Week of January 13

Reminder: No school Monday, Jan 20th in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day

FAPAC January Meeting Highlights

To: Voyager Parents

From: Monica Hutt, FAPAC Representative

Happy NewYear! The FAP  held  its January meeting on Thursday, January 9, 2014. As the parent-teacher organization for Williston schools, the FAP meetings are open to all. We will send highlights of the meeting each month but if you are interested in reviewing the complete minutes, you can read them HERE. The following are just a few highlights from our meeting.

Administration Report

Walter Nardelli, District Principal, talked with the group about the school budget and the intent of the administration to minimize any potential increases.  Please see the full minutes for more on this very important topic.

SPARK Academy sign up is happening now for the next 5 week Enrichment session; there are many exciting opportunities for student enrichment through the program.

Amazon Opportunity

We have an agreement with Amazon, every time you shop, at no cost to you, money is donated to the Williston FAP. To help generate that revenue, use this link:  AmazonLink:

Williston Annual Fund

Contributions are still coming in. The Annual Fund funds field trips for every child in Williston in addition to other programs.   In order to keep these opportunities available to every Williston student, please make your donation online now by clicking HERE.

Upcoming FAP Events

January 22, 2014 6:30-8:00 p.m.- Technological Empowerment: Parenting with Technology- This will be a presentation focused on media and its impact on our kids. Also included: workshop and 1:1 support on parental controls on your own devices.  

Save the Date- May 17, 2014 -Williston Runs for Education! 5k Run and Walk and Kids Fun Run

Save the Date- Lake Monsters for Williston families on Sunday, June 29, 2014

CHAMPLAIN VALLEY UNION HIGH SCHOOL - AN INVITATION

To 8th Grade Parents and Students of the Class of 2018

8th Grade Student & Parent Night

Champlain Valley Union High School

CVU Gym, Thursday, January 30, 6-8 p.m.

This evening will provide you and your son/daughter an introduction to the academic and elective programs they will experience in the 9th grade.

Mr. Merrill’s ⅚ Humanities Wrap Up

This week students completed their research for the informational writing piece, completed an outline and started typing.  The focus of the paper is on the events that contributed to the growth and expansion of the United States.  Students selected three topics to focus on and build their case.  Ask your student which three events he/she selected for the paper.  Students will be using a google doc to write their papers.  Feedback from teachers, along with a self and peer editing activity will be the next steps before students work on a final draft late next week.  

Ms. Q’s Corner

CMP8

Q: How does a ghost solve a quadratic equation?

A: By completing the scare.

This week our fearless CMP8 students forged on in our understanding or quadratic equations in our Frogs Fleas and Painted Cubes unit.  Students wrote equivalent expanded and factored equations and became more fluent going from one form to another.  Using visual models we “completed the square” to make sense of the terms within a quadratic equations.  We took a pause on Friday to put quadratics in action by building and firing marshmallow catapults.

CMP7

The highlight of the week was the introduction of O.J. concentrate to our 7th graders. They had no point of reference for the CMP example of creating a ratio between juice concentrate and water, so we made some juice.  We also made scientific conjectures about the increase in volume to our juice solution when using solid concentrate versus powder concentrate.    We worked on solving problems by setting up proportions.  We ended the week with a fun proportion game.

Science 7th/8th

We began our week with the completion of our Geology Unit Test and the beginning of our Biology unit.  Students read and highlighted a chapter on cells, organelles and cellular functions.  We reviewed the parts of a microscope, practiced making slides and focusing our specimens on low, medium and high power.  We continued our microscope practice with a lab that explored cells and tissues.  Our big science question was: How does the form of a cell or tissue relate to its function?

This Week in Ms. O’s Class

Math 5:  We are completing our Geometry investigations today with our end of Unit 3 Assessment.  We did plenty of review in class and students are ready to move on to fractions.  We’ve had lots of practice and there’s been plenty of new learning about rotational and reflective symmetry, area, volume and surface area, and properties of polygons.  

Math 6:  This week, we began our new book, Let’s Be Rational, all about fraction operations.  5th and 6th grade lays a nice foundation for this reviewed learning (addition and subtraction) and this new learning about multiplication and division of fractions.  We have done some really deep thinking about what it means to take a fraction of a fraction, building generalizations about the resulting quantity (student conjectures are that the resulting number will always be smaller, but then we have some questions about negative fractions still…) and trying to match an operation with fraction of fraction problems.  We did arrive yesterday at take ½ of a number seems to be the same as dividing by 2!  But we are still yet unsure about what to do with fractions that are not unit fractions, like taking ⅔ of ¾.  The exploration continues.

