement!
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
Math 5: We are working so hard on decimals. The noticings are fantastic. Students have forever been using the traditional algorithm for adding and subtracting, but it has never been more obvious than when operating on decimals. Some 5th graders sighed an, “Ohhhh, I see it,” when we had more than 9 tenths and needed to trade for a one, or had more than 9 hundredths and needed to trade for a tenth. It was hilarious and another good reminder that understanding place value is a big part of math! The portal for Jumprope will soon be open, so expect to see quiz and test scores reported there. Also, Aron and I would like to promise all work will be home on the 22nd, so that you can spend your holiday break reviewing assessments, wink wink! Just an early present from us! In the future, I will send all assessments home once they are reported on Jumprope. This way you can compare what you see to the scores on the portal. This may put your mind at ease. I’ve been so pleased with the commitment students have made to private reasoning time and turn and talk. I will start to put these kinds of habit scores on Jumprope, as a biweekly collaboration scores so that you can see how those scores are derived. Quiz on Wednesday and then continuing on with more decimals.
Math 6: This week we arrived at the algorithm for division of fractions. I’m constantly in awe of the ways that we get to these generalizable algorithms or rules that are true all the time for a given math idea. They discover it on their own, with no hint from me! Yes, we have learned about the rule you all know, dividing by a number is the same as multiplying by the reciprocal. This tends to snag many students. I get flipping of the first number instead of the second, and then flipping on multiplication. Watch for these errors on homework and help them correct! We will spend the next few days working on fact families and how we know when to add, subtract, multiply, and divide in story problems.
Science ⅚
Reading and research: Wow what a wonderful skill they are learning. I was so pleased with the quiet reading and practice on two column notetaking.
Development of a Public Record: We combined topic groups and then came to a common understanding about the topics. For example, for students studying light energy, we all agreed that light travels in straight lines. This will help them when they go to explain the phenomenon they have chosen to present.
Introduction to Anchoring Phenomenon: Our new way of teaching is to give students a puzzling phenomenon that they must explain, often over the course of several days or weeks. Coaches (Mr Menke, Dan the Engineer, and Ms. O) introduced students to some cool phenomenon so that they can then try to figure out what is happening and present them to you and ¾ students. By the way...this open house style Muggle Magic Show will be between 9:30-11:50 on the 21st. More details to follow...
The Week from Mr. G's Room:
It was a close vote and a heated debate, but in the end the proposal to begin revising novels right away narrowly defeated the option to wait for January by 5 votes. As a result, students will be working together to edit and revise their work this month leading up to our Authors Breakfast presentation on Dec. 21st.
This week we shared our first rough drafts with each other and started getting feedback for revisions. In current events, we discussed the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP8
Students made a quick study of exponential decay and its similarity with growth. Through our investigation into water cooling we found a decay curve of “best fit” and developed an equation from the table. We completed our unit with a review and jeopardy game. The Growing, Growing,Growing assessment began on Friday.
CMP7
This week we have been muscling through order of operation or (PEMDAS) for short. In 7th grade the equations become far more complicated and require students to pull from previous understanding of fractions, exponents, and integers. We created a class record on all the major concepts from Accentuate the Negative and presented them. We played a rousing game of jeopardy and began our assessment on Friday.
Science 7th/8th
We are in the midst of researching our essential questions for our physics exposition. Students are finding great demonstrations, creating visuals and working to understand the concepts behind their physics topic. The challenge for all is to make their work accessible to a younger audience (3rd-4th graders). Next week we will be pulling all the pieces together and presenting in front of the class for feedback. Students are also being assessed this week on their engagement and collaboration.
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