Week of October 16-20th

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.***

Dates to Know:

• Fri, Oct 20th- No School  Parent/Teacher/Student conferences this day

• Fri, Oct 27th- PLP Cafe Open House (formerly called the Harvest Breakfast)  7:45 - 8:45am in Voyager House.  Come interact with Voyager students and engage them in conversations about their Personalized Learning Plans (PLP’s).

• Fri, Nov 3rd- School Dance for 6th - 8th graders (Hosted by Harbor House)

• Wed, Dec 6th- Voyager Family Night / Variety Show 6 - 8pm at WCS in Dining Room & Auditorium

Williston FAP Annual Fund

Please donate to the FAP Annual Fund. This is how your student's field trips are paid for.

$45 recommended per student. Any amount helps!

Send check to Williston Central School, Williston FAP, 195 Central School Drive

Annual Families as Partners Fund Campaign Flyer

See Voyager Houses Annual Fund Progress so far: Voyager's Annual Fund Progress

Order your Yearbook!  

Yearbook Order Form

PLP CAFE and OPEN HOUSE!!!!

WE NEED YOU! COME HELP US PROMOTE THE PERSONALIZED LEARNING PROCESS!

(Information from Ms. Sherman)

Voyager will be hosting a PLP cafe/open house. Come join us in talking with students about their Personal Learning Plans, looking at their sites, and enjoying some coffee and a tasty treat. Throughout the beginning of the school year, students have been working on their PLP sites; creating goals, writing reflections, and documenting their learning. Students create goals for themselves and work with others to achieve their goals. Below is the information for the morning.

NOTE

Students should come at 7:45 if possible. Bus riding students should come straight to Voyager house on the 27th and get their PLP sites up, first thing, to share out.

What: PLP Cafe and Open House (To explore student learning through their google sites for PLP’s)

When: October 27th, 2017

Time: 7:45-8:45

Where: Voyager House

Parent Expectations: Come ready to ask a few students questions about their goals and give them feedback about their process, and enjoy a bit of social time with our Voyager Community.

Student Expectations: Come ready to share out your PLP with your parents and other adults.

Williston Families,

Save the date: The FAP Craft Show takes place on Saturday, November 4th,  from 9:30 am – 4:00 pm at Williston Central School.  There are over 100 crafters, artists and specialty food vendors participating.  You'll find lots of amazing handicrafts, toys, artwork, jewelry, decorative items and yummy foods all made by talented crafters and artists.  Whether you want to shop or not, we need YOU!  This is one of the biggest Families as Partners fundraisers, and the proceeds from the show help fund events, activities and grants that benefit all students in the Williston schools.  Please share some of your time and volunteer for a shift to set up (Friday afternoon, Nov 3) or during the show on Saturday. The sign-up link is here:http://signup.com/go/tEwkhqs  (You will need to enter your email address to sign up for a shift but will not need to set up an account with Sign-up.com).

Thank you!

Karen Olson & Paula LeBlanc

wsdcraftshow@cvsdvt.org

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

• 5th graders started reading Closed for the Season by Mary Downing Hahn and

6th graders started reading Coraline by Neil Gaiman. Our mystery and spook literature session will run until November 3rd.

• We kicked off our Geography unit with a big lesson on the 5 Themes of Geography.
• We are wrapping up our Malala argument writing this week and students are eager to take some action to support Malala’s campaign - see below.

After reading ‘I Am Malala’ we will be doing a classwide clothing drive to help support Malala’s Fund. Most of the proceeds after shipping costs go to the Malala Fund to support girls’ education projects in vulnerable communities around the world. Your student may bring in gently used and clean clothing of any size, to be sent to Schoola’s Malalafund clothing drive and fundraiser to stand #withMalala.  We will collect clothes until Wednesday, November 1st. Thanks!

Donate gently used Clothes to Malala Fund

https://vimeo.com/165252935

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

Math 5:  We wrapped up Unit 1 this week, with some review and the Post Assessment. Scores will be posted after corrections are made on Monday.  We began our new Fractions unit on Thursday with discussions about Greatest Common Factor and Least Common Multiple.  

