Week of November 3rd - 7th

Announcements:

Our First Event is our Annual Family Night and Talent Show - December 10th, 6:30-8:30pm.

We'll begin our night in the cafeteria enjoying treats and drinks (Please see the link below to sign up to support our event).

A $10 donation per family is suggested and all who attend receive a raffle prize ticket.

We also have a new home site for FAP information. All of our event dates and information will be posted there as well.

Voyager FAP

____________________________________________________________

R E D     R I B B O N  WEEK

November 11th – November 13th 2014

Dear 5th-8th Grade Students and Families,

Red Ribbon Week is a national event designed to help kids make healthy choices.   The red

ribbon is a symbol of living substance free.   This year’s theme is “Love yourself-Be drug free.”

Here are four ways to get involved next week at WCS:

1. Red Ribbon Theme  Days:

Tuesday (Nov 11th) - SHADE OUT DRUGS – Wear Sunglasses or crazy

Wednesday (Nov 12th) – Stay in the Game -Wear our school colors, blue +

gold, or sports gear

Thursday (Nov 13th) –Red – Get Real – Wear red

• Everyone that dresses up will get a ribbon that day during lunch.  

• At the end of the three days, there will be prizes for anyone who has all three ribbons.

2. Fit Facts – Everyday, at lunch, there will be a “fit fact” question with raffled prizes from local

businesses.  Look on the school SAP web page to review facts at home for a better chance to

3. Contract for Life – Parents and kids, read this over, talk about your expectations to be

substance free and safe and sign it together! Have your child bring in the signed form with

their name and house clearly marked.  All contracts will be entered into a raffle for a prize from

a local business and will be returned to you after Red Ribbon Week.  Contract For Life

4. Young Writer’s Project – In partnership with CY, Connecting Youth, Young Writers Project is

offering a special writing prompt that can be completed at home or in school.  The prompt is

“How do you manage peer influence?” and the deadline for submission is Nov 17th.  Selected

entries will win cash awards and prizes.  For more information click on this link

www.youngwritersproject.org.

Thanks so much for your participation in Red Ribbon Week and for your help in getting the word out

–You are too S.M.A.R.T. to start!

Signed,    

WCS Vermont Kids Against Tobacco (VKAT)

Ms. Sherman:

Just a reminder that organizational club will be running for only a few more weeks. Then the next session will start up in December for “tough reading 101.” This will be for all types of readers. The focus will be on difficult text and how to read them when they feel really hard. Send questions my way to: csherman@cssu.org

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

We kicked the week off with Reading Cafe and current events. Students completed a picture activity and read an article about Malala, the Nobel Peace Prize winner. On Tuesday, students participated in a mock public hearing, as a part of our study of the legislative branch. The hearing was on a bill that would prevent smoking in public places. Students played the Representative and her staff, or were members of a group (from clean air to the tobacco growers) that had to voice their opinions and concerns about the bill. On Wednesday afternoon we went to see the Swift house performance of Romeo and Juliet. In preparation of the performance, we had a read aloud of a Romeo and Juliet picture book.

On Thursday morning we studied voting. We watched a short BrainPop video on the subject and discussed a Burlington Free Article on Vermont’s low voter turnout. We then had a debate - “Should voting be required by law?” Students searched for reasons and facts to support their position and wrote a short opinion paper.

To end the week, we learned how to take Cornell Notes. This format is widely used and is an effective way to organize information. I modeled how to set up the notes in their Humanities notebook, and students learned how to use clues in the text to identify main ideas and find supporting details. We took notes on the legislative branch and will also take notes on the executive and judicial branches in preparation for an upcoming test. We also had a chance to play some fun icivics games on the 3 Branches of Government. Students had to use all three branches to make 10 laws.

Book Fair - ⅚ grade students will visit the Book Fair on Tuesday at 9:30.

