Monday, March 31, 2014

Week of March 24


Hi Amazing Voyager Families!
Thanks to all who made Saturday's Recycle Sale a great success!  
We've made $ 1,900.81
Voyager is an amazing community of kids and parents who work together to deliver results!   This will GREATLY reduce the cost of the year-end field trip for EVERY student in the house.
We can't even begin to thank individuals...the wiki was exploding with volunteers.  The kids were awesome...some worked ALL day selling bakes goods, helping shoppers carry things to their car, cleaning up.  Everyone really went the extra mile to make this fundraiser great.  
Thanks to all who brought merchandise in, tagged it Friday night, baked cupcakes, worked shifts, cleaned up and brought the left-overs to the Good Will!
I'm in awe every day as to how strong our Voyager community is.  Great Kids, Great Parents!
Thank you!!!!!
Voyager FAP


Ms. Jess
Summer is coming... “I THINK”!

Ms. Q's Corner
CMP8- This week our 8th grade mathematicians took the standard form of a quadratic equation and transformed it into the vertex form.  Students used the method called "completing the square" in order to create this form of equation.  The vertex form allows you to see the vertex point of a parabola which is an important graphing landmark.  The quadratic equation was also introduced as a means to find the roots of a quadratic function.  With our smaller sub group of 8th graders, we are practicing the distributive property and factoring in order to solve linear equations.  
CMP7- This week our 7th grade mathematicians began balancing algebraic equations using visual and symbolic models.  We discovered the system of pouches and gold coins in the Kingdom of Monterak.  This exercise allowed students to discover the number of coins in a pouch based on equalities.  This investigation was  similar to our use of the I-pad program "Hands-on Equations", where students balance pons and numbers on each side of a balance to find out the actual worth of the pon.
Science 7th/8th- We completed watching the BBC video on Genetic Disorders.  We went on to read about how genetic disorders are passed on from generation to generation and we learned about disorders that are sex-linked traits.  In order to understand the effect of diseases on the human body, we reviewed what we know about the different body systems and how they work together to keep us healthy.
5th and 6th grade Humanities
This week groups of 5th and 6th graders finished researching their chosen cultures.  Each group had to research the geography, demographics, tradition, art and music, folktales, languages, current events, and religion/beliefs.  Each group had to create a poster with pictures for each aspect along with captions.  Groups ended their research with a presentation in the Kiva to their peers.  After their presentations two guest speakers came in with examples of Thai food.  The guest speakers included Thai exchange teacher Apple and my mother, Wilwon Claughton.  The purpose of the guest speakers was for students to understand how people keep their traditions even away from culture. Having two thai guests reinforced the learning that students had over the past two weeks as they have been learning about the aspects that make up traditions through the Thai and US cultures as examples.  
Next week we will be starting an interdisciplinary unit, the topic will be water.  We will be learning the craft of argument writing, writing an argument piece on issues concerning water, debating, and learning about natural resources and phyiscal geography.  We read a picture book titled “Hey, Little Ant”, which lead into our first lesson on argument writing.  Ask your student about the book.
The Week in Ms.Wesnak’s Room
7/8 Humanities: This week in Humanities students started off with our regular Independent Reading Monday and Current Events in the afternoon. Current Events time always includes watching CNN Student News, having a class discussion, reading a debate topic in Junior Scholastic, and concluding with a whole class debate on the topic. As the week continued on students finished up their work on their Historical Fiction Narrative Projects by finishing up set design, creating props, and practicing their lines. The final outcomes were great! Students performed some wonderful historical fiction plays that followed a plot triangle and had well developed characters. Students really embraced the time period that their narrative took place in by using names, phrases, and clothing that were current at the time. These plays were not only fun to watch but informative! During our PM time together we started digging into the geography of the United States by beginning with the basics. We are starting with the regions, states, and capitals of our country. The two regions we are focusing on now are the Northeast and South. Students will have a quiz on the states and capitals included in these regions on Tuesday, April 1st. Students are encouraged to study with flash cards, the blank maps that were provided to them in class, or by using the geography games that can be found on my website under “Helpful Links”. Hope everyone has a great weekend, and hope to see some of you at the Recycle Sale!
A few notes from Ms. Sherman-
Do you have a child that struggles to get their work completed, stay organized, or needs more assistance to complete homework? This is a reminder that Voyager house has a homework club that meets on Mondays and Wednesdays from 3:00-4:25. If transportation is a concern, not a problem. WCS provides an after school activity bus that leaves from the front of the building at 4:30. The homework club is supervised by Elizabeth Percy, one of our fabulous house paraprofessionals, but regularly teachers are also available for extra help and further instruction in all content areas.
Lost and Found- With winter hopefully ending soon, Voyager has noticed an increased amount of personal belongings hanging out in the halls and around the house. Every Friday we will lay out these “lost” items in the KIVA and ask students to take a look for their personal items. At the end of the day, we will bring the belongings to the main lost and found, located at the front lobby.

