TA’s Notes:
***Please do not send in any food to be shared among Voyager students***
Important Dates:
April 24th - 28th : No School (April Break)
May 5th : Voyager Dance & Activity Night Fundraiser
May 12th : 5th & 6th grade Trout Release in Starksboro
May 23rd: Last Tuesday early release
May 29th : No school (Memorial Day)
June 1st : 5th & 6th grade field trip to Fort Ticonderoga
June 1st - 2nd : 8th grade overnight to Ridin-Hy Ranch
June 8th - 9th : Voyager House overnight to Camp Abnaki
Congratulations again to our Voyager students who received awards for the Be Money Wi$e Poster contest!! Awards were presented in Montpelier this past Thursday.
Thank you to all who helped out with Voyager’s Recycle Sale!!!
The weather was not on our side, so our sales were lower than normal, but despite the April snow we still made $760.80!!
As great as that was we still need to raise more money for our Voyager House Camp Abnaki Overnight in June. So- when Voyager sponsors the last dance of the year, May 5th, we are also hosting an “Activity Night” for 1st - 4th graders. A sign up will be coming next week where we’ll be looking for fabulous chaperones, concession food & drinks to sell and decorating supplies for our Cinco de Mayo theme! Students not planning to attend the dance are being asked to help volunteer with the Activity Night. We need to raise at least $800 to make our Abanaki plan a reality!
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
On Monday we read a Revolutionary War short story and students completed a narrative pyramid diagram of the story. By breaking down the elements of a story, we prepared students for their own narrative writing later in the week.
Mr. Maika wrapped up his Revolutionary War unit with a final simulation on Yorktown (the final battle of the war) and students had a final journal entry to write for their character’s diary.
We kicked off our narrative writing unit on Thursday. Students will be writing their own historical fiction piece using the character that they developed with Mr. Maika’s unit. Students will pick an event from the Revolutionary War to base their story on and research it. We introduced students to the elements of narrative writing and students brainstormed plot and conflict ideas for their narratives. On Friday, students started working on a very detailed Narrative graphic organizer.
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
Math 5: We wrapped up the Unit 6 Geometry unit this week by looking at volume and surface area. Specifically we observed what happens the volume when side measures are doubled or tripled and also how this change affects surface area too. We took a trip back to 5th grade math by looking again at multiplication of fractions. The context was the area of the surface of a rectangular prism. If we can multiply non-whole dimensions then we can find the surface area of any rectangular prism. We focused on surface area, because area is a measure calculated from two dimensions, length and width. We did not apply this same calculating strategy to volume, specifically because that would have meant three numbers multiplied, and put a few of the kiddos over the edge! Unit assessments will be scored this weekend.
Math 6: Students wrapped up Decimal Operations. I have been so pleased with the growth that so many students have made in this area. Calculating with decimals requires solid whole number calculation, which for many was a big challenge. Even the most resistant of students made progress in this area! Our next unit, on algebra, is a great prep for much of the 7th grade. Our work in this unit will build on tables, graphing, variables, and the shape of graphs as linear or nonlinear.
⅚ Science:
Our week began with a self-designed investigation on the difference between hot and cold liquids. Students discovered that water molecules move and they move faster in hot water than in cold water. We then applied that to solids and gases, discovered the same thing. Ask your Voyager about the investigations we did this week, which included dye in water, heating air with a soap bubble and heating brass.
The Week in Mr. G’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
We have jumped in to WWI with both feet now. In the morning we are covering battle strategies from the beginning of the War, the Schlieffen plan for Germany, and Plan 17 for France. We are looking at the conditions of trench warfare, the Invasion of Belgium, Serbian Resistance, and the influence of modern weaponry on warfare. In the afternoon students are applying what they have learned in an online battle simulation. Students are forming alliances, making and breaking treaties, and moving their armies across the map of Europe to see if they could have changed the course of history. 
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP8
This week in class was all about pulling together all we know about quadratic functions. We worked on practicing multiplying binomials, creating area models of trinomials, finding the landmark of quadratic equations with and without our graphing app Desmos, and creating quadratic equations from tables. Students sought time during core and break to check in with me about the content. We created class records and played a few rounds of jeopardy.
CMP7
Students worked on their infographic and presented their findings from their surveys. We experimented with Google Sheets and created graphs based on different aspects of our data so that we could compare and contrast and make meaning from our survey. Students collaborated well. We will be finishing up our Comparing and Scaling Unit over the next week.
Science 7th/8th
We had some “outside” visitors this week from Carolina Biological in form of tardigrades, hydra, planarian to name a few. We began our Biological Creature Investigation by observing, drawing and researching the life processes of these small creatures. Our mission is find out what role they play in our ecosystem. This information is all being documented in our science notebooks. It was very exciting to see these creatures move, feed and interact with the environment.
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