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

Math 5- This week students worked on building a deeper sense of understanding of fractions.  We spent many days using models to justify our thinking about addition and subtraction problems and also focusing on listening to understand.  When a student is able to revoice what they heard their partner say, they are really considering the value of their ideas and how they are the same and different as their own.  We had an assessment today on addition and subtraction of fractions based on the clock face and on the dollar bill.  Hopefully things will look good.  All signs point to proficiency, as we had a busy week of pulling small groups to address misconceptions and gaps in understanding.

Math 6 - Students are developing deeper understanding of ratios by learning about unit rates.  Unit rates are ratios in which one of the two numbers being compared is a 1.  We had a great visual of this ratio, one that we are all familiar with - 2 tomatoes for $3.00.  We talked about the possible unit rates for this ratio.  1 tomato for $1.50 is a unit rate because one of the two numbers being related is a 1.  How about the other ratio?  Well, sometimes it’s not so neat and clean.  ⅔ of a tomato for $1.00!  We talked about that fact that some unit rates work better than others!  Students completed a quick quiz today to assess learning in the unit thus far.

Science ⅚ - Students played a Predator Prey game Monday facilitated by Will Moody, an 8th grader, who was part of a team of writers working on modeling ecosystems at the ⅞ level.  The game demonstrated overpopulation of the wolf population as well as what happens when populations become scarce.  It was a Sharks and Minnows type game and the students had fun running around outside.  We also introduced the topic of Natural Selection and model/simulated this for several days to understand how biological adaptations might influence the size and existence of populations.  Students are responsible for building an Interactive Word Map to show that they understand vocabulary terms introduced during long block and an ability to associate those words to each other.  Interactive word maps are used to remember important vocabulary by relating it.  “Words need to be taught in relation to other words. Words representing concepts are not taught in a vacuum, but rather in contexts that illustrate how they are associated with other words and ideas.”    (Content-Area Vocabulary: A Critical Key to Conceptual Learning by Janis M. Harmon and Karen D. Wood).  This is the hope from this exercise.  It will be done by Tuesday, a review for final assessment will take place Wednesday and then students will complete the final assessment during long block Thursday and Friday.

The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):

This week in Humanities started like any other with our Independent Reading Mondays and CNN Student News. On Tuesday our 7/8 learning community took a fantastic trip to Montpelier for the “Under the Golden Dome” tour. All students were able to take a guided tour of our State House, participate in a mock trial in the Vermont Supreme Court, and view some great exhibits in the Vermont History Museum. Throughout the day I had students giving me really positive feedback on the experience, and that it was way more fun than they had thought! Students were able to make great connections to our curriculum, sit in the actual seats of our state justices, and ask really great questions that even stumped our tour guides. On Wednesday we returned to our normal learning schedule!  

Our morning time together was filled with reading, leaving tracks in our text, and prepping for our debate on Tuesday. We’ve been continuing to focus on our big question, “What does it mean to be an American Citizen?” and next week we will be starting our big 5 paragraph argument essay. To prepare for our argument essay around youth immigration, students have been gathering a lot of research and knowledge through our class time together. Students have been reading articles in Jr. Scholastic Magazine and New York Times Upfront Magazine to prepare. We have had independent reading time with the articles, class read alouds, discussions, and pushing the “Why?”. Their knowledge is being put to the test first in a debate, taking place on Tuesday, around birthright citizenship in the U.S. Students have been working really hard to prepare for their debate, finding strong evidence, using persuasive speech, and working as a team.

Our afternoon time together has been packed with work time for our citizenship project. Students are having a lot of fun with this project already, so I cannot wait to see their data and reflections! By the end of the week all groups had created their citizenship tests and were very excited to start handing them out to adults!

Book Fair 7/8: 7th and 8th graders will be attending the FAP Book Fair on Thursday, November 13.

