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.
Planners have been ordered for all Voyager students and we are hoping they will be in soon!
Dates to Know:
- Wed, Sept 20th- WCS Picture Day (order forms were put in cubbies!)
- Wed, Sept 27th- Grades 5-8 Curriculum Night, Learning Expo & Parent Assembly
6:30pm - 7:00pm Parent Assembly in Auditorium
7:00pm - 8:00pm Curriculum presentations on house
8:00pm - 8:30pm Learning Expo in lobby & dining room
- Tue, Oct 3rd- Walking Field Trip to Adams Apple Orchard. Permission slip HERE
Please have your student turn into to teacher or TA or email back to KFieldsend@cvsdvt.org
- Fri, Oct 27th- Voyager Harvest Breakfast Open House 7:45 - 8:45am in Voyager
House. Come see various works students have created on display.
- Wed, Dec 6th- Voyager Family Night / Variety Show 6 - 8pm at WCS in Dining Room & Auditorium
SPARK Enrichment After School Session 1
We are excited to offer your child an opportunity to participate in Spark Enrichment, an after-school applied learning program for students in grades 5-8. Sessions will run for 5 weeks from 3:00 p.m - 4:30 p.m. with our 1st session starting September 21st and ending October 19th. These small group classes will be facilitated by school faculty and staff. Students will have the opportunity to participate in a variety of activities that can be found on the link below. Every student who registers will be assigned to one of their three choices. No one is turned away from Spark! Students are informed of the workshop they will be attending the day prior to the start of the session via their house TA. In order to take full advantage of this learning opportunity, students will need to make a commitment to attend all five Thursdays. If your child decides to not take part in this session after having registered please contact Julie Rogers so that others may fill the spot. The after-school activity bus will provide transportation home for students in need of a ride home.
Students will be placed on a first come first serve basis. Sign-up form and a listing of workshop descriptions. Contact Julie Rogers (jrogers@cvsdvt.org) with any questions.
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
We started the week with our first Reading Cafe. Students read a selected book independently for 30 minutes and created a book list template in their Reading Response Notebooks. For our first current events mini lesson, we watched CNN 10 Student News and discussed the recent hurricanes and the anniversary of 9/11.
Our Peace One Day unit work included an introduction to a number of well known peacemakers and some reading to identify their accomplishments and special qualities.
We also did a choral reading of and watched the “I Have a Dream” speech. We will be using this speech as inspiration for our own dream of peace poetry next week.
Students should now have access to Google Classroom, Typing Club, and Digital Passport/Compass. Typing Club assignments will be posted on Google Classroom and the “Digital” programs are to be completed as part of our work on digital citizenship.
Be sure to ask your student about the two assemblies we had this week. Here are some links to the speakers.
Chris Waddell
http://one-revolution.org/nametags
http://one-revolution.org/nametags
Jared Campbell
Also, don’t forget to consider signing your student up for the intergen reading program - see the School Bell for information.
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
Math 5: Students have had a great start to the school year! We began our first unit this week, building models, looking for patterns, and practicing our multiplication.
Specifically we:
- Played the Product Game. Students used factor lists and offensive and defensive strategies to find products on the gameboard. To win, a student needed to get four products in a row. We reviewed the definitions for factor and product.
- Made number associations with multiplication facts. How can we see relationships between numbers so we can use those relationships to find products we do not know?
- Built models for multiplication using the scenario, Brad’s Baseball Shop. Brad wants to start a business selling baseballs (huh??), and has to consider how he will ship his orders. We built models for those orders by considering how to build rectangular prism boxes. We identified dimensions of possible boxes, and then saw that those dimensions would allow us to find all the factors of that number (the number of baseballs we were trying to box). More to come with Brad’s Baseball Shop!
Math 6: Students began their first book in the Connected Math Program for the year, Comparing Bits and Pieces. This book intentionally moves students to ratio thinking. Highlights from the week included:
- Tackling a fundraising problem, in which students have to justify comparative statements about the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade fundraising goals. Those comparative statements were made by students in the book who were thinking in addition and in multiplication.
