Week of March 12th - 16th

TA’s Notes:

***Please do not send in any food to be shared among Voyager students***

***Please notify us if your child has strep.  Thank you for this courtesy.***

Voyager Homework Club- Tuesdays (2:00-3:30pm) and Wednesdays (3:00-4:30pm)

Dates to Know:

March 21st- 7:00pm 7th & 8th grade Spring Concert

March 22nd- Jump Rope Reports are emailed out to families (Marking end of Trimester 2)

March 23rd- No School (Parent/Student/Teacher Conference Day)  Signs ups went out already, if you do not have a time to meet with your students teacher and wish to do so please contact Katie Fieldsend at KFieldsend@cvsdvt.org or 871-6148

Recycle Sale Drop Off 6-8pm in Cafeteria:  Volunteers needed for set-up

March 24th- Voyager Recycle Sale 9am - 12 noon: Volunteers needed for sales & clean-up

Concessions can be donated as well  Sign up HERE

March 29th - Voyager ⅚ Open House: Students will have personal narratives available for a reading cafe and the human body project will be on display.  8:30-9:30am.

April 23rd- 22nd- No School (April Break)

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

Lewis and Clark: Students completed a read aloud of the book and a sequence map of the major events of the expedition. They also completed 4 journal entries as members of the Corps of Discovery.

Current Events: Jigsaw activity on a variety of articles with sharing and discussion.

Slavery: We enjoyed our trip to the Flynn theater. Freedom Train introduced Harriet Tubman, slavery, and the Underground Railroad to students in powerful play performance.

3DVT: We made a quick stop at the Isham Farm and took a tour of the barn and walked around the property. Students were warmly greeted and welcomed by Ginger and David Isham.

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

Math 5:  We had a conversation today about what it means to do your best effort the first time around.  I spent hours helping create survey ideas for each of the students but feel as though that work could have been put in by the students initially.  Please feel free to remind your kiddos, when they are doing homework at home, to put in a best first effort by following protocols and guidelines put in place in the assignment.  

Math work focused on surveys, making edits, asking numerical questions, and building a frequency table for survey responses.

We will get back to our geometry unit next week.

Math 6:  We had a conversation today about what it means to do your best effort the first time around.  I spent hours helping create survey ideas for each of the students but feel as though that work could have been put in by the students initially.  Please feel free to remind your kiddos, when they are doing homework at home, to put in a best first effort by following protocols and guidelines put in place in the assignment.   

Math work focused on surveys, making edits, asking numerical questions, and building a frequency table for survey responses.

We are going to be building algebraic reasoning beginning Monday, with our new unit, Variables and Patterns. This is an essential unit for 6th graders as they transition to 7th grade.  I will be working to help build some skills in this math domain before SBAC in April.

⅚ Science:

We had a slow science week this week!  Not as many classes due to changes in schedule and snow days.  Our two classes this week were centered around building storylines and prepping for our first of two animation videos, on the structure and function of cell parts.  The larger animation/modeling project description will be launched on Monday.

Anna and Julia, 7th graders gave a workshop on stop motion animation!  It was awesome to have them join us and educate us on their learning and expertise!

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

ELA: In English this week, we worked on reflecting and updating our academic and personal goals. We also updated our principles and values. All of this is in preparation for conferences, which are next week on Thursday and Friday, or at other individually scheduled times. We also continued our practice of independent silent reading supported by reading log 25, due Monday.

Social Studies: This week, we continued research to complete our world religions comparisons chart. We are learning what makes these religions different, similar, and what impact they have had in the world. We also had a visit on Friday from four UVM international students. They came and shared about culture and geography from their countries: India, Mongolia, and China. As usual, we also worked on current events via CNN 10 from 3/12/18.

The Week from Mr. Shepley’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):

CMP8: This week in 8th grade math, our students expanded on their understanding of symmetry. Coming back from break we have been working on transformations of congruent figures using rulers, protractors, and tracing paper - very hands on an experiential practices proving symmetry and congruence. This week, we put our rulers and protractors away and began creating rules for our transformations on the coord point grid. Students explored reflections (mirrors) and were introduced to the rules of rotations where we will be picking up next week. All this work is preparing students for their upcoming unit in quadratics.

