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!
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!
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