I wanted to express my pleasure with the efforts of your sixth grade student!  I have noticed a big commitment to writing in math, whether in class to show and explain thinking or in end of investigation reflections.  Research about writing shows that writing in all learning areas has long term, positive effects on writing proficiency.  Please continue to encourage writing in mathematics.  It makes a difference!

⅚ Science: This week has been a whirlwind of writing, electrical generation, and summary!  We are closing in on some end of unit projects as we close out our electricity and magnetism unit.  I have been so pleased at the progress students have made on understanding foundational concepts in electromagnetism.  You wouldn’t believe just how expert the students sound, like they have been physical scientists and engineers.  We had one exploration this week, in the midst of our report writing ( a collaborative project with Mr. Merrill) and in our Word Wizarding through yet another Map it! Project.  Yesterday, we looked at electrical generation in a Shakelight (a flashlight that you shake in order to generate electricity, a hand crank generator that lights an LED, and a wind turbine that generates voltage.  It was a new understanding that moving magnets around a coil can generate electricity.  This added new value to our work with motors, because generators are the opposite energy transfer.  Motors take chemical energy or electrical energy to move a magnet to then move something else (mechanical) while a generator takes mechanical energy to generate electrical energy.  Pretty cool gadgets.  Science assessment next Wednesday.  Review in ongoing.

The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room - Brought to you by Doug Schmidt

**Quick Note from Ms.W** : As you may have noticed, for 7/8 Humanities we will be having guest student writers each week. I hope you enjoy their perspective and wrap-up of the week!  

7/8 Humanities: Hello everyone! This week started as normal with Independent Reading Monday and CNN Student News in the Humanities classes. Although, some 8th grade chorus students were away at CVU for the kick off to 9th grade chorus during the morning class period. In the Tuesday A.M. class, we released the new big question “How does the written word change our perspective of history and light the path to our global future?” In the P.M. class, all students reflected on the 1960’s stations. For 8th grades, that was before the CVU meeting in the auditorium. They grow up so fast! In the Wednesday-Friday A.M. classes, all students had a work day on their interview/eyewitness to history projects. In the P.M. classes, all students started working on their group timeline project. Each group is making a timeline for 1 decade from 1900 to the present day. On Thursday of this week, 8th grade band members took a trip to CVU for the kick off to 9th grade band. They were gone through the A.M. class period. That was our week! We have no school on Monday which means we will be missing our time with Carl Azuz :(. Have a happy long weekend!

Telegraph Office of 1844

Week of January 6

Mr. Merrill’s ⅚ Humanities Wrap Up

Students started the week with our usual reading cafe and current events activities.  Along with updating their book lists, students identified tier 2 words from their reading to represent in Frayer models.  We also completed pre and post activities in preparation for our field trip to the Flynn Theater.  For our Aladdin experience, we considered the production elements (masks, puppetry, and magic), the history of the story and the art of storytelling.  We also used a variety of matinee activities to prepare students for watching a performance that has little dialogue.  After the performance, we reflected on the plot and themes of the production, diagraming and making connections along the way.  Finally, we started our Westward Expansion informational writing project. Students were introduced to our electronic and print resources in the library, thanks to Karen Hennig.  They also started the research portion of the process, which will wrap up early next week.  

CMP8

This week was a bit abridged with our trip to the Flynn.  We continued to look at the anatomy of a quadratic equation and where quadratic functions are utilized.  The maximum point of a parabola and the x intercepts were explored.  The class will continue to create visual models in order to explain and solve quadratic relationships.

CMP7  

This week we completed our scale drawings.  The class has been working very hard to create similar and skewed drawings of their cartoons.   Their wonderful masterpieces will be going up in the house next week.  We began our new unit “Comparing and Scaling” which investigates ratios, rates and proportions.

Science 7/8

Filling in the geological gaps was the order of business this week.  Readings, discussion, videos and timelines were explored to pull together our understanding of earth's forces, rock cycle, water cycle and layers of earth.  Students worked on their review and created cards for the unit test.  This comprehensive unit test took place on Friday.

The Week in Ms.Wesnak’s Room - Brought to you by Halina Vercessi and Olivia Voth!