The Break-Away Project - Global Connections with New Zealand: This week some of our students took part in our 3rd Skype with Blockhouse Bay Intermediate School. During our Skype time together we’ve been talking about culture, cultural differences, current events, and national identity. In this week’s Skype we talked about how the new Prime Minister of New Zealand wants to create a new flag to represent New Zealand. We challenged students from Blockhouse Bay and WCS to create flags to represent each other’s country. WCS students created a new flag for New Zealand, and Blockhouse Bay created for the U.S. This was a very fun challenge and a very funny exchange. Students also talked about the ever-changing weather, pop culture, and upcoming school events. Our Voyager students had a great time and engaged in wonderful conversation. Our next Skype will be: Monday, November 10th.

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

CMP8

What happens when your decay exponential model is not aperfect”?  We explored how to find the trend of a decay curve and to find the decay factor and rate.  We reviewed the rules governing exponents and enjoyed a pretty “cheesy” video to review the rules.  We are finishing up this unit with fractional exponents and next week will bring the Growing, Growing, Growing Unit Test.  Students should definitely review growth factor/rate and decay factor/rate in relation to tables and equations.

CMP7

This week we broadened our math operations to include the Distributive property.  Students explored the factored and expanded form of expressions.  We also investigated more complex equations using Order of Operations.  We were a little flummoxed by the differences between the following exponents, (-2)2 and – 22.  The parentheses make all the difference.  We are finishing up Accentuate the Negative and will have a Unit Assessment next week.  Students need to practice their rules of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing positive and negative numbers.

Science 7th/8th

This week we put on the finishing touches on our mousetrap engineering lab reports and began an investigation into Newton’s 2nd Law of Motion.  We experimented by changing the mass of a moving car to see how its’ force moves a stationary car.  This simulation is similar to waiting at a stoplight and someone plows into you from behind.  We used similar toy cars and attached pennies to the exterior of the moving car before we sent it rolling down an elevated track.  Students began to see the relationship that mass has in the force of an object. We conjectured whether the relationship between mass and the distance the stationary car travelled was linear or nonlinear

5/6 Ecology Snapshot

Week of October 27th - 31st

TA’s Notes:

Please replenish students pencils, erasers and pens.  This is something all students should have and many are getting low!

After school with Ms. Sherman:

It has been great to see students staying after school to get support with organization. This group will continue for the next few Wednesdays. The last Wednesday for organization will be on November 19, 2014.

The next set of Wednesday sessions will have a new focus, reading. This session will primarily look at: What to do when faced with high level text. Students, with guidance and support, will work through difficult articles. We will talk about strategies to use when reading text that is difficult and above their independent reading level. Students will also work on: responding to text, interacting with text, comprehension, and using context clues. The new session will start in December.

*All sessions are open for 5th-8th grade students!

*Wednesdays: 3:00-4:00

*Students are dismissed at 4:00 and can either be picked up at that time or go to the homework club.

*There’s an activity bus that leaves the school at 4:30ish.

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

We started the week off with the fall Writing On Demand Assessment. 5th - 8th grade students write a LEAF response to a grade level prompt using a provided set of information. This was our first attempt using computers to give this assessment. We used Google Classroom for the task. Students had access to all of the information online. They were to complete a graphic organizer first, before moving on to typing the response. Unfortunately for us, Google Classroom had its one major glitch of the school year on Monday. This set some students back and required an extra period or two later in the school week to wrap up the assessment. It was a learning experience for all of us and good practice for future online assessments.

For writing, we are diving deeper into our argument study, learning the components to a good argument piece. We used a common core student exemplar to identify the claim, reasons, evidence, facts, and concluding statement of a good argument paper. Students took notes on the components and started to collect a variety of persuasive sentence starters and transition words to use in future pieces.

In our civics unit, we have moved on to the Federal Government, taking a closer look at the 3 branches and the concepts of checks and balances and the separation of power. Students will be making a diagram of the checks and balances system and participating in a mock legislative experience next week.