CMP7: This week in 7th grade math, students continued their work with proportions. As a whole, our 7th grade class doing extremely well with comparing, scaling, and solving for ratios. As we progress into next week we will be turning our thinking from proportions into unit rates which will become our tools for thinking of linear equations. Students are well equipped for the road ahead.

Science 7th/8th: In science, we have investigated scales of time, change over time, the anatomy of the earth, convection currents and their role in the movement of our Earth’s crust. Last week’s activity, recreating pangea, provided the foundation for this weeks investigation of plate tectonics. Student’s investigated, and modeled the change of our continents over time and realized that the Theory of Continental Drift is incomplete - wonderful discussions of the mechanisms of plate movement were had Thursday afternoon as students connected convection currents to plate movement. Today, Friday, students modeled converging plates that create mountains. Students will be finishing their lab next week and beginning to examine weathering forces and their interconnected principles that influence our planet.

Week of Mrach 5th - 9th

TA’s Notes:

***Please do not send in any food to be shared among Voyager students***

***Please notify us if your child has strep.  Thank you for this courtesy.***

Voyager Homework Club- Tuesdays (2:00-3:30pm) and Wednesdays (3:00-4:30pm)

Annual Voyager Recycle Sale

March 24, 2018 from 9:00 -12:00 PM

Dear Voyager Parents,

It is that time of year again, when Voyager House hosts our Annual Voyager Recycle Sale, (Indoor Yard Sale) to raise money for Voyager overnight field trips.  

SIGN UP SHEET FOR RECYCLE SALE HERE

Items to Sell:  We appreciate gently-used and never-used items that you think would be someone else’s treasure!  We especially ask that you donate at least one small item (worth about $5) or one larger item (worth about $10+).  If you have something of greater value, Mr. Merrill will help to price it appropriately. That way when antique dealers come, Voyager benefits the most from that item’s worth.  The clean up can be difficult, so please follow the Goodwill guidelines for what they can accept and not accept, so that we aren’t charged for disposal. (https://www.amazinggoodwill.com/donating/donor-guidelines)

Donation Drop Off:  If you can, drop those items off on Friday, March 23rd, from 6-8 PM.  If you cannot make that drop off time, please feel free to bring those items to Katie Fieldsend’s office in the Project Room.  

Items We Need Donated to Make the Sale Successful:  Bags, boxes, sale stickers to place on items, did we say bags and boxes!  These can all be dropped off prior to the sale in Voyager Project Room.

Thanks for all you do to make Voyager a great place to learn!

Voyager Teachers

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

Reading Cafe: We are reading a book about Lewis and Clark aloud. Students are making a sequence map of important events.

PLP Reflections: Students are reflecting on their 2nd semester, writing a letter to parents that will serve as a source for our upcoming parent conferences.

Lewis and Clark: We read a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis. It contained all of the orders and expectations for the expedition. Students summarized these orders, prepared a journal cover, and started to write their first journal entries as members of the Corps of Discovery. We also watched clips from the Ken Burns series on Lewis and Clark to understand the challenges and obstacles they faced.

Permission slips went home for the ⅚ trip to the Flynn next week. Please look for it to sign and send back. Thanks!

⅚ Voyager is welcoming a new intern!

"Kevin McElroy is a graduate student at the University of Vermont who will be working with Aron Merrill's 5/6th graders for the remainder of the year. Although new to Voyager, Kevin has spent time in Williston Central School this year and is looking forward to working on the team. After gaining a BA in History from the University of Vermont in 2015, he has spent time as a historic site guide in the Adirondacks, a middle school para-educator in Newton, MA and an ESL teacher in Prague, Czech Republic, using these experiences to help improve his teaching styles and practices. In his free time, Kevin enjoys writing and playing music, snowboarding and traveling. He's looking forward to a great few months with Aron and his Voyager students!"

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

** Away at a conference the end of this week- see next week’s Voice for class update **

Math 5:

Math 6:  

⅚ Science:

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

ELA and Social Studies: This week, we began our study of world religions. We will focus on Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism, but discuss other religions as well. We will have community expert from each religion visit our class to give us more information and to answer our questions. Students are working on completing a comparison chart, using research and class materials. We examined the complex, historical city of Jerusalem, and answered questions from a reading. In addition, we worked on CNN 10 and our Independent Reading with reading log 24. The use of commas and semicolons, along with capital letters is an ongoing focus for our writing. We are also trying to improve our written responses by using more specific details.