Open Math Classroom:  Thursday, November 2 9:30-10:30!  Come join the learning if you like!

Math 6:  We made great strides this week in understanding decimal names for fractions, specifically working on long division for those fractions that cannot be easily named as 10ths and 100ths.  This is always a tricky moment because long division is already a tough skill, but then to go right into the decimal place values makes it even harder. The strategy is still the same, so it fits right into the goals for division of all numbers.  We will finish the unit working on percents and take our final assessment next week.  

Open Math Classroom:  Thursday, November 2  8:30-9:30! Come join the learning if you like!

⅚ Science:  We had a productive editing day for our infographic project, and it was great to see students take their own and others’ feedback and make good use of it.  I will be assessing those this weekend.  You should also ask your child to see the infographic they made.  They are quite good!  

Try it this weekend!  You know you want to!  

• Place an empty plastic water bottle in the freezer. Cap on please!  What happens?  
• Try to explain how the vacuum cleaner works!  Vacuum the house for your family!
• Since air puppies cannot suck or pull, then how does a straw work? Grab a milkshake and have a lively discussion!  
• Can you figure these phenomena out? Air is the key!

We also continued work on our new unit, Air, Water and Weather.  Students experienced two new phenomena, air in a soccer ball and the peppermint oil investigation.  Both demonstrations had purpose.  Driving questions this week were:  What will happen when I put 10 pumps of air into a soccer ball and why does that happen? What will happen when I put peppermint oil on a paper plate and why will that happen? Both driving questions seem pretty light on the learning, but ironically, there are many deep questions that can be asked and misconceptions that must be mythbusted!  Students learned that air is something, that it has weight.  After pumping air in, we could measure the change in mass on the scale.  Some students believe the ball would get lighter, because of the misconceptions about helium - more air makes it lighter.  We discussed why some might think the ball’s weight wouldn’t change - air is nothing.  So, the myth was busted!  Also, the question of how we smell things, isn’t one we think of often.  It really makes us think, what is in a slice of air?  We demonstrated that it took some time for the scent to travel to the students in the back. Some never smelled it. I asked, how did you smell the peppermint?  Claims were made that air moves.  This behavior becomes very important in explaining many things. We then watched a teacher model the air puppies theory.  He related air to newborn pups, in the way it behaves.  It just bumbles around.   This model helped us to see that air puppies/particles/molecules have forces when they bumble around and that those forces can make things move.  All three learning experiences are going to help us explain the crushed water bottle phenomenon and the tanker car implosion.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz95_VvTxZM

Left:  Learning modeling by viewing a model of the soccer ball phenomenon.  

Right:  Our Driving Questions board for each new phenomena we experience.

An updated student model of the crushed water bottle.

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

CMP8

This week the 8th graders have been working with the distributive property, solving multi-step algebraic equations and finding the Line of Best Fit.  On Wednesday, students took a Partner Quiz which was the first formal assessment of this term.  

CMP7

At the beginning of the week students took a brief Shapes and Designs Check-up.  Students will have the results of their check-up in their binder.  We then shifted our geometry study to triangles and quadrilaterals.  Using plastic “polystrips” students constructed triangles out of a variety of side lengths.  Some of these side lengths worked and some did not. We began to see a rule that governs which side lengths will make a triangle.  Does the same rule apply to quadrilaterals? Using our “polystrips” we created quadrilaterals that worked and found those that did not.  Students shared their findings, looked for patterns and came up with conjectures based on their evidence.  

Science 7th/8th

We began the week with looking at atoms, molecules, elements and compounds.  We used simplified models to create these structures and classified them.  Tuesday and Wednesday we experimented with chemical reactions and observed what qualifies as a chemical reaction.  We saw bubbles forming, color change, temperature change and heard fizzing.  We then created claim and evidence statements about how we could tell that a reaction was taking place.  