7/8 Humanities: This week in Humanities started with some good ole Independent Reading Monday and thoughtful book analysis. Along with the many wonders of the warm and fuzzy, Carl Azuz, in the afternoon. On Tuesday, in the AM, we had our “person and event” due for our interview essay. Later on, in PM, we started our rotation stations for our 60’s unit! Wednesday brought us on a trip to the Flynn where we experienced the colorful and magical adventures of “Aladdin and Other Enchanting Tales”. The wild magic tricks and intricate puppeteering brought us to a world where genies grant wishes and boxes of gold appear out of nowhere. 7/8 Humanities PM sent us back, once again, to the 1960s and so brings us over the hump of the week! Thursday delivered us a very FUN grammar quiz. The plus, we got to say bingo, and say “hello” in another language when we passed it in! We went back to the 60s in PM and completed our stations! There was one particular station that we couldn’t help but enjoy! Ms. Wesnak prepared for us one of her fantastical and famous simulations. This one was focused around showing us what it was like to be a soldier during the Vietnam War! Today is Friday! In the AM, we worked on preparing our interview questions for the lovely parents and grandparents and other random lucky associates out there who get to have a sophisticated conversation about 20th Century events with a 7th or 8th Grader. I hope you enjoyed that run-on sentence and have a lovely weekend!

-Olivia and Halina

The Week in Ms.O’s Class

Math 5: We are moving towards deep understanding in geometry and have begun the downhill slide toward the assessment.  We have spent this week doing some healthy review, reinstruction, and introducing new concepts related to 3-D solids, that I hope will lead to full proficiency on the assessment.  Kathy and I have continued to explore the coteaching model, so you may have heard that I gave up the reigns a few times this week to Kathy as I scanned the room and supported students individually.  Topics of Review this week...properties of polygons, the development of polygon riddles to reinforce our understanding of those properties.  New this week...the topic of 3-D measurement!  Introduction of attributes of geometric solids and a fun exploration of volume across a number of settings.  We built three dimensional solids with magna tiles, took them apart with zoam tools, measurement of liquid volume, measurement of rectangular prisms and the age old question of why do we care?!  Our assessment for Unit 3 will take place next Friday.

Math 6:  We began investigations in our new book, Let’s Be Rational.  This book extends and deepens our understanding of Comparing Bits and Pieces into operations with fractions.  There are rich problem solving pieces that strengthen skills practiced in the last unit and will move students into multiplication and division of fractions and how we know when to multiply and divide them.  I have already uncovered some misconceptions but also feel great about some of the prerequisite skills needed to do well in this area of math!  

Science ⅚:I didn’t really know if it would all work...the telegraph thing and all, but it did!  We set up two telegraph offices this week in our class and sent Morse Code back and forth to each other.  How does this relate?  A telegraph is an electromagnet and its use coincided with Westward Expansion, so the connection between science and social studies is seamless!  So cool!  Thanks to Dan for all of the hard work he has done in the spirit of building mechanisms with electromagnets!  We are moving into a writing piece for Social Studies which includes deep understanding of the telegraph, so we will be doing this writing in science class.  The last few weeks of science this month will be dedicated to natural resource understanding.

Week of December 16

Happy Holidays!  We had a great day!

• Thank you to all who brought in food for this mornings Voyager House Breakfast.  The students really appreciated it!!
• Stocking Stuffers?  Pencils, erasers, calculators!

Gingerbread Challenge

Look at these words of art!  Wow to our newest architects!

Field Trip

Voyager House will be heading to the Flynn Theater downtown Burlington Wednesday morning, January 8th.  Permission slips will go out when students return in January.  They will be taking buses and returning by 11am.

2min). Share it with your students

Mr. Merrill’s ⅚ Humanities Wrap Up

Reading Cafe - After reading for 30 minutes, students wrote a letter of advice to a character in the book that they are reading.  This letter is one of many reading strategy assignments in the Reading Response Notebook.

Westward Expansion - We completed 2 excellent primary document activities this week.  With the first activity, students (in small groups) had to translate (it is tough to read a 19th century document!) a peace treaty between the Cheyenne and US Government from 1868.  Students then considered the implications of that treaty for the Cheyenne.  We then took a look at a how a Manifest Destiny T-Shirt by GAP created a big controversy last year, ending with GAP pulling the shirt off the shelves.  We looked at tweets, responses, and images from various viewpoints on the use of this term.  Students then wrote their own “tweet” response (paper only), using 140 characters or less.  We then completed our Westward Expansion Graphic Organizer in preparation for a January writing assignment on the topic.

