TA’s Notes:
***Please do not send in any food to be shared among Voyager students***
8th Graders:
Baby Photos wanted for Yearbook by February 1st! These pictures can be turned in to me with your name and “Voyager” on the back so they can be returned, or emailed to KFieldsend@cssu.org.
Message from 8th Grader to Parents:
I am Emma Howe and I am in the 8th grade. For my 8th grade challenge I am focusing on Cancer. Next week I will be having a week long fundraiser challenge. Can you please send in your kids with coins. Thank you and have a good weekend.
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
Tuesday
Reading Cafe - Independent reading time. The goal is to build reading stamina. Studies show that the ability to read for extended periods of time is a good indicator of success in college.
The learning target is to "get lost in the book".
Wednesday
Argument writing - Students worked on writing strong conclusions by highlighting their main points and making it personal for the reader by offering greater insights, questions, or a challenge to take action.
Current Events - Mr. Maika taught students about the culture and people of Hawaii.
Thursday
Economics Kick Off
Personal Finance - Students reflected on their personal finances. They wrote about how they currently use money for spending, saving, investing, and donating. We then read an article about kids who shared their stories of bad choices with money and what they do now. These students have personal financial plans that include saving 10%, investing 30% in stocks, donating 10% to charities, and spending money on things they really need. A goal for the unit is for students to come up with their own financial plans.
Students are working on completing an online course called Everfi - Vault. Below is a description of the program.
Vault is an interactive learning course specifically designed to introduce financial education skills early in a child’s cognitive development. The course uses the latest in new-media technologies to bring complex financial concepts to life for today’s digital generation. Evidence-based learning theories are incorporated to increase students’ knowledge and build the foundation for making good financial decisions at a young age and promote career development skills.
Topics Covered:
- Responsible Money Choices
- Income and Careers
- Planning & Money Management
- Credit & Borrowing
- Insurance & Safety Management
- Savings & Investing
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
Math 5: This week, students built skeletal arrays for multiplication and practiced modeling the area of a rectangle to find the product of problems like 76 x 34. We then color coded area models and related them to the standard algorithm for multiplication (I know you have all been waiting for years for this!). The purpose of this relating was to see that the conceptual understanding of place value related to the less conceptual recipe for multiplying. I was pleasantly surprised by just how strong so many students are in terms of place value understanding, and that carrying a 2 to the tens place in the standard algorithm shows that they understand that the 2 is a “twenty”. We ended the week with some practice and games multiplying multidigit numbers.
Math 6: With a visit from our math coordinator this week, who commented that “your students are jumping out of their seats to answer questions about area of triangles,” my response was “of course! Is there anything more exciting than the area of a triangle.” They really were jumping out of their seats! We are discovering so much more than area, by seeing patterns and relating numbers/measures, or quantifying the effects of multiplying, that students are becoming so obviously thrilled by their discoveries. Well, let’s pretend shall we? I have noticed a measured increased in excitement in geometry, which often happens because it is so visual, measurable, and filled with patterns. In particular, I have been pleased to introduce problems where decimals or fractions are used, say for the base and height measures, and that students are using skills from previous units to solve those problems. I heard a lot of “oh yeah, that’s how you divide fractions.” OR “I forgot that 4.6 is also 4 6/10 leading to an increase in proficiency when finding the area of a rectangle. Quick Quiz Friday will measure student proficiency on area of rectangles and triangles. On to parallelograms next week...
⅚ Science: Gravity continued this week with some discussion and video reinforcement of what we have learned about how gravity affects objects on Earth. And the big news of the week is that we are building rockets (no propellants, just rubberband rockets) so that we can compete in a challenge on Monday, January 30th from 1:15-2:50. If you can join us, it would be fantastic. We will have 8 launch stations and it would be helpful to have one person per launch station. Please email me if you think you can join. It will be in the New Gym.
The Week in Mr. G’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
In 7/8 Humanities we continued our Immigration Unit by doing an inquiry into the treatment of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast during World War II. Students compared and contrasted primary source documents and archival video to determine which was the most reliable source for understanding this chapter in American history. In their writing, students are practicing making claims and supporting them with evidence. We also had a class discussion, "What are the greatest challenges facing the nation?" on the eve of the presidential inauguration.
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP8
This week we explored the common misconceptions in using the Pythagorean Theorem. We investigated several “interesting no’s” or math processes where errors had occurred. We ended the week with a review of all the major concepts and played a close game of Jeopardy. On Friday we began our “Looking for Pythagoras” Unit Test.
CMP7
Students have been working hard to understand the relationship between scale factor, area and perimeter. We have practiced problems on similar figures and finding unknown side lengths, nested triangles and ratios and proportions. I have asked students to look for an image that they would like to reproduce for our upcoming scaling project. We ended the week with the Check-up!
Science 7th/8th
Both Blue and Gold classes were given feedback on their last data analysis entrance task on the distance of planets from the sun. As a collective group, students have done a great job at making claims based on observations, however, their evidence has not been data driven. We practiced data analysis using data about the diameter of planets. The question we were exploring was: “How are planet diameters related to what we know about the formation of the solar system?” We found that the rocky or terrestrial planets are substantially smaller than the outer gas giants. Our evidence showed that the diameters of terrestrial planets are less than 8,000 miles whereas the gaseous planets range in diameter from 30,000 to 88,000 miles. This relates to the current understanding that outer planets formed first and were able to gather materials (gases and debris) from the sun’s initial blast. The rocky planets formed second with less materials to work with. Finally, we rounded out the week the introduction of our ”Alien Planet” project, where student will create a planet and alien based on different attributes. (low gravity vs. high gravity, high temperature vs. low temperature, etc).
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