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:
Friday, March 23rd- Voyager Recycle Sale Set-Up
Saturday, March 24th- Voyager Recycle Sale
Thank you to all who helped make the Voyager Dance & Activity Night a HUGE success!! The dance was the biggest of the year bringing in over $600 for Voyager House alone.
Activity Night raised $1,229!!! These funds will go directly towards Voyager field trips and are so important to our house.
A special thank you to Sydney Swindell who brought in a team of PT students that really made the difference in running the activities at Activity Night! Our 8th graders also stepped up and did a great job running lots of stations!
All of the parent chaperones really made the night possible for us to have the two events in one night and a lot of the money earned came from concession sales, thanks to all who donated items.
Thank you to all who helped make last Friday an overall success!
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
Literature Groups - Students are in one of seven smaller reading groups led by a Voyager adult. Our common “big question” is “how does one overcome obstacles in life?” Students are collecting evidence from the book to help answer this LEAF essay question at the end of the literature group session.
Narrative Writing - The snow day cut into our writing time, so we will have to pick up the pace on this unit next week.
3D Vermont Project - Several students visited the Isham Farm house this week to measure the house for our 3D model of the home. They were treated to some great stories by David and Ginger Isham and some homemade ginger cookies. Another trip with more students will be made to the farm house in March. Students also researched the origins and history of the house which will form the basis of our multimedia presentation.
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
Math 5: It has been two busy weeks since my last update! It’s finally here! The standard algorithm for multiplication! You may now practice this strategy with your child and they won’t yell at you that this is not the way I learned. Some students are still learning the method, so if you want to help out with some problems at home, feel free!
Math 6: We have been busy building deeper understanding of area and perimeter by looking at parallelograms and other complex shapes. Last week, we looked at floor plans for houses and tried to figure out the total number of square feet of flooring needed for the house. Students are finding that they have the concept of area and perimeter even with non-whole number dimensions, which is good practice for 7th and 8th grade that move away from whole number computation.
⅚ Science: Students have reading and taking notes on the human body system chosen early in the month. I’ve been pleased with how serious the students have been about learning about his/her own system. This week we had one human body workshop, with Cayce Ludwar (thanks CL!) to learn about the ways that exercise makes demands of the body. Students did a workout and then talked about what systems were being impacted directly and which systems would need to be up and operational in order to allow exercise to happen at all or over the long term. We will continue our workshop series next week!
Pictures below are from Cayce’s workshop and our Cold Climates and the Body Olympic Event!
The Week in Mr. Roof’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
ELA: This week, we worked on finding evidence to support claims. Students worked on an assignment in which they were able to choose any claim from the State of the Union address, and then find evidence to support the claim and provide analysis. If they could not find evidence that supported the claim, then they needed to rewrite the claim. This was a great current events connection with our work on informative writing using the LEAF format. We continued with reading log 21 to support our independent reading. Students also spent time working on compound sentences, subjects, and predicates. In related news, all students are in literature groups now, focusing on the theme of overcoming obstacles. Ask your child about his/her book.
SS: This week in social studies, students were engaged in the creation and design of slide-show presentations for their world culture research. Students identified the necessary components and requirements of good slide shows to accompany presentations, and then worked on public speaking expectations to meet the learning target. We also looked at CNN 10, with summary writing, focusing on the exciting launch of Space X’s Falcon Heavy.
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP8
We began the week with our new book Butterflies, Pinwheels and Wallpaper. We began the week by using rulers and protractors to create accurate reflections of geometric figures. We also investigated how to find the line of symmetry between a reflected image.
We then investigated rotational symmetry and how to create figures with rotational symmetry and to find the angle of rotation.
CMP7
Students are continuing to work on their Blow it up and Shrink it down projects. We will be finishing them up next week.
Science 7th/8th
We began the week with comparing animal embryos to see some of the common features
This along with our comparative skeletal anatomy investigation is leading us toward understanding common ancestry. We did a reading on how life became diversified on the earth and then watched and took some notes from Brainpop on Charles Darwin, natural selection and evolution. We finished the week as swallows in an interactive simulation of eating white winged or grey winged Peppered Moths to show how genetic mutations can be an advantage depending on environmental changes.
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