Week of April 30-May 4

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:

May 8th - ⅚ Brook trout stocking on Lewis Creek in Starksboro, VT. Date Tuesday, 5/8. Permission slips and more details to follow.  Field Trip Form HERE

May 28th- No School

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

Highlights:

• We kicked off our Civil War unit by exploring what we already know and want to know about the Civil War.
• We started a read aloud of Soldier’s Heart by Gary Paulsen. As we read we are listing topics and big ideas that will help us discover the themes of the book.
• We had several activities that were based on the division caused by the Civil War, both geographically and politically.
• Tree planting along Allen Brook. Please remember to check your student for ticks tonight!

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

Math 5:

Computational Fluency:  It’s never too late to practice the 6, 7, and 8’s!  Before our next big unit (Prime Time), I thought it would be important to put a little extra time into basic 0-12 fluency.  Many students made great progress this week, either with accuracy or speed.

Conversion: We spent this week talking about length as a measurement, and specifically focused on unit conversion of length (within the Metric and US Customary System).  Common Core sees this as an important skill and the focus of the conversion was around using ratio tables to convert. A worthwhile and useful application of multiplication.  

Math 6:  

Students spent the week designing their own individualized learning by focusing on standards that he/she has not met and taking responsibility for the relearning plan.  I did assess two different skills this week for each student, so you will see updated scores on Jumprope after this weekend.

We also are continuing the table, graph, and equation pursuit in algebra!  Students are beginning to see patterns in data, graphs and equations that will lead them to linear and proportional relationships, a prerequisite skill for Grade 7.  Students are making great connections and seeing similarities between equations and within equations, graphs and tables.

⅚ Science:

What explains the ‘fog’ above the Grand Prismatic Pool?  Students are in hot pursuit of explaining the Grand Prismatic Pool phenomenon and made a positive move in that direction this week by observing vaporization and condensation.  We heated water and watched both evaporation and boiling, examples of vaporization, and created conditions for condensation, so that students could see phase change. This model demonstrates the role that heat energy plays in phase change. In this model we could see that fog’ was created.  In addition, we poured water over dry ice to show ‘fog’ and I asked students if they believed that the fog in the pool is created because of hot or cold water. I then revealed the truth, the water is hot. The ‘fog’ above the pool can be explained as a phase change from liquid to gas. The ‘fog’ can then be explained by cooler conditions above the pool as a phase change from gas to liquid.  

We had an awesome time planting trees Friday!  Please do a tick check!

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

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

CMP7

This week we began our “Moving Straight Ahead” Unit with finding our average walking rate for 25 meters.  Through a series of steps students figured out what their walking rate was in miles per hour. We found out how many calories we burn based on our weight and walking rate.  We figured out how long we would have to walk to work off a McDonald’s Big Mac. For many, they would have to walk for at least 8 hours to burn it off. I hate to think what a pint of Ben and Jerry’s is!  We also graphed our different walking rates in Desmos, an online graphing calculator. Students are beginning to see the relationship between rate of change and the slope of the graph. We rounded out the week with solving all sorts of algebraic equations.  We are learning to keep things balanced.

CMP8

We began the week with a series of stations that looked at all things quadratic.  We explored triangular and square patterns, understanding the equation for a fixed perimeter of a rectangle, played with the different coefficients in a standard form, played with algebra tiles and learned the area model of going from factored form to expanded form. Next week we will finish our quick quadratic blitz with an assessment.

Science 7th/8th

  Teams spent the first part of the week completing their earthquake proof structures.  We placed two 450 g weights at 15cm and 30 centimeters and then ran the earthquake shake table for over 20 seconds.  Some of the building designs were interesting and effective. We had cross bracing, use of trusses, dampers, tension wires and base isolation.  The structures were so well made that only a few showed signs of failing. Unfortunately, our shake table failed. We could not complete our testing due to an electrical malfunction in the device.  We are still hoping for a possible shake table from another source....until then we are beginning our scientific reflections on our work.