Week of February 14th - 17th

TA’s Notes:

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

No School: Monday, February 27th - Friday, March 3rd

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

Poetry Slam Week

Students participated in poetry writing workshops in the morning and worked with their poetry slam teams in the afternoon during our poetry slam week. We read and watched slam poetry to inspire our writing and slam performances. Students also learned about and used literary devices in their theme and sensory poetry writing. Slam teams participated in poetry slam challenges. They wrote simile/metaphor poetry that had to be performed by a teacher. They also had to create and perform a slam poem using a given set of words. Each challenge earned their team points during the week long slam competition. The final competition included both team and individual original poetry slams. Students performed their poetry in the auditorium to students and parents.  

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

The conference schedule has been emailed to you.  Please do your best to sign up for conferences as soon as possible.

Math 5:  Assessments went home this week.  Please ask your child for the assessment and cross reference scores on Jumprope.

We have begun our new unit on multiplication and division of fractions.  We will continue to work specifically on whole numbers x fractions this week and move to fractions x fractions next week.

Math 6:   A check up went home this week.  Please ask your child for the assessment and cross reference scores on Jumprope.  Also, students have completed their corrections on Covering and Surrounding Unit Test.  I will have scores in this weekend and tests will go home Monday.  Please take a look when you can.  The assessment was very difficult for many students and their corrections may have produced some improved results.

⅚ Science:  Just poetry this week.  We will continue our work with Gravity and the Solar System after break.  We will have only two science classes next week, which will be a review session on Gravity and a short assessment to wrap up what we have learned thus far.

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

CMP8

This week we had some significant traction with understanding the parabolic landmarks found in the standard form ax2 + bx + c and the factored form (x + p) (x + q).  We used multiple strategies to find the line of symmetry and how to find the vertex using that same line.  The process of finding these different parts of a parabola often requires multiple steps.  It assumes that students can use exponents, positive and negative integers and the distributive property.  I have been having many additional core time math sessions and encourage the students to come see me if they are struggling.  They are working hard and are definitely moving forward in their thinking.

CMP7

We are finishing up our scaling projects with wonderful results. This project challenges students to slow down, use a grid system to plot points and pay attention to detail when enlarging and shrinking their images. Creating a skewed or distorted image pushes students to create an image using a rule that either doubles the horizontal change or the vertical change.

Science 7th/8th

This week we participated in the Poetry slam, science will begin again next week.