Our Periodic Table of Elements:

Week of October 9th - 13th

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.***

Dates to Know:

• Wed, Oct 18th- Picture Retakes!  Happening around 11:00am.  An announcement will be made to all students who need a picture retake, order forms are available in front office or requesting from Mrs. Fieldsend

• Fri, Oct 20th- No School  Parent/Teacher/Student conferences this day

• 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

NOTES FROM MS. Sherman:

HOMEWORK CLUB!!!!

Homework club has begun! Students will be supervised by Allison Cobb, our fabulous house paraprofessional. Students will be given a movement break and snack at the beginning of the session. See the information below. If you have more questions please feel free to contact me via email: csherman@cvsdvt.org.

When: Tuesdays (2:00-3:30) and Wednesday (3:00-4:30)

Where: Voyager House

Transportation: Personal Pick Up or late bus available

Given: Break and Snack

Who Should Attend: Students who have the ability to work independently at times, self-regulate their behavior with minimal reminders, and who have to ability to sustain work attention for 30-60 minutes in a period.

Notes: Some students may be requested to attend due to their need for individual assistance with work completion.

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

We finished reading I Am Malala this week. Malala’s powerful story will be the basis of our first “big” piece of writing. With our class constructed claim for our argument piece, students started pulling evidence from their notes, the book, and other sources to support the claim. We explored the difference between good, better, and best evidence (ask your student about the catamount lesson) and then students worked together in small groups to find evidence from selected pages of the book. The evidence was compiled and students put the found evidence in categories (good, better, best) and selected 3 pieces of evidence to use in their argument piece.

Students will also practice using evidence to create a google drawing poster to support Malala and her campaign for girls’ education.

Next week we will start our mystery and spook literature books and continue with our argument writing work.

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

Math 5: Students transitioned from multiplication strategies to division strategies this week.  The move was to build some understanding about the relationship between multiplication and division and to use visual models to do this!  We modeled using Base Ten pieces, as seen below, and made the relationship between the dimensions of the rectangle and the division bracket (look at the location of the numbers!).  The final assessment will be on Tuesday!  We will work tomorrow and Monday to review.

Math 6:  Students worked their way through many number line problems this week as an introduction to rational numbers. Students learned this week that only rational numbers can be placed on the number line.  Rational numbers are a set of numbers that includes whole numbers, fractions, mixed numbers, decimals and integers (+ and -).  Numbers that are not included in the rational number set are numbers that are considered non-terminating and non-repeating, like Pi.  Otherwise, we can plot them on the number line.  So who cares?  Well...when students are asked to place numbers on a number line, they must understand how big or how small a number is - know its  magnitude.  The negative side of the number line poses some challenges to generalizations that students have made for the positive side of the number line, so these conversations were rich.  We made a public record with claims about rational numbers, as seen below.  There is a lot to think about, as we decide whether these claims are true all the time or just some of the time.  

Science ⅚:  We wrapped up the Food and Farming unit this week by researching hunger in our Hunger Banquet nation.  We are using this research to design an infographic about our country.  Students are using Canva, an online graphic design program and will be presenting these on Friday.  We also began our new unit on Air, Water, and Weather.  We observed an interesting phenomenon related to air and water; we put hot water into a 2 liter bottle and capped it immediately.  We watched for about 20 minutes as the bottle imploded into itself.  We are using this phenomenon, called our anchoring phenomenon, to learn about the behavior of air and water, so that we can explain basic weather events.  There will be more active investigating in this unit and students are preparing for the demands of having materials out, using procedures, drawing models, etc.  I have collected their last science notebooks and will be providing feedback so that they know basic expectations of the science notebook for this next unit!

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

ELA:  Wow! These students are awesome. We worked hard this week to examine three short stories, and the theme of one in particular: Langston Hughes’ timeless coming of age tale Thank you, Ma’am. Students examined the plot structure and components of these stories, and participated in class discussions and read alouds. We have some talented voice artists who lent their skills to our class, so kudos to them!  Students also continued to build their independent reading and vocabulary skills, using reading log 6 as a guide.

