Week of May 22-26

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 28th - No School (Memorial Day)
• May 30th- 8th graders World Language Final Exams 8:10 - 10:30am
• June 14th - 8th grade Graduation 6:30pm (Last day of school for 8th graders)
• June 15th - ½ Day, Last day of school
• Parent Satisfaction Survey
  Dear Williston Parents/Guardians,
  Please take a few minutes to provide us with feedback on ways you feel we can enhance the education of your children by filling out the 2017-2018 Parent Satisfaction Survey. You can access the survey by clicking on the following link or on our web site:
  https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SatisfactionSurvey2017-2018
  If you are having trouble accessing the link please contact Liz Neeld at lneeld@cvsdvt.org.
  Thank you,
  Liz Neeld
  Executive Assistant, WCS

Thank you to all of our chaperones who made multiple field trips a success for everyone!!

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

• Book/Movie Literature Group - students selected a book for our final literature round. Students will read the book and on June 11th watch the movie. They will compare and contrast the book and the movie on June 12th.
• Field trip to Rokeby Museum - Before our trip, students learned about two fugitive slaves who found shelter with the Robinson family. We explored the circumstances of their escape and their time at the farm in Ferrisburgh, VT. We also learned about the Robinson family, especially the generation of the early to mid 1800’s, who were Quakers and leading abolitionists of the time. Our field trip included a scavenger hunt of the historic buildings, a tour of the house, and a gallery walk of the Free and Safe exhibit.
• Next week students will be presenting book talks, meeting with book/movie literature groups, writing to pen pals, and starting a unit on Westward Expansion.

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

Math 5:

We are working really hard to dig into the properties of numbers so that we understand the relationships between them!  Highlights from the week include:

• Understanding the difference between ‘at the same time’ problems (like when will 13 year and 17 year cicadas emerge at the same time?) or ‘equal share’ problems in which we must find a way to share items with no leftovers (we want to invite people to a party and have a limited number of items to share, but don’t want leftovers).  
• Understanding that ‘at the same time’ problems use the strategy of common multiples to solve the problem
• Understanding that ‘share with no extras’ problems use the common factors strategy

Math 6:  

We completed Variables and Patterns this week and are looking forward to some mathematical problem solving on the hoophouse. Students moved soil last week, 4 cubic yards of it, to the hoophouse site and really worked at a team. It was really amazing!  Almost all the soil was moved by bucket and wheelbarrow in about 35 minutes! Great teamwork!

⅚ Science:  We learned about the coloration in the Grand Prismatic Pool connecting the phenomenon to our last sphere, the biosphere.  Yes, the coloration in the pool is explained by the presence of thermophiles, heat loving organisms who tolerate different temperature thresholds.  These thermophiles are different kinds of cyanobacteria, some of which are going through photosynthesis, and other which are not. This accounts for the variety of color they exhibit.  Pretty cool. The last part of this earth systems unit will be to model the phenomenon on our own, trying to account for all the things we know are happening there. Then, we will have an Amazing Race style hunt for geologic features around the United States.

Pictures from Echo:

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

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

CMP8

In this very abridged week, 8th graders continued work on finding a solution for linear systems through graphing.  We learned strategies for finding the x and y intercepts that would allow us to graph our lines accurately.

We also took a brief Check-up.  Next week we will focus on finding solutions to linear systems algebraically.

CMP7

Students in 7th grade also had a short math week.  We dabbled in looking at linear systems and trends in data.  We also looked creating “Lines of Best Fit”. Over the next week we will explore finding the equation of a line through a variety of ways.

Science 7th/8th

We began the week with sharing our natural disaster research with our school community.  Students created interactive models and fielded questions on topics like tornadoes, tsunamis, wildfires and ice storms.  It was fun to watch our students interact with younger students on their topics. Currently, we are taking our science knowledge about our natural hazard to create a 1st person narrative.  Students have created characters that will face their natural hazard and all the things that occur when that hazard takes place. We will continue wiith this work next week.