The Week in Ms. O’s
***Important Note about Science Project:  This Project is due April 7.  I recognize that we are all busy at home and don’t want to put the pressure on, but please ask your child how things are going on their project.  We have been doing this work full time in class, but it always helps to be working at home too.  Thanks for all the help you provide your child.
Math 5:  Student have been working with Greatest Common Factor and Least Common Multiple this week, in terms of comparing fractions and simplifying them.  This is another attempt to address fluency.  Please check with your child about independent work on FASTT math and Kahn Academy.
Math 6:  We have been having fun with food labels and the mean.  We have entered some pretty sophisticated investigations using quartiles and identifying the IQR, the Interquartile range.  This summary statistic helps students to understand variability in data.  The book goes into some pretty detailed explanations and tasks. My plan is to simplify this a bit, as this material came from Samples and Populations, a CMP 2 8th grade book.  I think we are digging at the meat of the concept, so they will get what they need to meet the Common Core standard.  We are heading into a brief decimal computation unit and then on to Algebra.

Friday, March 21, 2014

Our Video Conference with Dr. Mark Fleming, MD, PhD Boston Children's Hospital


Week of March 17


Important Information and Events

  • Report Cards went home this week- please sign and return report card envelope!

  • Variety Show - TONIGHT!! - 7pm in WCS Auditorium- Tickets $6 each

  • Pie Sale Fundraiser happening now!!  Adams Farm Market Pies are being sold for $15 each- large variety, sale ends Thursday, March 27th and pies will be available for pick-up at Adams Market in April

  • Voyager Recycle Sale is Saturday, March 29th 9am-3pm-  Drop-off items Friday, the 28th, from 6-8pm  Volunteers are still needed to help the day of the sale  http://voyagerfap.wikispaces.com/home

Mr. Merrill’s ⅚ Humanities Wrap Up
This week class is being taught by UVM intern June Claughton for her two weeklong solo unit on cultures.  Students have been learning about the importance of culture in the 21st century as well as the various aspects that make up culture.  Students will  be placed in groups that will be responsible for researching a different country’s culture and create a poster and presentation on the poster.  To help students learn the aspects that make up a culture they have been looking at two different ones in class, the first being American and the second is Thai with the help of Apple the Thai exchange teacher at Williston Central School this year.
Ms. Q’s Corner
CMP7
How can you tell if there is a linear relationship in a table, equation or graph?  What does the coefficient and “y” intercept mean in the context of day-to day situations?  Students investigated ways to form equations from tables and created tables and graphs from equations.  Students ended the week with a “Moving Straight Ahead” check-up.  

CMP8
This week we continued to translate and reflect families of functions.  We looked for graphing “land marks” from different forms of quadratic equations and investigated the vertex form.  Students completed a “Partner Quiz” and we had a little fun with oreo eating!

Science 7th/8th
The big news this week was the Engineering Challenge Day on March 18th. Having started last week, our 7th/8th grade teams designed, built, tested and redesigned solutions to the engineering problems.  Students from all over the school competed with rubber band cars, ziplines, moon landers and marshmallow flingers.  Voyager students performed well in the competition and brought home many laurels.   
    The winners included:
    1st place in Rubber Band Car:Hanna S., Morgan B.,Lucien T.,Riley F.
    1st place in Lander: Lydia K., Doug S., Natalie D., Brayden B.
    1st place in Marshmallow Flinger: Eli H., Raf R., Grace G.
    2nd place in Zipline: Kris K., Justin S., Halina V.,Geneva C.
    3rd place in Zipline: Jaden R., Jessica G., Nathalie P., Graham S.