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

Math 5: I apologize for the lack of update last week.  It completely slipped my mind!  We have had a busy couple of weeks - finishing up Unit 1 and moving on to Unit 2.   Unit 2 has a main focus on fractions, what is a fraction, how can we compare one fraction to another in terms of magnitude and finally a focus on fraction addition and subtraction.  As we talked about in conferences, Bridges 2.0 makes a lot of assumptions about where a student has been prior to this year, but we are cobbling together the framework to meet all needs.  Our focus this week has been on using two models, the clock and money to build proficiency in adding fractions with unlike denominators.  If we have 1/10 + ⅔, we can use the clock to help us solve this problem.  1/10 of an hour is 6 minutes, ⅔ of an hour is 20 minutes and therefore added together we get 26 minutes.  26 minutes out of how many minutes?  26/60 and you have an answer for this problem.  We will eventually arrive at traditional algorithms, but it gives students a place to start!   Remember to encourage 60 minutes of Moby Max Monday to Sunday!

Math 6:  I apologize for the lack of update last week.  I was over my head and totally forgot to get it done!  Students have been working in our new unit, Comparing Bits and Pieces, and learning some new math, about how to compare two numbers, better known as ratios.  It has been an interesting transition as this topic of ratios is new to most.  It requires an immense amount of proficiency in multiplication, and once again, fluency matters.  Encourage your 6th grader to get on Moby Max and work on Fact Master.  They really need to put this skill, multiplication and division 0-12, behind them.  Just a reminder, the weekly time expectation is 60 minutes.  Our work on ratios has focused on making comparison statements like, for every 3 boys there are 2 girls in the classroom.  These kinds of statements move students away from difference (subtraction) statements, like $150 more or less and into statements like “their goal is ⅓ of our goal.”  The latter involve multiplication and move you more easily toward “for every” statements, or ratios.  The learning curve in this unit has, in the past, been steep.  I will keep a close eye on their progress and fill gaps where needed.

Science ⅚:  This week students had the chance to view population size through the eyes of mice and weasels.  Why do populations increase and why do they decrease?  Mice are eaten by weasels and as a result, you have changes in population size.  The simulation invited students into the world of ecological relationships in nature.  And allowed them to see that populations do not grow out of control, or become extinct without some bigger interruptions in the ecosystem.  Naturally, populations of predators and prey will control each other’s size.  This was a really worthwhile activity for students and allowed for some interesting graphing, math analysis and writing opportunities.  We are wrapping up our Ecology unit next week and moving on to adaptations, heredity, and evolution.  

The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):

This week has been filled with a lot of great week in both our morning and afternoon times together.

The morning classes this week continued their punctuation study on comma and quotation rules. Students took their comic strip stories and transformed them into typed, short stories. This was great practice for students to apply their new knowledge of the 7 comma rules and 8 quotation mark rules. Students in both 7th and 8th grade seemed to have a great time creating these stories, and seeing this project through both of its parts - comic and short story. As our week came to a close, we continued to practice our quotation and comma rules through entrance tasks. Students did really well on these! We also used our knowledge of commas and quotations to analyze and read Edgar Allan Poe’s, “The Raven”. This classic piece of poetry was a really fun, challenging, and entertaining way to end the week. Students listened to a read aloud of the poem, analyzed the meaning with their table groups, and persevered through tough vocabulary to create a solid understanding and summary of this wonderful, yet eerie piece of literature.

During our afternoon classes we have turned our discussions to talking about the question of, “What does it mean to be a citizen?”. Students rotated through learning stations to read and respond to two articles about illegal youth immigration in the United States. Students were asked to identify a variety of things in the articles such as: the main idea, fact vs. opinion, point of view, and develop arguments with evidence from the articles. Students were really invested in learning about the stories of these young children trying to make their way into our country. Students participated in some respectful, wonderful discussion around why the U.S. is such a desired place to live, what is it like to be a parent of these children, and what do we do about this hot-button issue. Students will be continuing their work around “What it means to be a citizen” through their mini project on American Citizenship. The project is centered around the Naturalization test - giving the test, gathering data, and analyzing data. Students are really excited about this project, and I’m really excited to see the data they gather!