The Week from Mr. Shepley’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):

CMP8

    This week in CMP8, students began investigations of triangle congruence and its relevance to transformations of shapes. This has been an introductory week to geometric proofs that they will, without a doubt, be encountering over the next few years in high school. Students engaged in speed dating activities to find congruent partner shapes, drawing triangles and attempting to disprove theorems, and applying their new understanding to prior proof methods of transformations. Students will be wrapping up problem set 2.3 that blends our congruent determining short cuts with shape transformations. Class records will find their place on our walls next week as student move toward completing this unit.

CMP7

    Ratios, rates, proportions, equivalent fractions, and scaling have been the name game this week. Students started the week with an investigation determining the difference in caffeine concentration between 5 common energy drinks. Students found that 5 hour energy was the highest concentration of caffeine per ounce - lots of good math discussions around this. Students continued to hone their skills of constructing, analyzing, and expressing ratios and rates from word problems. Friday morning, students did a quick lab to refresh approaches to scaling in a new context. How many drops of water fit on a penny - how can we find the number of drops for a quarter? Fun week in math, students will continue exploring proportions next week as we work toward our check up.  

Science 7th/8th

    With the launch of our Earth Science unit Monday, students spent the first few days of the week examining the scale of geologic time. This is an important perspective to conceptualize. Students converted important geologic event from billions of years ago into the more tangible units of meters, centimeters, and mm. Students found that local geologic features, such as, the green mountains, Iapetus ocean, lake vermont, glaciers, and more occurred relatively recently in the grand scheme of time - and that the presence of human beings is the analogous to the last letter, of the last word of our Earth’s timeline. Student’s engaged in an activity at the end of the day Friday, reconstructing Pangea - a concept that is launching our coursework Monday, as we investigate large scale mechanisms of change that influence our  Earth’s surface. Students completed a claim and evidence statement from this lab activity.

Week of February 19th - 23rd

TA’s Notes:

***Please do not send in any food to be shared among Voyager students***

***Please notify us if your child has strep.  Thank you for this courtesy.***

Voyager Homework Club- Tuesdays (2:00-3:30pm) and Wednesdays (3:00-4:30pm)

February Break- Feb 26th - March 2nd (No School)

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Save the Date

Annual Voyager Recycle Sale

March 24, 2018 from 9:00 -12:00 PM

Dear Voyager Parents,

It is that time of year again, when Voyager House hosts our Annual Voyager Recycle Sale, (Indoor Yard Sale) to raise money for Voyager overnight field trips.  Please take a moment over the vacation, to hunt down a few items for donation.  If every family donates at least one valuable item, this will really help defray the cost of overnight field trips for Voyager students. We will need help with setup and selling, so we will contact you in the near future for your help.

Items to Sell:  We appreciate gently-used and never-used items that you think would be someone else’s treasure!  We especially ask that you donate at least one small item (worth about $5) or one larger item (worth about $10+).  If you have something of greater value, Mr. Merrill will help to price it appropriately. That way when antique dealers come, Voyager benefits the most from that item’s worth.  The clean up can be difficult, so please follow the Goodwill guidelines for what they can accept and not accept, so that we aren’t charged for disposal.  (https://www.amazinggoodwill.com/donating/donor-guidelines)

Donation Drop Off:  If you can, drop those items off on Friday, March 23rd, from 6-8 PM.  If you cannot make that drop off time, please feel free to bring those items to Katie Fieldsend’s office in the Project Room.  

Items We Need Donated to Make the Sale Successful:  Bags, boxes, sale stickers to place on items, did we say bags and boxes!  These can all be dropped off prior to the sale in Voyager Project Room.

Thanks for all you do to make Voyager a great place to learn!

Voyager Teachers

Thursday, March 15th: Voyager ⅚ Flynn Theater and Isham Farm Field Trip

⅚ Voyager students will attend the Freedom Train performance at the Flynn Theater and then go to the Isham Farm on Oak Hill Road for a quick tour of the property and a walk on the trails. This is the house we are researching for the 3D Vermont competition (http://3dvermont.org/). Students are creating a multimedia presentation and a 3D model of the Gothic Revival house. 

Freedom Train tells the thrilling story of Harriet Tubman using dance, dialogue, and music of the period. Songs include, Follow the Drinking Gourd, Steal Away, Wade in the Water, Good News, The Chariot's A-comin', and many other still sung today. Freedom Train is the story of self-sacrifice, dedication, and survival, laced with warmth and a sense of humor that celebrates the human spirit- a universal story for all.