Ms Q’s Corner

CMP8

This week students prepared to take the Looking for Pythagoras with a rousing game of jeopardy.  We completed this unit and we will be moving onto  Frogs, Fleas and Painted Cubes, a unit which introduces quadratic functions.  

CMP7

We completed our Stretching and Shrinking Unit Test and have moved onto our “Shrink it down and Blow it Up” scaling project.  Students have selected cartoons, action figures and logos to create facsimiles of the original.  They will also create a distorted image that follows a rule like 2x, y. Students will then compare the perimeter, area and angles to prove that they are similar. We will be working on these projects when we return from break.

Science 7th/8th

We shifted our thinking from the water cycle to our oceans and the issue of plastic garbage in the five world gyres.  We researched where the plastic is residing, where it is coming from and how it affects sea creatures and the food chain.  Students created informational posters on the issue and what we can do to help our ocean ecosystem.  We began to place our posters around school near trash cans, recycling bins and areas in where we throw things out.  After break we will focus more on ways to prevent and reduce pollution in the ocean.

The Week in Ms. O’s Class

Math 5:  Wow!  We are building our geometry language and all talking like mathematicians!  We spent the week talking about congruence and practicing our translations, rotations, and reflections to prove congruence.  We also reviewed big ideas from the unit:  properties of polygons, angle relationships and measurement, and area of rectangles and triangles.  We will move on to other ideas after break including symmetry, perimeter, and area of other polygons like trapezoids and parallelograms.

Math 6:  Students completed the final ideas of Comparing Bits and Pieces this week by building percent bars and using fraction understanding to find percents of a number and the percent when two other quantities are known (what percent is 14 of 40).  We took our unit assessment this week and those scores will be posted on Jupiter Grades after break. We will take a short detour into an integrated unit on natural resources and statistics (that use fractions, decimals, and percents). Students will be building a collaborative Globopoly game on four natural resource topics:  what we do with our garbage and waste, water resource management, deforestation, and global climate change.  Game pieces will include fraction, decimal, and percent understanding.

Science ⅚:  Students built very strong electromagnets using their understanding of electrical current and have really begun to solidify the ideas in this unit.  We built word maps of our learning, have done several investigations, including one that involved data collection and graphing (we have some work to do in this dept!), and are moving toward a big research project on the telegraph.  Our resident engineer, Dan, has been an amazing link to the real world and what a gift he has been to me in my own understanding of electricity and magnetism.  Students will have a chance to enter the world of motors and generators the next time we meet and to ultimately learn about morse code and the mechanism used to send it!  

The Week in Ms.Wesnak’s Room

7/8 Humanites: This week students took part in independent reading, and we also took time to catch up on current events and discuss events happening around the world. As the week continued on we played around with our work on sentence diagramming and sentence variety by taking on the role of a movie critic and writing movie reviews! Students had a lot of fun with this, and I think we may have even seen a glimpse into the future with some of our own Voyager students becoming Movie Critics! During our PM Humanities classes students were given time to work on their Vermont Impact projects. These were based around Vermont tourism and attracting tourists to our state through its rich history, variety of products, and famous people. Some of our final products included a Vermont tourism video, an ABC Book, placemats for local restaurants, educational posters, and even a book about the adventures of Senator Leahy. I can’t wait to read through these and put them up in our own “Welcome to Vermont” display, which will be coming to Voyager House in 2014. Wishing everyone a Happy Winter and Happy New Year! See you in 2014!!

Week of December 9

Voyager Family Night!  Thank you to all who organized, donated food and participated in the Voyager Family Night!  It was a great success as a fundraiser for Voyager and for FUN!  The students did a terrific job and a great time was had by all!  We raised some money too. Thanks to all who made donations that evening.  And congrats to the prize winners.

Stocking Stuffers?  Not sure what to stuff the stocking with???  How about pencils and erasers, a calculator, or some fine tip colored pencils?  We have noticed our stash is dwindling fast, stuff for school!

Literature Group:  Reading children's books and rewriting chapters for young adult version of the book.

Mr. Merrill’s ⅚ Hummanities Wrap Up

This week, as part of our Westward Expansion Unit, we focused on the plight of Native Americans as settlers moved west.   We used the Mission US resources and the interactive game to consider what strategies the Cheyenne and other Plains Indians used to survive and adapt to the expansion of the United States.  We used a variety of primary resources (pictures, and documents) in a jigsaw activity,  to better understand the Cheyenne culture and the conflicts they faced.  Students also had a vocabulary quiz on the Westward Expansion (key words) today.