It was an exciting event and all of our students deserve kudos for a job well done.  Lab reports on our engineering tasks were passed in on Friday.  Next week we venture back into Biology with our study of genetic disorders.



The Week in Ms.Wesnak’s Room
Humanities 7/8: This week for Humanities has been a week of wrap-up activities. For our AM time together Monday started with independent reading and some character comparison work using Venn diagrams. Our afternoon has been dedicated to work on the engineering tasks, and on Tuesday we certainly showcased our work well!! On Tuesday while students were not competing in the engineering day, they were on house working on a variety of items. 7th graders rotated through global current event learning stations in the morning by watching CNN Student News, reading Jr. Scholastic articles, and working on a puzzle that was a map of our world. Most of the puzzle pieces were in the shape of countries or regions, so this was a nice kick-off to our geography unit. In the afternoon 7th graders did work with creating plot triangles and making connections to our 20th Century History BIG question: How does the written word change our perspective of history and light the path to our global future? 8th graders were given the day to work on their 8th Grade Challenge projects. All of them were able to get a lot of work done by either working on their writing component, reserving space for their community connections, or even building their presentations. As the week continued on and we celebrated our winnings from the engineering day, we got back into our routine. During our morning time together we completed some journal writes, and worked on our historical fiction narratives. In the afternoon we brought our work on the Cold War to a close by playing Cold War Jeopardy. Students created their own questions for the game board, and the competition was quite heated! Friday wrapped up with a check-in and work time for our narrative project, while the afternoon class was used to launch into our final unit of study: Geography!

WCS Outdoor Learning Classroom

   Hello, my name is Lucien Theriault and for my 8th Grade Challenge I will be building an outdoor classroom for the students of Williston Central School.

   I am designing a project to incorporate my love of nature and a focus on education. I will work to build an outdoor classroom for the community. As part of this project I have created questions relating to my topic, specifically about connecting education with nature and how learning outside can enhance a child’s mood, and comprehension of the lesson being taught. My community connection is building the outdoor learning environment and making it welcome, accessible and useful for all. The learning space will be within walking distance from the school and have seats around a blackboard.

   In order for me to purchase the necessary materials for this project, I will need to raise $250. A donation of any amount will help create this outdoor classroom to be used by students and teachers for years to come!

   If you would like to donate to my project please ask Lucien, in Ms.Wesnak’s core for a donation page. Thank you very much.

The Week in Ms O’s
The iPads were out this week!  It was like teaching a completely different group of students!  They were quiet, engaged and resourceful.  Not for every day, not forever, but what a nice change...like the first day of spring!

Math 5:  We began our new unit this week after an early week assessment.  This unit, Unit 6, is a continuation of Unit 4 work on division and fractions.  We used Educreations on the iPads to model problem solving situations and made sense of the relationship between division and fractions.

Math 6:  We are deep in data!  Numbers everywhere.  We analyzed some of our snack foods this week for sugar content in grams.  Some interesting summary statistics came out of this including just the immense amount of sugar that is in our food! We also tackled the big question of measures of middle: mode, median, and mean.  What are they, how do you calculate them and when do you use them?  We recognized that range is a big deal when it comes to deciding what measure of middle to use in a given situation.  We talked about clusters, gaps, range of variability, and outliers.  We had a quick quiz today on our work thus far.

Science ⅚

On Tuesday, students had a chance to talk with the Chief of Pediatric Pathology at Boston Children’s Hospital via Skype.  It was amazing...we were able to see actual slides on his microscope in his office, normal and otherwise.  He talked about cells, blood diseases and other amazing things.  What a privilege to have a connection to the outside world.

