TA’s Notes:
***Please do not send in any food to be shared among Voyager students***
***Please notify us if your child has strep. Thank you for this courtesy.***
Voyager Homework Club- Tuesdays (2:00-3:30pm) and Wednesdays (3:00-4:30pm)
Dates to Know:
- Sat, Nov 4th- Craft Show at WCS 9:30am - 4:00pm
- Fri, Nov 10th- DATE CHANGE! School Dance for 6th - 8th graders (Hosted by Harbor House)
- Wed, Dec 6th- Voyager Family Night / Variety Show 6 - 8pm at WCS in Dining Room & Auditorium
- Sat, Dec 9th- Voyager students can volunteer to be elves with the Polar Express from 4:00 - 8:00pm. More info to come. Please note the date if your student might be interested!
For 8th grade families:
Permission Forms for the May 24th - May 25th 8th Grade Celebration Trip to Ridin-Hy. All forms must be completed and returned by December 15th so WCS can reserve enough beds at the ranch. Students were also given paper copies of these forms. Please return to Voyager TA.
Work Completion Communication Friendly Reminder:
Assignments that are not turned in on Google Classroom are not necessarily late. JumpRope is updated every two weeks with a work completion score. We also email parents if students are missing assignments on a weekly basis.
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
We continued our study of the 5 Themes of Geography this week. Here is a quick look at the themes we looked into…
- Place - We brainstormed the physical and human characteristics of Vermont. Students made a Place Map of Vermont - filling it up with the unique characteristics of our state.
- Human-Environment Interaction - We reviewed a powerpoint on the geography of Williston, viewing historical and aerial photos to come up with examples of how we depend on, adapt to, and modify our environment. We also looked at a bar graph of the history of WIlliston’s population and thought about how changes have affected the town.
- Movement - We explored products - where they come from, how we depend on them, and how they get to Williston. We also explored roots - students discussed what they know about the when and why their ancestors came to the United States and how they got here.
Mystery and Spook Books - As students wrap up their book, they are thinking about and finding examples of how the setting creates a story of mystery and spook.
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
Math 5: This week we worked on clock and money fractions and finally made the bridge to common denominators. We started to see that the only way we can add and subtract fractions is to find a common denominator. We made the connection from Least Common Multiples lists to using that number for a Common Denominator. You will be seeing more equivalent fractions ideas, like you are used to, when adding and subtracting fractions.
It was fun to have 5th grade parents at the Open Classroom day. I will schedule another one, sometime soon, so you can all come in! Really you can come any time. Just let me know when you want to come!
Math 6: We began Let’s Be Rational this week and began to tackle the idea of using benchmarks to get close to actual sums and differences. We also talked about times when it is okay to overestimate and times when it is not okay. The list below was generated by students to identify those times when it is okay to overestimate and when it isn’t!
⅚ Science: We added one more air phenomenon to our experience this week by looking at what happens when we heat and cool air. We used soap film and glycerin to create a strong bubble that could withstand repeated heating and cooling of the air inside a flask in order to say that hot air molecules push on the soap film from the inside causing a bubble to form on top of the flask. When those same air molecules on the inside of the flask are cooled the outside air molecules push on the film and cause the soap film to descend into the flask. We will use this same design to build barometers next week in order to link the behavior of air to weather changes. We finally named the pushing of air molecules as air pressure.
We also reviewed and evaluated our infographics! Sorry this took some time. Hard to squeeze it in! 
The Week in Mr. Roof’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
This week, we focused in on our narrative assignment, and by Monday, every student will have a completed outline, with many students already beginning the writing process. Ask your child about his/her idea! Students received a complete description of the assignment, accompanied by support materials. We will be practicing discrete writing skills each week to support this assignment. We began with subject verb agreement. We will continue with punctuation, capitalization, figurative language, sensory imagery, and maintaining verb tense. Students continued their independent reading, focused on using context clues to define unknown vocabulary, along with exploring the theme of their book. Students also continued work with summary writing from informational text, along with the five themes of geography, and basic geography practice. Specifically in regards to the five themes, students focused on human and environment interaction, and characteristics that differentiate regions.
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP8
Students completed the “Thinking with Mathematical Models” Unit Assessment at the beginning of the week. Results will be available next week. We have moved onto exponent and created Step Books on many of the rules utilized when working with exponents. Students completed their vocabulary from our new book “Growing, Growing, Growing” and we began to explore exponential graphs and tables. Finally, students have begun their IXL online math program. The expectation is that students will work 45 minutes to meet the expectation and an hour to exceed the expectation which is due on Friday. There will be other class related math problems during the week. Please refer to Google Classroom.
CMP7
This week we completed our Shapes and Designs Unit Test and explored number systems and how rational numbers are related to integers, whole numbers and counting numbers. We began our “Accentuate the Negative” book with our vocabulary study and talked about strategies with adding positive and negative integers. We used number lines to place a variety of numbers on our number lines and defended our reasoning.
Science 7th/8th
We had a very abridged science week with the wind storm, Swift play and the PBIS cell-a-bration. We did get some great experimentation done in the time we had. Students have been working on changing a variable from our original exothermic reaction in a series of experiments. Students have been doing a great job at following their experiment plans and
collecting lots of data, observations and creating graphs. In the next week we will be completing a lab report on our findings.
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