Social Studies:

As we continue with our world cultures and religions unit, we’ve focused on the five themes of geography. This will give us a strong foundation upon which to build our knowledge of people and places around the globe. As an introduction, students are using a five themes graphic organizer to conduct brief research around a region of interest to them. This research can be used in the future if students choose, or they can pick a different region when we move on to our culture and religion projects. In addition, each Monday, we try to explore some current events. Typically, we watch CNN 10, and then focus on one story. Students are currently working on summary, and using the 5ws and 1h to help them organize the information.

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

CMP8

We began digging deeper into the meaning of, Line of Best Fit and what linear models tell us.  We looked at what slope and the y-intercept mean in the context of the problem and how to find an equation from 2 points or slope and one point.  We will be completing this unit over the next week.

CMP7

The 7th grade class explored several different methods of finding the internal sum of the angles of a polygon.  We found that dividing figures into triangles works for both irregular and regular figures, and concave and convex figures. By adding up the 180 of each triangle it allowed us to find the total sum of the angles.

We ended the week with categorizing our geometric shape sets to find figures that can tessellate/tile with no gaps and those that don’t.  We then began making tessellations that show transformation through flipping, sliding or rotating.

Here are some examples of that from MC Escher tessellations:

Rotation/turning Translation/Slide Reflection/flip

We will be finishing up these and moving onto the properties of triangles.

Science 7th/8th

This week we finished up our Periodic Table of Super Hero’s and Villains.  Students shared their work with their colleagues and then reflected on their learning.  We will be putting up the Periodic Table next week on our back wall. It was great fun hearing all the “back stories” of these interesting characters that had powers based on their element. Our periodic table will be a great addition to our classroom. We shifted our focus onto the chemical properties of elements with an exciting lab.  Using bunsen burners, strikers, nichrome wire and “unknown” elements, we placed samples of the element on the wire and placed them in the flame.  

The electrons in the elements became “excited” by being heated and jumped into a higher energy level.  Once the electrons return back to their original level it emits a color that is specific to that element.  Students compared answers to see what the mystery elements were.  This investigation gave us practice with lab safety and utilizing equipment.  Finally, we began to explore chemical reactions, what they are and how you can tell that have have taken place.  Next week we will continue our exploration of chemical reactions.

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.***

JumpRope, our online student information portal, is currently being updated. New data will be available later next week.

Dates to Know:

• Sat, Oct 7th- Fall Festival @ WCS  8:30 - 10:30am Breakfast in Cafeteria, Touch-a-Truck & crafts.  Adults $8, Students $5, Seniors $6, Under 4 Free.  Benefits Unified 8th Grade Trip

8th Graders needed!  Sign up sheet: Fall Fest Sign Up

• Tues, Oct 10th- First week of Homework Club.  Happens every Tuesday & Wednesday

• 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

NOTES FROM MS. Sherman:

HOMEWORK CLUB!!!!

Homework club will start next week! It will meet on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Students will be supervised by Allison Cobb, our fabulous house paraprofessional. Students will be given a movement break and snack at the beginning of the session. See the information below. If you have more questions please feel free to contact me via email: csherman@cvsdvt.org.

When: Tuesdays (2:00-3:30) and Wednesday (3:00-4:30)

Where: Voyager House

Transportation: Personal Pick Up or late bus available

Given: Break and Snack

Who Should Attend: Students who have the ability to work independently at times, self-regulate their behavior with minimal reminders, and who have to ability to sustain work attention for 30-60 minutes in a period.

Notes: Some students may be requested to attend due to their need for individual assistance with work completion.

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

As we continue to read “I Am Malala”, students are noticing (and making t - charts in their reading response notebooks) what life under the Taliban was like for Malala. They are also keeping track of the challenges that Malala faced and how she responded to those challenges.