We began a deep investigation of cells, tissues, organs, and organ systems this week with brief overviews of levels of complexity (cell to tissue to organ to organ systems to organisms), and the launch of an independent project on the human body.  Please ask to see your child’s packet and ask about the calendar of due dates, which is important for you to see.  I will get that all up on Jupiter grades Monday (some of it needs to be scanned).  Students have a choice of projects:

  • A virtual climb of Mt. Everest
  • A dissection of a cow or pig organ
  • A cooking show
  • Engineering of a prosthetic
  • Engineering of a anti-concussion helmet
  • An interview of a specialist in the disease field

Students select a project, then by default a body system or two. Once researched students will do a hands-on project while video taping the process.  Then they will use iMovie to make a 5 minute video of their process.

This project honors individuality, independence, each person to work at their own pace.  It is also multi-modal (reading, research, hands-on, technology), a format I hope interests students.  Please please ask them about daily and weekly due dates.  I have included a calendar and will post those due dates on Jupiter Grades.


Tuesday, March 11, 2014

March 11, 2014

Important Voyager FAP Information

A BIG thank you to our amazing Voyager parent community for their support of the Voyager-sponsored dance!  Chaperones, awesome snacks and drinks, fun Mardi Gras gear and Mardi Gras Manicures (super shout-out to Debbie Rutherford for pulling that fun activity together!)  We raised $630 that will go directly into the field trip fund.  Our mantra for the field trip is that we want it to be FREE for ALL kids, so each event we support with a bit of time and smaller donations makes a huge impact and helps us amplify our dollars in a big way!

NEXT UP -- in three short weeks, our BIGGEST Fundraiser of the year -- The Voyager Recycle SALE!!!! Saturday, March 29th, 9-3. In an effort to streamline the commitment from each family, we've set up the event in shifts so that no one needs to work for more than 2 hours...that is IT!  Our goal is to raise $2,000!

Here is the sign-up wiki.  For new parents, the event is simple: it is a giant indoor garage sale.  Friday night, we collect goods to sell the following day in the WCS cafeteria.  Goods range from books, records, CD's, household goods (dishes, plates, cups, decorative items, rugs, furniture -- anything you'd like to donate that is in good enough shape to be used again,) sports goods, toys, puzzles, games, clothing (clean and gently used - no sheets or undergarments - kids and adult jeans are a huge hit,) working electronics, art, etc.!  A group of parents organizes goods, prices them and sets up tables for the sale.  Saturday morning, a team of parents run the sale throughout the day and at the end of the day, leftovers are donated to the Good Will.  The event is a great way for kids to be involved too, so there is a food concession that kids can run (baked goods.)


We need everyone's help in spreading the word.  I've attached a flyer that can be posted in your workplace, e-mailed to friends and family and shared on your social media platforms.  I will place an ad in the Burlington Free press and have the event listed in local newspaper and TV community calendars.  We'll also post to Front Porch Forum and Craig's list.   The beauty of this event is that it attracts people from all over Chittenden County, so we are not 'tapping' into our own pockets - we are providing a great service and fun shopping experience.  It is a win-win for the whole community!

Please take some time to gather your donations and sign-up for a spot to help!  If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail Ann Schmidt at apechaver@yahoo.com

Thank you!
Voyager FAPhttps://lh5.googleusercontent.com/MKxQTECdEpZCsnYsrfs_1nz51kgXiDfK4M5GBBKTLIZ_TaORt3JQOLW4N15bE_Gzcr09GVEUoTVRvPgtox4XcC408AXHqo30Lv37-S8sJ4HaeK4avFyIdu6uaok-Hw

Adam’s Farm Market Pie Sale Fundraiser
Voyager students will be selling delicious Adams Farm Market pies for $15.00 each.  There is a large selection of 10 inch fruit pies to choose from and you can pick up the pies yourself at Adams Farm Market.  Money is due when the order is placed and all orders can be sent in to Katie Fieldsend.  This fundraiser runs through March 27th and pies can be picked up April 17th and 18th from 10-5.  Students will receive order forms in school Tuesday!

Voyager 5-8 Spring Field Trip
Camp Abnaki - June 2 - 4
We are pleased to announce that our spring field trip will be a 5th-8th grade, three day, 2 night experience at Camp Abnaki, in North Hero, VT.  The site will provide a wonderful outdoor location for activities that are connected to Environmental Science, Language Arts, Personal Development, and Reasoning and Problem Solving standards and goals.  More information will be sent out later in the spring.