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

CMP8

The class did splendidly on a partner quiz this week and they clearly understand the exponential growth equation. They have been able to interpret the landmarks in a table and graph that show exponential growth.  We moved onto exponential decay by investigating how flea medication loses its effectiveness over time. Did you know that fleas are able to jump up 10 inches! When they are pupating, insecticides can’t harm them. The medication that we use on our pets, show an exponential decay relationship, between medication level in the bloodstream and time. We have found that exponential decay equations show a decay factor that is greater than zero, but less than one.  We compared tables and graphs showing growth and decay.

 

CMP7

We had all kinds of algorithms, videos, games and activities around adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing positive and negative integers.  We watched some excellently cheesy videos from PBS Math Club about mathematical operations with integers and we learned some memorable ways to figure out the product of two integers.  For example, “If you love to love, you love.” (+ number x + number = + number) We also learned about the fabulous “love triangle” for multiplying and dividing integers.  Students had a partner quiz this week.

Science 7th/8th

The top three finishers in our mousetrap car design project competed in one epic race on Friday. We had some very fast cars that were able to tear across the 5 meter length well below the 5 second constraint. Although, we had many cars that did not make it, the design and redesign process was fun, challenging, and sometimes frustrating.  The design process takes us from solving a problem, to the design of a solution, the creation and testing of that solution and redesigning when necessary.  We certainly had lots of redesign with our cars.  Students had a science meeting Friday afternoon to discuss the observations that were made about their car’s performance and how it related to the scientific principles we are studying: inertia, friction, kinetic/potential energy.  Next week our engineering lab reports are due.

Weeks of October 13th - 24th

MARK YOUR CALENDARS and SAVE THE DATE

Voyager Family Night at WCS - Wednesday December 10th, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm!

For those of you new to Voyager, Voyager Family Night at WCS is our annual all-house gathering where students and families of Voyager get together to share snacks and conversation in the cafeteria, then move to the auditorium for some fun open-mike performances.

Students should sign up for a performance spot with Ms. Quatt if they are interested. In the past, performances have included small-group singing/dance, poetry or short story reading, playing piano or guitar, magic tricks, and others. It is great chance to meet all the awesome kids and families who are part of the Voyager community as well as support our first important fundraiser.

How can you help?

• Please plan to attend with your family.
• We will be seeking raffle prizes for the evening; we hold a door raffle that has typically included movie cards, pizza gift cards and other great family gifts.
• Each class will be asked to bring a small easy, hand held snack. Mr. Merill and Ms. O'Brien will be "savory" snacks such as cheese and crackers, vegetables, etc. Ms. Wesnak and Ms. Quatt will be "sweet" snacks suck as brownies, cookies, etc.
• We will need help with setting up the cafeteria and cleaning up when we are finished.

A sign up sheet will be sent out in the Voice in early November.

Thanks in advance for your time and support of our incredible Voyager community.

WCS Candidate Forum

You can find the WCS Candidate Forum online here: http://retn.org/show/2014-candidate-forum-williston-central-school.

This forum will be getting a lot of air time on Channel 16 between now and Election Day, especially in the few days leading up to November 4th. Here are some of the upcoming air dates. More dates will be posted online as they are scheduled.

Sunday, 10/26 - 2:00 PM

Saturday, 11/1 - 11:00 AM

Sunday, 11/2 - 4:00 PM & 9:00 PM

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

On Monday after Reading Cafe students wrote about a character in their book. They had a choice to make a character map, compare the character to another character, or write about why they like the character or not.

For current events, we learned how to identify and use the 5 W’s and 1 H in a news story. Students selected an article from the Burlington Free Press and highlighted the 5 W’s and 1 H. They then filled in a graphic organizer for the 5 W’s and 1 H. Students then swapped organizers with a clock partner and had to try and write their own version of that story using only the information provided in the graphic organizers. Students then exchanged newspaper stories to see if their stories were a close match.

Our second literature group round started on Monday. Our theme is Mystery and Suspense and our big question is “How does the setting of your book create a story of mystery and spook?”

