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)
February Break- Feb 26th - March 2nd (No School)
Save the Date
Annual Voyager Recycle Sale
March 24, 2018 from 9:00 -12:00 PM
Dear Voyager Parents,
It is that time of year again, when Voyager House hosts our Annual Voyager Recycle Sale, (Indoor Yard Sale) to raise money for Voyager overnight field trips. Please take a moment over the vacation, to hunt down a few items for donation. If every family donates at least one valuable item, this will really help defray the cost of overnight field trips for Voyager students. We will need help with setup and selling, so we will contact you in the near future for your help.
Items to Sell: We appreciate gently-used and never-used items that you think would be someone else’s treasure! We especially ask that you donate at least one small item (worth about $5) or one larger item (worth about $10+). If you have something of greater value, Mr. Merrill will help to price it appropriately. That way when antique dealers come, Voyager benefits the most from that item’s worth. The clean up can be difficult, so please follow the Goodwill guidelines for what they can accept and not accept, so that we aren’t charged for disposal. (https://www.amazinggoodwill.com/donating/donor-guidelines)
Donation Drop Off: If you can, drop those items off on Friday, March 23rd, from 6-8 PM. If you cannot make that drop off time, please feel free to bring those items to Katie Fieldsend’s office in the Project Room.
Items We Need Donated to Make the Sale Successful: Bags, boxes, sale stickers to place on items, did we say bags and boxes! These can all be dropped off prior to the sale in Voyager Project Room.
Thanks for all you do to make Voyager a great place to learn!
Voyager Teachers
Thursday, March 15th: Voyager ⅚ Flynn Theater and Isham Farm Field Trip
⅚ Voyager students will attend the Freedom Train performance at the Flynn Theater and then go to the Isham Farm on Oak Hill Road for a quick tour of the property and a walk on the trails. This is the house we are researching for the 3D Vermont competition (http://3dvermont.org/). Students are creating a multimedia presentation and a 3D model of the Gothic Revival house.
Freedom Train tells the thrilling story of Harriet Tubman using dance, dialogue, and music of the period. Songs include, Follow the Drinking Gourd, Steal Away, Wade in the Water, Good News, The Chariot's A-comin', and many other still sung today. Freedom Train is the story of self-sacrifice, dedication, and survival, laced with warmth and a sense of humor that celebrates the human spirit- a universal story for all.
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
Lewis and Clark: Students used primary resources (mostly online maps from the period) to get a better understanding of what was known about the lands west of the Mississippi in 1803. They also studied the lifestyle and culture of the time period through a small group jigsaw activity. Students will pretend to be members of the Corps of Discovery as we use the journals of Lewis and Clark to experience the expedition when we return from the break.
Narrative writing: Students made a story arc of their narratives and then revised their stories to be sure they had all of the elements of a story. After typing their best version of the narrative, they also worked on elaboration and writing a strong ending. We will be wrapping up the unit with some editing activities after the break.
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
Math 5: We had a great week (ha, right) working on graphing (they hate graphing) and starting our new unit on Geometry. I am spending a lot of time on graphing, because it is a great way to integrate learning in science and math, but also because graphs tell stories that buckets of numbers fail to show easily. I am pretty strict on what I expect so if you continue to see scores that show no growth, please know that instruction happens each time we graph and that your kiddo just needs more experience. The 6th graders are just coming around, so even two years in, we are still working on it.
Math 6: We had a great week (ha, right) working on graphing (they hate graphing) and starting our new unit on decimal operations. I am spending a lot of time on graphing, because it is a great way to integrate learning in science and math, but also because graphs tell stories that buckets of numbers fail to show easily. I am pretty strict on what I expect so if you continue to see scores that show no growth, please know that instruction happens each time we graph and that your kiddo just needs more experience. The 6th graders have shown a ton of progress these last 6 months. I think we might be almost 100% proficient. What a journey that has been! Whew! I will be working briefly on decimal ops and then getting right to algebra, which I know students will see on the SBAC which is scheduled for mid-April. I will continue to foster decimal multiplication and division throughout the Algebra unit, so that I can slowly move kiddos along.
⅚ Science: We had our last guest speakers this week, Ann Lawrence and Sarah Kim, who gave the kids some first hand knowledge of the connection between the circulatory and respiratory systems. A couple of kiddos were hooked up to a machine to monitor heart rate and breathing rate. And we all saw what happens to our pulse when resting and not! Thanks to Ann and Sarah for helping move us along in our learning.
And...we had pretty much 100% proficiency on our Human Body system diagrams. They love to memorize!
The Week in Mr. Roof’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
ELA: In ELA this week, we have focused on support with the LEAF writing due for literature groups. Students were working on a prompt of walking in someone else’s shoes (Perspective), or overcoming adversity (conflict resolution). We also wrote book recommendations of our favorite independent reading from the second trimester so far, created new versions of the book covers, and shared our recommendations with each other on Friday (along with some hot cocoa). We also had our independent reading supported by reading log 23, along with our weekly grammar study on IXL.Coming up: Writing to inform.
Social Studies: In Social Studies, we practiced speaking skills for our big presentations on world cultures. Then, the rest of the week was performing our presentations in front of the class. We used a podium, and presented in the KIVA, using the big TV for our slide shows. The students did a great job. Ask them to give you a presentation at home.! Coming up: World Religions.
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP8
How can you move geometric figures using a combination of translation, rotation and reflection? Students have worked with protractors, rulers and tracing paper to find multiple ways to show how congruent figures move through space.
What makes a figure congruent to another? At the end of the week we explored what congruency means and ways to figure out if triangles are congruent by looking at side and angle measures.
CMP7
What is the tastiest lemon/lime soda around? The 7th graders took data by completing a blind taste test of different sodas. We collected data on soda preferences and created statistics that could be used to advertise the soda. We found that 55% of our students liked Sprite, 5% like Limon-up and 40% like 7-up. We started to look at part-to-part ratios, and part-to-whole ratios and how to take a ratio and make it into a percentage.
Science 7th/8th
This week students completed their Evolution Projects. We had a wide variety of cartoons, videos and comics that modeled how organisms change over time. Students had the opportunity to select their own topic and elect to work alone or with another partner. I learned some new things about evolution, adaptations and natural selection.