Students will be making a claim and using evidence from the book to support their claim in their first argument piece. We did some small group and individual practice with these learning targets (making a claim/using evidence) this week to prepare for that writing assignment.

We also continued to work with the rich vocabulary from this book. We played “overheard conversations”, a game that requires students to work in pairs and create a conversation for 3 vocabulary words (without using the words) and have others guess which vocabulary word is being discussed.

For our current events lesson, students learned about cause and effect relationships and we used news stories to link a cause and an effect for the event.

FYI - I have data for JumpRope, but it is curently being updated for us. This data should be available later next week.

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

Math 5:  We learned new strategies for multiplication this week and practiced and practiced them through problem strings!  Students learned strategies like the over strategy, the five is half ten strategy, and the fifty is half 100 strategy.  We reviewed our collection of strategies (see pics below) and then took a quiz.  We did review quizzes today and recorded our changes in thinking, after I returned corrected quizzes and kiddos tried again.  We will move on to partial product and the traditional algorithm next week.

Math 6:  We wrapped up our learning on ratios, by discussing simplest form of a ratio (when a ratio cannot be divided any further by common factors for the numerator and denominator) and unit rate (the per one comparison statement).   Students are finding out just how valuable ratio tables are to solving problems like, if 4 noisemakers are sold for $12, then how many noisemakers can we buy for $24? Or if a dozen eggs are sold for $3.60, then how much does it cost for one egg?   In fact, I have asked many to always make one, because the visual table is so powerful. We did two very big assessment tasks this week.  First, we went over the math reflections and created a on the target standard for ourselves.  This will be posted on student PLP’s so students can go back to this standard, when they write the next math reflection.  It is a way to get kids to stretch in their writing so they see how important writing is in the math. Then, we worked on making corrections on our checkup.  We calculated the number of changes we made to our thinking as a way to prove how important a second chance is.  We will do this regularly with checkups, and less so on final assessments.   It was a great weekend.

⅚ Science:  This week we focused on finishing up our designs and polishing up our writing.  Lauren Davis and Sarah Healy were again here to add expertise to the design and writing process respectively and what a value they have been to us!  Design drawings will be included in the grant proposal and writers will be credited for their excellent efforts polishing work.  Moving on to a new unit next week!

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

English/Language Arts:

This week, we began our Narrative unit and completed our book recommendations. We now have a beautiful wall of book covers created by our students!

For our Narrative unit, we read three short stories and examined author's’ techniques and craft, as well as the elements of plot. As usual, we continued with our independent reading supported by reading log 5.

Social Studies

This week, we began our World Cultures and Religions unit. This unit will explore the concept of culture- what it is, supported by numerous examples. We will also do a survey of the world’s five major religions. Embedded within both of these concepts is Geography. This week, we looked at the five themes of geography, we introduced the extensive vocabulary that will accompany the unit, and we previewed and reflected upon the learning purposes and goals of the unit.

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

CMP8

This week the 8th graders performed experiments with paper bridges with varying thickness and length.  We used Smart Cells as weight and explored what load each bridge could hold.  We were looking for linear and non-linear trends in our data.  We practiced solving multi-step algebraic equations and reviewed three ways to find a linear equation from a table, graph and two points.  We dabbled in finding the line of best fit from a scatterplot using Smarties!

CMP7

We continued our exploration of angles and polygons with a question.  “If we can find a rule for finding the sum of the internal angles of a regular polygon, does it work for irregular polygons, both convex and concave?”  Students worked in teams to prove or disprove their thinking. Using protractors, rulers and angle rulers students argued their case.  They needed to convince their peers and the skeptics with their stellar mathematical thinking.

Science 7th/8th

Students researched their element to find out physical properties like melting point, color, density and the ability to conduct electricity.  They also researched chemical properties like reactivity in air, water and with other elements.  Students also found out about common uses and interesting facts.  All this information has helped created a back story and characteristics for their superheros and villains.   Students will be finishing up their creations and presenting them early next week.   Please see Google Classroom for project details.