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)
Notes from Ms. Sherman:
Thank you SOOOOOOO very much to those of you that joined us for our 9th annual Voyager night. We all love to get together and see families before we go for our winter break. Thank you also to all the brave students that put themselves out there to perform on stage and to our sound and light crew, Baylin and Tyler. The food was great, the company was merry, and the night was bright. THANKS AGAIN!
P.S. If you have photos or videos from the night, please email to me at: csherman@cvsdvt.org
POLAR EXPRESS IS THIS SATURDAY!
See you there at 3:30!
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
Highlights
Book Talks: Students presented their book talk using the organizer they completed as a guide.
Voyager Play Challenge: We kicked off our Voyager Play Challenge this week. Students are working in combined challenge teams to write a one act script to perform during our play unit in January.
World Almanac - We had a lot of fun searching a world almanac for largest, smallest, oldest, highest and lowest in a variety of categories. We found the most populated country, largest country, oldest country, lowest life expectancy etc.
5 Themes of Geography SlideShow: Students completed and shared (via musical chairs) a Google SlideShow on their selected country.
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
Math 5:
It was the week of code, so we spent two days doing coded unplugged. Monday, students wrote a code for a design on a four by four grid. They then shared this code with a partner who then tried to read the code and recreate the design. Afterwards we wrote code for a bunny on the Google Doodle of the day, so that the bunny could find and eat carrots. I happened upon it at the end of class, and of course, kids were so psyched about it! Today, we did another unplugged coding activity, where 5th graders read code for a treasure hunt written by 6th graders. 6th graders hid five colored dots in the hallways around school and then wrote code to be followed in the hunt. We had a few unclear coding directives, but for the most part, students
enjoyed reading code to locate their colored dots.
We began Unit 3 this week, a unit on decimals. We discussed place value, when looking at the question, are all 3’s created equal? (in the number 33,333.33). We played around with two problem strings, one called Give and Take and the other called Ten times more, both to look at the the effect operations have on decimals.
Math 6:
We are driving toward the division algorithm for fractions and finding great generalizations along the way. Ideas we have been uncovering: That when you divide by a number, say 3, it is the same as taking a fraction of that number, ⅓ of a number. Finding ⅓ of a number is multiplying ⅓ x that number, so we can then see that a reciprocal operation can get us to the same endpoint, when we use the reciprocal of that number. Hard to explain...let’s see if this example helps:
45 ÷ 3 is the same at ⅓ of 45. Since the word ‘of’ in this case means multiply, then we flip the operation from division to multiplication and flip 3/1 to become ⅓ . Now you can see that dividing by a number is the same as multiplying by the reciprocal. We can then apply that here:
¾ ÷ ½ we know will be 1 ½ when we model this. We can also see that we can do 3 ÷ 1 (divide numerators) and 4 ÷ 2 (divide denominators) and get 3/2. Or we can take ¾ x 2/1 = 6/4 or 1 ½ .
It was the week of CODE, so students had several opportunities to write code. Today, students wrote code for a treasure hunt for 5th grade.
⅚ Science:
We have had such fun with magnets last week and electricity this week. We began last week looking at properties of magnets and making visible some of the things that seem invisible about magnets. See the photos below of fun demonstrations and activities we did. We also began investigations on electricity this week and are moving toward the connection between magnetism and electricity.
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Iron filings and compasses make the magnetic field visible. Flying paperclips!
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP8
This week we practiced adding, subtracting, dividing and multiplying numbers in scientific notation. Each of these operations have distinct rules that at times combine the Commutative Property and exponent rules. We rounded out the week with Growing, Growing, Growing Review stations. On Friday we began our assessment.
CMP7
This week was a mishmash of mathematical models. We looked at solving inequalities, practiced multiplying and dividing integers and began balancing algebraic equations. Students also had an Accentuate the Negative review with stations around the room. We began our assessment on Friday.
Science
How are traits inherited? We took a closer look at genetics and dominant and recessive traits by breeding dragons. Through a series of allele selections students were able to create babies with interesting differences. Some dragons were fire breathers, some had horns and some had red wings and blue bodies. We then took parent dragons with different traits and created Punnett squares.
In this Punnett Square the TT genotype represents the mother with a red tail. The father has a yellow tail which has a recessive tt. When the boxes are filled in you can see the possible outcomes of the children. Half will have red tails and half will have yellow tails.
We ended the week starting our research of types of genetic mutations. Next week we will begin looking at genetic disorders.
This week in Mr. Roof’s ELA and Social Studies classes
ELA: This week, we worked on independent reading log 13. Students are making impressive literature decisions. It is exciting to see the growth each week. In an attempt to bring some excitement to sharing about our books, students entered a Library of Congress contest that involved writing a letter to an author about a book that has changed them or their point of view of the world. We worked on letter writing for the week, making sure we supported our ideas with evidence. The letters were mailed on Friday with the possibility of students winning $200 as a runner up, or $1000 as a finalist. Very cool!
Social Studies: We were all over the place this week! On Monday, we had our usual current events study with Carl Azuz from CNN 10. On Tuesday and Wednesday, students continued work on the GEO B, which were are slowly arriving at a Voyager champion that will represent us in a schoolwide competition. On Thursday, we read an article about the December 7th, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and wrote prompt responses.
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