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

Lewis and Clark: Students used primary resources (mostly online maps from the period) to get a better understanding of what was known about the lands west of the Mississippi in 1803. They also studied the lifestyle and culture of the time period through a small group jigsaw activity. Students will pretend to be members of the Corps of Discovery as we use the journals of Lewis and Clark to experience the expedition when we return from the break.

Narrative writing: Students made a story arc of their narratives and then revised their stories to be sure they had all of the elements of a story. After typing their best version of the narrative, they also worked on elaboration and writing a strong ending. We will be wrapping up the unit with some editing activities after the break.

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

Math 5:  We had a great week (ha, right) working on graphing (they hate graphing) and starting our new unit on Geometry.  I am spending a lot of time on graphing, because it is a great way to integrate learning in science and math, but also because graphs tell stories that buckets of numbers fail to show easily.  I am pretty strict on what I expect so if you continue to see scores that show no growth, please know that instruction happens each time we graph and that your kiddo just needs more experience.  The 6th graders are just coming around, so even two years in, we are still working on it.  

Math 6:  We had a great week (ha, right) working on graphing (they hate graphing) and starting our new unit on decimal operations.  I am spending a lot of time on graphing, because it is a great way to integrate learning in science and math, but also because graphs tell stories that buckets of numbers fail to show easily.  I am pretty strict on what I expect so if you continue to see scores that show no growth, please know that instruction happens each time we graph and that your kiddo just needs more experience.  The 6th graders have shown a ton of progress these last 6 months.  I think we might be almost 100% proficient.  What a journey that has been! Whew!  I will be working briefly on decimal ops and then getting right to algebra, which I know students will see on the SBAC which is scheduled for mid-April.  I will continue to foster decimal multiplication and division throughout the Algebra unit, so that I can slowly move kiddos along.

⅚ Science:  We had our last guest speakers this week, Ann Lawrence and Sarah Kim, who gave the kids some first hand knowledge of the connection between the circulatory and respiratory systems.  A couple of kiddos were hooked up to a machine to monitor heart rate and breathing rate.  And we all saw what happens to our pulse when resting and not!  Thanks to Ann and Sarah for helping move us along in our learning.  

And...we had pretty much 100% proficiency on our Human Body system diagrams.  They love to memorize!

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

ELA:  In ELA this week, we have focused on support with the LEAF writing due for literature groups. Students were working on a prompt of walking in someone else’s shoes (Perspective), or overcoming adversity (conflict resolution). We also wrote book recommendations of our favorite independent reading from the second trimester so far, created new versions of the book covers, and shared our recommendations with each other on Friday (along with some hot cocoa). We also had our independent reading supported by reading log 23, along with our weekly grammar study on IXL.Coming up: Writing to inform.

Social Studies:  In Social Studies, we practiced speaking skills for our big presentations on world cultures. Then, the rest of the week was performing our presentations in front of the class. We used a podium, and presented in the KIVA, using the big TV for our slide shows. The students did a great job. Ask them to give you a presentation at home.!  Coming up: World Religions.

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

CMP8

How can you move geometric figures using a combination of translation, rotation and reflection? Students have worked with protractors, rulers and tracing paper to find multiple ways to show how congruent figures move through space.

What makes a figure congruent to another?  At the end of the week we explored what congruency means and ways to figure out if triangles are congruent by looking at side and angle measures.

CMP7

What is the tastiest lemon/lime soda around?  The 7th graders took data by completing a blind taste test of different sodas.  We collected data on soda preferences and created statistics that could be used to advertise the soda.  We found that 55% of our students liked Sprite, 5% like Limon-up and 40% like 7-up.  We started to look at part-to-part ratios, and part-to-whole ratios and how to take a ratio and make it into a percentage.

Science 7th/8th

This week students completed their Evolution Projects.  We had a wide variety of cartoons, videos and comics that modeled how organisms change over time. Students had the opportunity to select their own topic and elect to work alone or with another partner.  I learned some new things about evolution, adaptations and natural selection.

