Week of March 13-17

TA’s Notes:

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

March 31st: No School

Voyager Recycle Sale Set-Up 5:30 - 8pm

April 1st: VOYAGER RECYCLE SALE!!  8:30am - 4pm

May 5th- Voyager Dance

After school with Ms. Sherman:

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

This week we are working on the Road to the American Revolution Unit!  Students are reading My Brother Sam is Dead to get an idea of what life was like for people in the Colonies during the Revolution.  They should have read through Chapter 10 by Friday 3/17!  

After our mid-week vacation we played a Mercantilism simulation where students played the parts of France, England, and Spain and their Colonies.  Students traded with each other to acquire valuable resources and score as many points as possible in the process.  By the end of the game students started to see that the Mercantilist system heavily favored the ‘mother’ countries and put the Colonies at a disadvantage.

On Friday students learned about the Proclamation of 1763 and the restrictions on Colonial expansion in the wake of the French and Indian War.  In the afternoon students participated in a Taxation simulation so that they could learn about one of the major causes of Colonial discontent in the leadup to the Revolutionary War.  During the Taxation simulation the students really got into it and really felt unfairly treated.  Here are some pics!

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

Short but sweet today...

Math 5:  Geometry Everywhere! Geometry language is flying all over the place.  You will see in Math learning logs that students are logging geometry language so that we can use the language regularly in our turn and talks and in our investigations of spatial math.  The Math Antics videos are excellent for introducing the language and providing visual representations for those terms.  Check them out!  https://mathantics.com/

Math 6:  Decimal Multiplication and Division are a dog for students. If you can, please practice whole number multiplication and division at home.  This is the most difficult step for understanding how decimals operate and would be worth the extra help at home.  Mastery is important here!  

⅚ Science:  We have had a ton of fun modeling observable phenomena in our Solar System.  We had the challenge of drawing explanatory models of the moon phases and also trying to understand why the Sun and Moon appear to be the same size even though we know they are different sizes.  We used the railroad track and telephone pole phenomena to look at relative size of objects and why we perceive them differently than they actually are.  See some modeling photos below!

 We had a busy week of modeling the moon phases through explanatory models on paper.  

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

This week we are working on infographics related to the start of WWI and preparing for SBACs on Monday. For next week, the best things that students can do to get ready is to get plenty of rest, eat a good breakfast and bring some snacks to school. Also, students done early with their tests will have to have a book to read. For some students this will be a significant amount of time to dive into a book they are really enjoying. We’ll be collecting recommendations in class, and students should bring a stack of at least three books to school. Coloring books or drawing paper are also a good idea for students who like to draw.  

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

CMP8

Even though we had an abridged work week, the 8th graders showed some excellent focus and grit while learning how to find a quadratic equation from a table.  Essentially, students used the second difference to find the “a” in our ax2 + bx + c, the coordinate from the table where x is “0” to find the “c” and then used what we had  ax2  + c to find the missing “b”.  We finished the week with a Partner Quiz.

CMP7

In our short week, the 7th graders have spent some time reviewing changing ratios to percentages, finding equivalent ratios, and comparing ratios to find out which term is greater.We finished the week with a check-up on the first investigation.

Science 7th/8th

This week we finished up our yeast experiments and focused on the process of cellular respiration and compared it with photosynthesis.  We looked at the similarities of the equations and talked about where the energy came from and went. Using blocks we created glucose molecules and diatomic oxygen molecules and placed them in a cow mitochandria, took them apart and rearranged them to form carbon dioxide and water molecules.  Energy from the glucose molecule was released.  Students have a reading assignment with highlighting and questions due next week.