In Mission 3: “A Cheyenne Odyssey,” players become Little Fox, a Northern Cheyenne boy whose life is changed by the encroachment of white settlers, railroads, and U.S. military expeditions.  As buffalo diminish and the U.S. expands westward, players experience the Cheyenne's persistence through conflict and national transformation..

The Week in Ms. O’s Class

Math 5:  We have been working our way through basic geometric principles like angles, congruence, symmetry, and the properties of circles. It is really important for students to learn the properties of polygons and know the names of different kinds of polygons.  A lot of upper level geometry relies on this understanding (Pythagorus, finding area) and so building the language of geometry is important.  We will be taking a quiz next week on the first part of this unit to assess current understanding.

Math 6:  Students have been productively working on understandings that relate fractions, decimals, and percents.  Percents seem to be a stumbling block for students, but the percent bar (which consequently looks like the fraction bar, yippee) has been helpful to students.  When we have numbers out of 100, percent renaming is easy, but what happens when the whole is 30, 80 or oh no, 213!  Students are working on applying the same strategy to harder to compute numbers.  New learning for sure!  Unit Assessment next week to complete the Comparing Bits and Pieces unit.  

Science ⅚:  Playing with electric current is fun.  Oersted and Ampere did it and so did we!  What is so great about electric current anyway?  Well, yes lights and all, but if you didn’t know, electric current is magnetic.  A compass moves when passed under a closed circuit and magnets attract to the wire in a complete circuit!  We will be doing more quantitative analysis next week of the strength of electromagnets and the looking at the insides of motors and alternators.  We have a generator too and an electromagnet that rings a bell (really a telegraph of sorts).  After the holiday break we will build a telegraph and learn about its use to the world!  It’s been really fun!

Ms. Q's Corner

CMP8 This week students used a proof to explore the Pythagorean Theorem.  Students took a series of right triangle and square puzzle pieces and fit them into two congruent squares. The square puzzle pieces all had a side length that correlated with the two legs and the hypotenuse of a right triangle.  Through our investigation we found that when the square of each leg was added, it had the same area as the square of the hypotenuse.  Students began reviewing for the Unit Test by creating a public record of our understanding of square roots and their meaning, methods for finding area and perimeter of irregular polygons and how to find the legs and hypotenuse of a right triangle.  Next week students will take the Looking for Pythagoras Unit Test.

CMP7  This week we created height-o-meters, a handheld device  that allows you to record the angle of elevation of different objects.  Using these devices we were able to use triangulation to find the height of objects around school. We also used similar triangles to find the distance across an unknown river and the heights of  various objects. We reviewed ratios and proportions and cross multiplication.  Next week we will have the unit test for Stretching and Shrinking.

Science 7th/8th

This week students explored the forces below, above and beyond the planet Earth.  We watched a National Geographic  video on Tectonic plates, explored Wegener’s theory of  Continental Drift and used puzzles and models to investigate Pangaea, convergent and divergent plate movement and transform boundaries. We completed our week with creating cartoons on the water cycle.

The Week in Ms.Wesnak’s Room

7/8 Humanities: Our week started off with independent reading or research in the library, and current events with CNN Student News in the afternoon. As the week swiftly continued on our mornings were filled with journal writes of a wide variety! We also completed and put closure to our work on sentence diagramming, where our main focus was on identifying the subject, verb, adjective, and adverb in a sentence. Once we completed our sentence diagramming work we moved into working on verb tense consistency. We started off by reviewing the 3 main verb tenses: past, present, and future tense. We practiced identifying and using these tenses correctly in class, and for homework. We are also putting all of this practice to the test in our current writing piece for PM Humanities. Students have been trying to answer the question: How has Vermont made an impact on our world and/or our history? This topic is providing us with a great bridge between our global unit and our 20th century history unit. Students have been researching and writing an informative piece about ONE person, place, event, or product that has helped Vermont make an impact on the global community. No matter what topic students have been researching they have had to learn a bit about our state’s rich history and its people! This week students have been given class time to work on this piece, along with time to have their writing peer edited. Students were also introduced to Part 2 of this Vermont mini-unit, which includes working in small groups to produce a piece of advertising that could be used for Vermont Tourism. Groups are completing projects along the lines of ABC Books, video advertisements, educational posters that could be found at Vermont Informational Stops or Rest Areas, a children’s book about Vermont, or even a brochure. Students seem really excited about this project and are taking a variety of routes to complete it. I’m really excited to see the final outcome! We’ll be working on this all next week.