5th graders will be reading “Closed for the Season”, and 6th graders had choice for this round. Ask your student about the book he/she is reading.

We continued our study of state government and preparation for our field trip to Montpelier this week, learning about the 3 branches of government and how a bill becomes a law.  Students had a chance to see this first hand on our field trip. They toured the State House and followed the adventure of a bill by visiting a committee room, the Senate Chamber,  the House of Representatives, and the Governor’s office. They also conducted a mock trial in the Supreme Court room using a real case that was decided by the VT Supreme Court (ask your student about this - it was so fun!). We also had a great tour of the Vermont Historical Society Museum, passing through the history of Vermont from Abnaki times, the Green Mountain Boys, the Civil War, railroads, quarries, and skiing and tourism. It was a great day!

The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):

This week in Humanities has been filled with creativity, fun, and discussion! During our morning time together students started off the week with our usual Independent Reading Monday. Students were asked to find important sections of dialogue from their reading, and explain its importance in their reading journal. As the week went on we returned to our punctuation study of commas and quotation marks. We did a quick review before we began our work on our in-class “Ordinary Object Comic Strip” project. Students were inspired by the youtube sensation “Marcel the Shell” to come up with a character developed from a household or ordinary object. Students created characters such as “Sammy the Spoon”, “Larry and Barry the Marbles”, “Bobby the Door Wedge”, “Stan the Pillow-Man”, and “Arabelle Beans the Croissant”. Students took these characters and created short stories for them to star in. They then created a short comic strip to illustrate their story with dialogue. Now that the comic strips are complete, next week students will transform their comic into a typed, short story to showcase their skills in proper comma and quotation use with the conversation bubbles from the comics. Students had a lot of fun working on their comics and developing characters. We’re looking forward to continuing with the work next week!

During our afternoon classes students brought their work with government and American History to a close, by playing an intense game of Jeopardy! Students answered questions from categories such as “Not the Bill of Lefts”, “The Government Tree”, and “History and Zinnstory”. The questions were student created, and they were pretty tough! We had a great time playing, and it was a really fun way for students to showcase their gained knowledge, work with a team, and think critically and creatively. With our work on our sub-essential question of “What does it mean to be an American?” brought to a close through Jeopardy, we were able to move on to our next sub-essential question. The question we are trying to answer now is, “What does it mean to be a citizen?”. Thursday’s class consisted of some great discussion, definition building, and analysis. Students analyzed the dictionary definition of “citizen”, and then we viewed two clips from The Hunger Games to see what being a citizen looks like in an extreme environment. Some students even questioned whether or not the people in The Hunger Games could be considered citizens because what protection or rights were they being provided by their government? We had a great discussion filled with a lot of critical thinking and analysis. Students will be continuing to learn about what it means to be a citizen by learning about what it means to be an American Citizen through the eyes of the government, and learning about immigration in our country. Students will be reading, discussing, and debating a few articles from Jr. Scholastic, while also responding to questions and writing prompts. Through all of our work we are hoping to come to an understanding around what the national identity is for America. Next week students will start on an in-class mini project around what it takes to become a citizen of our country. Next week we will also partake in an after-school Skype session to discuss citizenship and national identity in New Zealand with our Blockhouse Bay class!

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

CMP8

This week students explored biological exponential models.  We investigated growth patterns of mold, snakes and rabbits in Australia. These cute, fluffy consumers that  were introduced as a game and food source, have decimated many of the native species in Australia and have caused ecological damage to the natural environment.  Students  became more familiar with the exponential equation of  y= a(bx) where “a” is the y-intercept  and “b” is the growth factor and  “x”  is the independent variable.   We created class records on the “landmarks “ of exponential growth within graphs, tables and equations  and completed a Growing, Growing, Growing Check-up.

CMP7

What patterns can we see when adding and subtracting positive and negative integers? Are there rules or an algorithm that could guide us when we compute with these numbers? This week we investigated positive and negative integers using  number lines, chip boards and playing cards to explore their properties.  We learned about absolute value, additive inverses and opposites.  We dabbled in inequalities and rounded out the week with a brief Accentuate the Negative “Check-up”.

