Week of April 16th - 20th

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)

SPARK: The final session of Spark Enrichment will begin the week we come back from April break.

Here's the listing of workshops and the link for registration.

Dates to Know:

April 23rd- 22nd- No School (April Break)

Friday, May 4th - For Vermont Arbor Day (Friday, May 4th) ⅚ students will be participating in a community volunteer riparian tree planting along Allen Brook (immediately as you enter the nature trail behind the soccer field). This site in Williston lacks adequate riparian buffer habitat. Students should wear boots or old sneakers and dress to be outside for most of the day.

Week of May 7th - ⅚ Brook trout stocking on Lewis Creek in Starksboro, VT. Date TBD based on weather forecast. Permission slips and more details to follow.

The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):

This week, Mr. McElroy is wrapping with his Slavery Unit with the ⅚ students. They have spent time this week working on their final project for the unit, a character creation where the students create a fictional slave based on real historical information they’ve learned during the unit. Some are making posters, while others are making collaborative skits, and everything in between. They will be presenting their projects during a Gallery Walk on Friday morning, finishing off the Slavery Unit before we head off for break.

The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):

Math 5:

Highlights:

• Students learned about area of rectangles and then used the strategies of subdividing and enclosing to find the area of composite shapes.
• Students revisited the concept of volume to apply the l x w x h strategy to composite solids.  
• Students reviewed rounding and took a cumulative review quiz to make sure the concept has stuck!

Math 6:  

Highlights:

• We took a big leap this week and focused on equations.  See public records for some of the specifics. We are fully into an algebra unit at this time and many students are loving the abstract math.

⅚ Science:

Highlights:

• We were introduced to our anchoring phenomenon to ask the question what is happening and why is it happening?  The Grand Prismatic Pool in Yellowstone is the geologic feature we are trying to understand! Maybe a trip to Yellowstone is in order:).
• We learned about the four spheres of Earth.  New language includes the hydrosphere, geosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere.  These vocab terms are critical for meeting the standard for this unit (that all spheres are interconnected).
• We played the Toss the Earth game.  The goal of the modeling scenario was to see if we can describe the Earth’s surface.  We collected data and compared it to the actual surface area data for land and water. Our experimental data matched our theoretical data.  Lots of math.

The Week in Mr. Roof’s Room (⅞ Humanities):

ELA: In English, students worked on writing for a public audience and possible publication. They wrote in any style they wanted, with either new pieces, or by editing and revising an older piece. These pieces will be submitted to The Scribe, which is Williston Central School’s literary magazine, or to The Williston Observer for the Kids take over the Observer edition. Students have reading log 30 to complete over vacation, which they began on Monday of this week.

Last week, students were able to have a presentation from Pastor Andrew Magnuson on Christianity.

SS: Students worked on the engineering task during the afternoon, so social studies was postponed.

The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):

CMP8

This week we began investigating quadratic function. These are functions that form parabolas.

We looked at landmarks such as the maximum point, x-intercepts, y-intercept and the line of symmetry.  Students also began working with polynomials: binomials and trinomials. These are expressions that have a number of terms such as x2 + 3x + 5, this is an example of a trinomial.

We also practiced using the distributive property to create equivalent expressions, such as

x(x + 3) = x2 + 3x.  We learned about the FOIL method when multiplying binomials.

CMP7

This week the 7th graders did a fabulous job completing and presenting their survey projects.  We shared our work in a “Speed Dating” format and so every team had the opportunity to share their results from their data.  We worked on creating class records for our Comparing and Scaling Unit Test and then worked toward completing the assessment.

Science 7th/8th

This week our earthquake resistant building engineers were treated to guest speakers.  Erik Urch, who is a geologist, helped us to understand how earthquakes work and the types of waves that are created.  We used springs to enact p-waves and s-waves. Lauren Davis helped us to understand what architectural structures help hold up buildings.  Using tinker toys and pictures students began to get ideas of how to build their structures. A rigorous approval system was followed as students did background research, listed important vocabulary, explored the science of earthquakes and buildings that can handle seismic waves and created designs ideas.  They were given specific materials and constraints. The “Great Shake” will not happen until we get back from break.