Week of December 2

REPORT CARDS:  1st trimester report cards and a folder of student work are coming home today.  Please empty all materials from folders and envelopes and return!   

Dear Voyager Families,

Voyager has over $4,700 worth of field trips and house activities planned throughout the year.  In addition, we just received a grant from FAP to purchase 60 copies of, “A Young People’s History of the United States”.  This translates into more than $55 of FAP per Voyager student.

Team Building at Oakledge $1,480

Team Building at Sandbar $915

Adams Orchard $215

Rokeby Museum $510

Flynn Theater- Aladdin and the Arabian Nights $1,000

Miscellaneous House Activities (house play) $600

60 copies of history book $840

This money is not included in the regular school budget.  In past years we would have asked for several small checks throughout the year to cover the cost of all activities.  For the last three years field trips and activities have been paid for though FAP by your once a year, tax deductible, contribution to the Williston Schools Annual Fund (formerly Williston Wins).  Voyager is currently at a 31% participation rate for Annual Fund contributions this year.  Your $45 per student contribution, in addition to some funds we receive from dance proceeds, will cover the cost of your child for all activities we have planned above.  If you haven’t made a contribution yet, please click here to continue on-line or fill out the form and send in a check through Katie Fieldsend.  

Thank you!

Voyager Family Night and Talent Show at WCS - Tuesday, December 10th, 6:30 - 8:30 pm!

Voyager Family Night and Talent show at WCS is a wonderful gathering where students and families of Voyager get together to share snacks and conversation in the cafeteria, then move to the auditorium to share some fun open-mike performances.  Students can sign up for a performance spot with Ms. Quatt if they are interested. In the past, performances have included small-group singing/dance, poetry recital, playing a song on the piano, reading a short story, demonstrating magic tricks or a guitar performance.  It is a fun family night and great way to meet all the awesome kids and families who are part of the Voyager community.

There is a suggested $10 donation at the door -- at the end of the evening we will hold a door raffle of prizes that include movie tickets, pizza gift cards and other fun family gifts.  This is a major fundraising opportunity for the house, so if you are feeling generous, please make any-sized donation you'd like!  The money will go directly towards the end-of-year field trip fund for all students.  This fund will greatly reduce the amount asked of parents to pay for the field trip.

We do ask that families bring a small snack to share, based on the core class your child is in.  This year, Mr. Merrill and Ms. O'Brien's class are asked to bring 'savory snacks' which should be hand-held.  We do not have access to the kitchen, so everything must be 'ready' and 'easy to eat.'  We will have plates and napkins, but no knives or forks.  Ms. Wesnak and Ms. Quatt's class are asked to bring 'sweet snacks' or hand-held deserts.

Here is a link to the Voyager wiki where you can sign up!

http://voyagerfap.wikispaces.com/

We look forward to seeing you there!!!!

Voyager FAP

CHARITY CHALLENGE

The Charity Challenge is the week of December 9th and is an extension of our Peace One Day school wide unit. Each Upper House grade will compete to raise money for selected charities.

Charities include Williston Food Shelf, Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, and COTS.  Discussions around charities and giving will occur at the House level.   Each house will need 4 volunteers for one day of the challenge.  Voyager House is looking for 4 volunteers to help out with the charity challenge on Thursday, December 12 from 12:30 - 1:10 (during the 5-8 lunch time).  

Volunteer Responsibilities

• Supervise the table and buckets as people donate money in the cafeteria and total money collected.
• Coins will need to be taken to a bank and turned into cash
• IT IS IMPORTANT TO KEEP EACH GRADE SEPARATE

• Return money, by grade, to the house TA

• NEFCU does not charge to count coins if a person has an account

Please contact Mr. Merrill (amerrill@cssu.org) if  you would be willing to help out on Thursday, December 12 from 12:30 - 1:10.

Thanks!

Mr. Merrill’s ⅚ Humanities Wrap Up

This week we continued our study of Westward Expansion.  Mini lessons using power points, informational text, primary resources, and video on Mountain Men, Pioneers, The Gold Rush, Trail of Tears, and the Transcontinental Railroad will be taught over the next two weeks in preparation for a writing assignment on the Westward Movement.  Students are expected to understand the motivation, problems and results for each of the mini lessons.   