Science 7/8th

Ladies and Gentlemen start your engines! Students began this week with researching mousetrap car designs and the science concepts behind how they work. Friction, Newton’s laws, rotational inertia were topics that we read about and then  we pulled out our tools, safety glasses, glue guns, duct tape, and materials and began construction.  As of Friday, students were just beginning to test their designs.  Next week we will begin testing, data collection and our redesign phase.  We hope to have a team wide competition mid-week. The engineering goal: Create a mousetrap car that  travels 5 meters in 5 seconds.  Students will have an engineering lab report due after the competition.

Week of October 6th-10th

TA’s Notes:

• Field Trip permissions slips have been distributed for:

*All of Voyager House- Walking field trip to Adam’s Farm on Oct 15th- permission slips due 10/14

*5th & 6th graders- “Under the Golden Dome” trip to Montpelier on Oct 23rd- slips due 10/20

• Parent-Teacher-Student Conference sign-up sheets (google docs) have been e-mailed home.  Please contact me if you need assistance or to set-up an different date/time.
• 8th Graders received forms for Washington DC trip.  Permission forms, behavior expectations contract and $150 deposit is due by 10/31 if attending the 5/26-5/29 trip.

Katie Fieldsend: KFieldsend@cssu.org or 871-6148

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

As usual, we kicked the week off with our Reading Cafe. Students are now working independently in their Reading Response Notebooks, updating book lists, tier 2 words, and reflecting on their reading practices. A reminder to encourage your student to read - share a favorite book that you read in middle school or visit the libary this weekend.

We also watched the 10 minute CNN Student News on Monday, making up titles for each of the news stories.

We introduced two online learning tools that we will be using throughout the school year. The first is called - No Red Ink. These are online assignments that support writing and grammar skills. Students will have a weekly assignment posted on this site that will be due every Friday.

The second is Typing Club. Students have online access to this keyboard skill building site. They will be expected to practice on a regular basis. Once we have all the students up on the site, weekly assignments will be posted. We will also be introducing the students to Kidblog in the coming weeks and building the community writing forum into our regular writing practices.

These sites are set up with teacher accounts that the student accounts are connected to. If you have any questions about these sites, please do not hesitate to contact me.

We also continued our argument writing work this week. We took a look at another controversial school rule (taking recess away for bad behavior) and practiced our debate skills using a new debate format. Students then learned highlighting and underlining strategies and put them to use in creating an outline for an argument essay.

Students put the finishing touches on their posters for the Candidate Forum. The posters are amazing and will look fantastic in the auditorium, dining room, and around the building. Be sure to tune in to Channel 17 RETN to watch the WCS Candidate Forum or watch online. It will be broadcast several times throughout the campaign season.

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

Math 5

Students are working hard on building proficiency in Multiplication Strategies learned in the unit.  We have reviewed them in class and as you can see, they keep getting reinforced in homework.  We spent the latter part of the week connecting multiplication to division and finding that the rectangular area model works well for division too.  Please note that we are working towards a final assessment before the 4 day long weekend.  Students have received important handouts for review and they will have the opportunity to practice problems represented on the test.

Math 6

We are moving towards the end of the Prime Time unit, and as we do so, we are pulling all of our learning together!  Students began the week looking at math reflections.  How do we reflect on our math thinking?  We looked at benchmark pieces, created by many students in the class, that were exemplary and showed how a math thinker explains using evidence and examples.  We then Skyped a photographer in Oregon to learn more about photographing patterns in nature and then spent a few days working on our Special Number Projects.  The stories are great and getting better as students apply feedback from me and eventually others!  The latter part of the week offered new learning in the Distributive Property and Order of Operations!  Final test next Tuesday!