Week of February 5th - 9th

TA’s Notes:

***Please do not send in any food to be shared among Voyager students***

***Please notify us if your child has strep.  Thank you for this courtesy.***

Voyager Homework Club- Tuesdays (2:00-3:30pm) and Wednesdays (3:00-4:30pm)

Dates to Know:

Friday, March 23rd- Voyager Recycle Sale Set-Up

Saturday, March 24th- Voyager Recycle Sale 

THANK YOU!!!

Thank you to all who helped make the Voyager Dance & Activity Night a HUGE success!!  The dance was the biggest of the year bringing in over $600 for Voyager House alone.

Activity Night raised $1,229!!!  These funds will go directly towards Voyager field trips and are so important to our house.

A special thank you to Sydney Swindell who brought in a team of PT students that really made the difference in running the activities at Activity Night!  Our 8th graders also stepped up and did a great job running lots of stations!

All of the parent chaperones really made the night possible for us to have the two events in one night and a lot of the money earned came from concession sales, thanks to all who donated items.

Thank you to all who helped make last Friday an overall success!

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

Literature Groups - Students are in one of seven smaller reading groups led by a Voyager adult. Our common “big question” is “how does one overcome obstacles in life?” Students are collecting evidence from the book to help answer this LEAF essay question at the end of the literature group session.

Narrative Writing - The snow day cut into our writing time, so we will have to pick up the pace on this unit next week.

3D Vermont Project - Several students visited the Isham Farm house this week to measure the house for our 3D model of the home. They were treated to some great stories by David and Ginger Isham and some homemade ginger cookies. Another trip with more students will be made to the farm house in March. Students also researched the origins and history of the house which will form the basis of our multimedia presentation.

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

Math 5:  It has been two busy weeks since my last update!  It’s finally here!  The standard algorithm for multiplication!  You may now practice this strategy with your child and they won’t yell at  you that this is not the way I learned.  Some students are still learning the method, so if you want to help out with some problems at home, feel free!  

Math 6:    We have been busy building deeper understanding of area and perimeter by looking at parallelograms and other complex shapes.  Last week, we looked at floor plans for houses and tried to figure out the total number of square feet of flooring needed for the house. Students are finding that they have the concept of area and perimeter even with non-whole number dimensions, which is good practice for 7th and 8th grade that move away from whole number computation.  

⅚ Science:  Students have reading and taking notes on the human body system chosen early in the month.  I’ve been pleased with how serious the students have been about learning about his/her own system.  This week we had one human body workshop, with Cayce Ludwar (thanks CL!) to learn about the ways that exercise makes demands of the body.  Students did a workout and then talked about what systems were being impacted directly and which systems would need to be up and operational in order to allow exercise to happen at all or over the long term.  We will continue our workshop series next week!

Pictures below are from Cayce’s workshop and our Cold Climates and the Body Olympic Event!

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

ELA: This week, we worked on finding evidence to support claims. Students worked on an assignment in which they were able to choose any claim from the State of the Union address, and then find evidence to support the claim and provide analysis. If they could not find evidence that supported the claim, then they needed to rewrite the claim. This was a great current events connection with our work on informative writing using the LEAF format. We continued with reading log 21 to support our independent reading. Students also spent time working on compound sentences, subjects, and predicates. In related news, all students are in literature groups now, focusing on the theme of overcoming obstacles. Ask your child about his/her book.

SS: This week in social studies, students were engaged in the creation and design of slide-show presentations for their world culture research. Students identified the necessary components and requirements of good slide shows to accompany presentations, and then worked on public speaking expectations to meet the learning target. We also looked at CNN 10, with summary writing, focusing on the exciting launch of Space X’s Falcon Heavy.

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

CMP8

We began the week with our new book Butterflies, Pinwheels and Wallpaper.  We began the week by using rulers and  protractors to create accurate reflections of geometric figures.  We also investigated how to find the line of symmetry between a reflected image.  

We then investigated rotational symmetry and how to create figures with rotational symmetry and to find the angle of rotation.  

CMP7

Students are continuing to work on their Blow it up and Shrink it down projects. We will be finishing them up next week.

Science 7th/8th

We began the week with comparing animal embryos to see some of the common features

This along with our comparative skeletal anatomy investigation is leading us toward understanding common ancestry.  We did a reading on how life became diversified on the earth and then watched and took some notes from Brainpop on Charles Darwin, natural selection and evolution.  We finished the week as swallows in an interactive simulation of eating white winged or grey winged Peppered Moths to show how genetic mutations can be an advantage depending on environmental changes.