A new round of literature groups started this week.  Students are mixed in 5th-8th groups.  We are reading classic short stories and picture books aloud and students will use these books and story ideas to write their own creative versions of the stories.

Ms. Q’s Corner

CMP8

This week we began a new book called “Looking for Pythagoras”.  We practiced finding areas of closed figures using what we know about squares and triangles.  We investigated the relationship between the area of a square and its side length.  We practiced estimating the value of square and cube roots between two whole numbers.

CMP7

This week we explored the relationship between scale factor, perimeter and area of  triangles and rectangles.  Students began to use their understanding of similar figures and scale factor to find unknown side lengths of triangles and rectangles.  

Science 7th/8th

We completed watching and taking notes from student’s Educreation, Haiku Deck and Google  presentations on geological topics.  We investigated the rock cycle in greater detail during our “Rock” lab by observing the three main groups of rocks: Igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary. Students compared the characteristics and composition of each rock group.  We moved onto a lab on Mineral identification.  Students performed streak, acid, scratch and density tests on the mineral samples.  With our observations and  information, we used a dichotomous key to figure out what minerals we had.  

The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room:

7/8 Humanities

This week began just like any other with a morning of independent reading and an afternoon of catching up on current events. As the week continued on our mornings were filled with grammar work, specifically around sentences and sentence structure. We started off the week by learning about sentence variety, and as the week went on we started dissecting sentences and diagraming sentences. We did this by breaking the sentence apart and identifying the subject, verb, adjective, and adverb. We did this with sentences found in children’s books, our own writing, and just simple sentences. This work is really allowing students to put a magnifying glass to their own writing and focus on how they structure their sentences. They’re also able to try their hand at editing, and are becoming great self-editors. Students are asking themselves: Is this a complete sentence? What am I trying to say, and are my words being conveyed correctly? What type of sentence is this, and is it grammatically correct? This sentence work is going to come in handy with our new mini-unit in Social Studies. We’re coming out of our global unit and moving into our next large unit on 20th Century history. To build the bridge between these two units, we are asking ourselves: How has Vermont made an impact on our world and/or our history? Students are focusing on people, places, products, or historical events that have made Vermont famous outside of just our home state. Some topics include the Von Trapp Family, Burton Snowboards, John Deere, the Battle of Bennington, and the Local Food Movement/Farm to Table Movement. This is allowing our class to learn a bit about our own history, while still connecting it to the bigger picture. We are still in the research stage of this project, and so far students are overwhelmed with how much has come from Vermont and impacted the world outside of our small state! A few students have even said, “I am so proud of our little state!”.

News from Ms. O

Math 5:  We spent this week making new discoveries about geometry!  We looked at properties of polygons, discovered generalizations about the area of triangles based on understandings of rectangles, and learned about angles, what they represent and the different kinds of angles.  We will take these baseline understandings to dig deeper into geometry.

We took a practice speed assessment today for the x 6, 7 and 8 facts. It was not a very productive meet!  We will continue to work on this kind of skill, as it will be important that we improve automaticity of these facts, often the ones that students do not remember.  Please continue to practice math facts at home for speed.  Knowing them and knowing them fast are different skills that require a great deal of practice.

Math 6:  Sixth graders have been working specifically on seminar style learning this week.  We held 3 seminars two in Kiva and one standing to try and make more intimate our math talk.  Seminars allow us to pollinate ideas quickly which can help move the group along and it increases accountability because you ask students to talk and talk and talk.  Our talk this week has been about fractions and decimals.  Some of this work is review, but takes these ideas to the deepest level, a depth that might be new to students.  We have been cutting up pans of lasagna (ridiculous) and using them to understand decimals.

Folders were not completely filled this week to send home.  There is a pile of unfiled things.  Please send folder back and we will fill and send Monday.  It was a rush!

Science 5/6:  It has been an exciting week.  We began our week learning about magnets by engaging in a 6 station circus doing focused learning about the properties of magnets.  We had a scientist meeting to talk about claims students have about magnets and then did some reading about them.  Today, we made a magnet straw motor.  Students used their understanding of opposing pole to force the straw motor into motion.  It was fun!  We are moving on to circuits and then electromagnets.  Thanks to Dan Fleming, a retired electrical engineer of 31 years, has been in our classroom every day bringing his engineering expertise and helping me stay on my toes.  He is really great!