Science ⅚

We have spent our week analyzing the results of our green roof engineering design challenge and talking a lot about how science and engineers use mathematics to make scientific claims and to improve designed solutions to problems.  It has been a schlog!  As you can imagine, students aren’t wildly enthusiastic about tables and graphs, but the reality is...they are really important in science!  We have been learning about the elements of good graphs and about how to deal with multiple sets of data overlapped on one piece of graph paper.  With this acute attention to the math behind the science, we have discovered some interesting things about green roofs, but also about the role of plants on Earth.  Writing a claim with evidence is a tough skill but one that will serve our young scientists.  To end the week, we wrote a letter to our Director of Maintenance to encourage the creation of a green roof on our building (just as practice for writing proposals based on personal experience and a little research).  We all know that this will likely be an exercise and not a reality, but it is good practice for how to report out and encourage sustainable building design, knowing what we know about the role and importance of plants!

The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):

This week in Humanities has been busy! During our morning time together our students were able to work on and finalize their questions for the Candidate Forum that happened this morning! 8 of our questions were sent to the forum, but only a few were picked to be asked to the candidates. Students did a great job of integrating their knowledge of current events and candidate specific information to form some really wonderful questions for the event! As the week went on we started a punctuation study. We are focusing on proper comma use, complete sentences, and proper use of quotation marks. Students had time to practice in class through table challenges and some really fun, creative work with political cartoons!

During our afternoon time together we finished our Bill of Rights debates, which were fantastic! Students really showcased their ability to research a specific topic and form solid, strong arguments. As the week continued on, we did some reading and note-taking on the book, A Young People’s History of the United States. This is a book that focuses on telling our history through a variety of voices, therefore giving its readers a different perspective on stories they may have already heard. Our chapters focused on the making of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights, and all of the events and key players leading up to the creation of these documents. Students were able to take away a greater understanding of the order of events leading up to the creation of these important documents, why these documents were created, along with understanding that every story can have a variety of perspectives depending on who is telling it. These chapters also were able to build a nice connection to our literature group focus on social justice and injustice, along with giving us a nice beginning to our study on citizenship and what it means to be a citizen of a country.

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

CMP8

This week we shored up our understanding of ratios, proportions and continued work on solving multi-step algebraic equations. We reviewed the Commutative, Distributive, Associative and Identity properties in relation to solving equations. Later on in the week, we explored the vertical, horizontal and cross product relationship between ratios in a proportion.  We tried different computational strategies and then transferred those strategies to real world situations like biological sampling.  We fished for tagged golden “fish” (gold painted rice) in a pond (plastic bag) in order to find the approximate number of fish in the pond.  At the end of the week, we completed TWMM part 2 and we plunged into exponent laws.  Growing, Growing, Growing is our next unit and it is focused on exponential relationships.

CMP7

Looking for patterns in polygons, exploring similarities and differences between parallelograms, quadrilaterals and triangles, and understanding the angles that line transversals create was the order of business for our 7th graders.  Students played a rousing game of geometry jeopardy to prepare for our Shapes and Designs Unit Test.  Student teams created excellent class records to record their understanding of our geometric concepts for this unit. Finally, students completed the unit test.  In the next few weeks we will spend some time working with positive and negative integers.

7/8th Science:

Putting the finishing touches on our Energy through the Ecosystem Unit, students completed a discussion about the main concepts covered by our models/simulations based on Next Generation Science Standards. Critically, we found some gaps in our scientific understanding and found through discussion we were able to clarity some or our misunderstanding and grapple with such questions as “How does energy and matter move through an ecosystem?”

We paused to learn about Linnaean Classification.  Students explored the taxonomic naming convention called binomial nomenclature and the levels of classification from Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, and Genus to Species. (King Phillip Cares Only For Ginger Snaps)  Taking a baggy of creatures living, extinct and fictional, they created a taxonomic tree based on physical characteristics of each creature.  Students started with very general kingdoms and ended up with specific genus species names.  We completed the week with a “Speed Dating” science review for our unit test. (A fabulous idea blatantly borrowed from Ms. Wesnak!) Next week we begin a new unit!