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!
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