- Defining ratio and beginning to see that multiplicative reasoning is necessary for understanding ratios.
- Looking at the relationships between fraction thermometers for fundraisers and what we can say when one line on one fundraising bar matches up with one line on the other fundraising bar. That’s ratio thinking!
- Building our own fraction thermometers and relating ratios to fractions.
⅚ Science:
What a week! We were busy this week finishing up our Food System models in an attempt to model/represent how our food gets from field to plate. In doing this, we also followed the resources (energy) and money required to support a food system, whether local or global. Some interesting patterns arose. Global food systems are expensive and resource intensive! I then asked, what could interrupt our food system? This led us to make meaning of our food systems when there are interruptions like, lack of money, lack of roads, isolation of villages, ater issues, wars, and natural disasters. More food system work to come!
Simultaneous to this learning about food systems, we began a peek into issues of hunger. Why veer from food systems to hunger? Students will begin to deconstruct their food system models to see if interruptions they have identified could lead to hunger. Does war in a country cause increased hunger issues? Can a rural village’s lack of roads to the rest of the country, cut them off from food access? There is a lot to learn here! Thus the Hunger Banquet. Ask your child about our Oxfam sponsored Hunger Banquet. There is a lot of reflection to be had from that experience.
Friday, we put together our Globe greenhouse, donated from Gardener’s Supply (Thanks Deb Miuccio!) and dug up the ground for our pilot greens plot. This growing adventure this fall will be our first experience growing food for donation to the Williston Food Shelf. We will soon be designing a hoophouse and writing a grant proposal for funding with Lauren Davis and Sarah Healy. If funded we will have a great building project for the spring, a permanent hoophouse for the school garden and a production line for fresh food for the Williston Food Shelf.
The Week in Mr. Roof’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
This week was quite busy in ELA and Social Studies. In ELA, we continued our strong work developing and maintaining our independent reading habits. Students are asked to read one hour per day. It is a lot, and we recognize that not everyone is there yet. We are trying to give at least 30mins/day at school, between class time and core time. Students are asked to read outside of school as well. This link helps independent reading become a habit instead of a chore. Please encourage this practice. Students complete a weekly reading log to help them set goals, track their reading, and work on vocabulary and grammar. We also began work on student Personal Learning Plans (PLP), specifically the About Me section. Ask your student about this engaging work so far.
In Social Studies, we are focused on the global event Peace Day, which is held on September 21st of each year. We have watched a video, held class discussions, and completed some writing to explore this rich, deeply rewarding topic. In addition, both classes had discussions regarding our amazing assemblies this week in which we heard powerful, motivating messages from Paralympian Chris Waddell and singer-songwriter Jared Campbell.
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP8 and CMP7
This week both the 7th and 8th graders explored 2-D figures for area and 3-D figures for surface area, volume and flat patterns. We looked at the formula for the area of triangles, quadrilaterals, trapezoids and circles and how they are derived. For example, the area of a trapezoid is, ( A=b1 + b22h). By inverting a trapezoid, you create a parallelogram which can be solved by b h and then you divide it in half to find the area of the single trapezoid.
http://virtualnerd.com
We finished out the week exploring cylinders and calculating surface area, volume and how to create flat patterns. Next week we begin our Popsi Challenge design engineering project! 7th and 8th graders will compete to create a drink container that holds 360 ml, and has the least surface area, is easily stackable and aesthetically pleasing. Stayed tuned for the excitement!
Science 7th/8th
We began our chemistry unit with the exploration of physical properties of matter, specifically density. Dr Massa Volumnae sent a top secret box of solids. Within one solid was a secret weapon. An inside operative was able to get out the clue....2.7. Students worked methodically to calculate the density and volume of the solids to find the solid. Voyager student scientists were able to locate the solid (aluminum which has a density of 2.7 g/ml) and save mankind! Phew! At the end of the week we explored the density of fluids and students took a “Check-up” on their science reading.