Big Basket Raffle
Collections for the 14th Annual Big Basket Raffle and Silent Auction are underway!  This is one of FAP’s biggest fundraisers of the year, with proceeds funding FAP programs that support all WCS and ABS students, families and staff.  Items donated by our Williston School District families will be made into beautiful themed baskets that will be raffled off at the BIG BASKET RAFFLE on Saturday, April 12, 2014.
We ask each family to donate one (or more) item(s) that relate to your class theme:
Ms. Wesnak- Teen Time
Ms. Quatt- Let’s Get Fit
Ms. O’Brien- Best of Boston
Mr. Merrill- Fondue Fun

Ms. Q’s Corner
CMP7 and CMP8
Due to the play unit, we had an abridged math class.  Our 7th grade students reviewed ratios, proportions and began looking at the meaning of slope.  In 8th grade we reviewed function notation and explored parent functions and their translations.

7th/8th Science:
We introduced our engineering task and students began working with their groups.  Next week we will have double science periods to design, build, test and redesign our cars, space landers, marshmallow projectiles and ziplines.  March 18th is the school wide engineering  competition, and Voyager students will be  competing for the “bragging rights” of best design for the task.

The Week in Voyager 5- 8 Humanities….Brought to you by Olivia, Halina, Natalie, and Davis!

Words From Our Student Directors: The Voyager play unit has come to an end. As you have probably heard from your tired cast or crew member, this week was a little hectic. There were difficulties with sound, headsets and set changes, but we all came through and performed a great show! We would like to thank all those who participated in the production, whether cast, crew or staff. Aside from the bumps in the road, we all put so much hard work into making this play be “audience-ready” and a great success! Though Tuesday and Wednesday were a little stressful with full dress rehearsals and working with sets for the first time, Thursday’s productions were absolutely fantastic. It was truly an amazing experience to see our creation come to life and we thank you all for supporting Voyager in this process!

Words From Our Stage Managers: This week was performance week, and we all managed to get back from vacation and  get on track right away. Our lines were memorized, the red curtain was fixed and blocking was finalized, we were well on our way to being fully prepared for the show. There wasn’t a single person involved that wasn’t nervous, but that was natural. The nerves were good.
Before each of our performances, we warmed up together in the auditorium. One of the most important warmups was when we gathered together in a circle around the auditorium. We all held hands with the people next to us, and sent out a “heartbeat” pulse around to everyone. The warm up showed that without cooperation from even just one person, things wouldn’t be able to be accomplished. We needed everyone in the room, all of Voyager house, to pull this play off. Every person was essential to this production. Now that we have completed all of our performances, we can see that things have definitely come together.  We’ve come so far together as a house, and it’s going to be hard to say goodbye to it all.

The Week in Ms. O’s

Getting back to some regularity in our schedule, we set math goals this week related to Habits of Mind and Interaction.  Students have chosen one of four areas to focus:  Habits of Interaction, particularly the commitment to share thinking with dyad partner, Make Sense of My Thinking and the Thinking of Others (what is the same, what is different, does the thinking make sense based on what I know), Justifying (how do I show and explain my work so others can understand, how do I use models to explain my thinking) and Generalizing (what patterns do I notice, what conjectures can I make about the structure and regularity of the math, can my conjecture be generalized to all cases).  

Math next week...6th Graders should bring in a snack for a data analysis project on food.  If it can be an extra snack beyond the usual that would be great.  We will be using it to learn more about data and how to use data to make decisions.

Science:  We have a big independent project coming soon and wanted to give you a heads up.  Students will have the choice to:  virtually climb Mt. Everest, make a meal for your family, interview a doctor about disease, dissect a sheep or pig organ, build a prosthetic, or build a helmet in order to fulfill the goals of the project.  Students will be using iMovie as a tool to share their learning with others.  We will also have class time dedicated to this work.  We will choose these projects relatively early in the week as we investigate onion, cheek, and other kinds of cells.  This project is due, April 4th.  All documents will be shared with students and then with you!