TA’s Notes:
***Please do not send in any food to be shared among Voyager students***
Book & Media Collection
Voyager House will be organizing the book and media sale at this year's Craft Fair, Nov. 7th.
Please consider donating:
- Gently used best sellers or decent books (no textbooks or dated ‘travel’ books)
- Children's chapter and picture books
- Music CD's
- Movie DVD's
Items can be dropped off in Voyager’s Project Room or bins at WCS & ABS
Any questions, please contact Katie Fieldsend at KFieldsend@cssu.org
Save the Date: Wednesday, December 9th- Voyager Family Night 6-8pm
FAP UPDATE
The FAP Advisory Council held its first monthly meeting of this school year on October 8th. FAP is Williston's equivalent of a parent-teacher organization. We meet each month, our meetings our open to all, and you will receive an email like this every month with highlights of the meeting and a link to the FAP website for the full minutes. Check the full minutes in a PDF format by clicking HERE. Below are a few meeting highlights:
Administration Report: Greg Marino, our District Principal, talked about communication strategies for our schools, including Facebook and Twitter, about SBAC results which families of current 4th-8th graders should have received in the mail in the last 10 days and the exciting new Disk Golf Course. Please check the full minutes for more information on these topics.
Williston Annual Fund: This fund pays for your children's school field trips, among other educational items. Current donations total $10, 328, which is less than one-third of our target. So PLEASE SEND IN YOUR DONATION TODAY or you can do it online by clicking HERE.
Educational Grants: FAP approved nearly $7,500 in educational grants for enhanced learning activities in our Williston Schools. Please check out the full minutes for more information on this.
24th Annual Craft Fair at Williston Central School -- Saturday, November 7th, 9:30 am to 4:00 pm: This first big FAP fundraiser is attended by hundreds of area residents. We welcome back both crafters who come year after year and many new crafters this year. AND the Media/Book Sale is back, sponsored by Voyager House! We also need your help with this event; opportunities to help SET UP, HELP CRAFTERS UNPACK VEHICLES, AND HELP SERVE FOOD TO CRAFTERS. WE ALSO NEED HELP IN THE KITCHEN THIS YEAR!! Please CLICK HERE if you can donate an hour or two of your time to this event. THANK YOU!
Scholastic Book Fair in the Williston Central School Dining Room — Monday, November 9th-Friday, November 13th: Look for more information on this important school fundraiser in the School Bell. This event needs parent help too! Whether you want to help set up, clean up or help with sales in 2 hour shifts during the week, whatever time you can dedicate is appreciated. Here is the SIGN UP LINK.
Parent Presentation: How to Understand and Reduce Anxiety in Children with Dr. Paul Foxman, Ph.D., Tuesday, November 10th from 6:30 – 8:00 in the WCS Auditorium: Join us for an evening with psychologist and anxiety expert, Dr. Paul Foxman, Ph.D., Founder and Director of the Center for Anxiety Disorders in Vermont, and author of The Worried Child and Dancing with Fear. Dr. Foxman will help parents learn: How, why and when anxiety develops in children: The different forms of anxiety; What parents can do to reduce stress and anxiety; and When and how to refer for professional help. If you need additional information about this event, please contact Chris Ford, WCS Guidance Counselor at cford@cssu.org.
Our next meeting is on Thursday, November 12th at 8:15 am at Williston Central School. We hope you can attend!!!
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
Students worked really hard on their LEAF Constructed Responses this week. The question - what are the characteristics of a hero? Is Malala a hero? Defend your answer. We dug deep into our Reading Response Notebooks for evidence from our read aloud of the book I Am Malala. Students brainstormed characteristics of a hero and matched those characteristics up with Malala’s actions for the evidence of their paper. We also worked on including a well connected lead, analysis, and a finisher. Self/peer assessments using a LEAF rubric, followed by self/peer editing were the final components of our drafting process.
Our field trip to the Grand Isle Fish Hatchery was a great way for us to kick off our Trout in the Classroom project. We learned about each stage of the process which we will be doing once our eggs arrive in January on a smaller scale.
Students also had a chance to watch the ⅞ Model United Nations debates. Students represented countries and debated current hot topics. The ⅚ students enjoyed watching and were asked to take a stand on the topic being debated.
Also, ask your student about the country coordinates competition and finding exact location!
The Week in Ms O's Room:
The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
Due to our incredible students being extremely dedicated to their Model United Nations debates, we do not have any “Tweet the Week” statements, but here is an overview of our classes.
During our morning classes we have been getting started on our class literature groups and beginning our Global unit! For our literature groups, 8th graders are reading “The Day of the Pelican” by Katherine Paterson, and our 7th graders have just started “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins. Both classes will be focusing on themes of social justice and social injustices. 8th graders have already read 100 pages in “The Day of the Pelican” and completed a written response to their reading. Students have also been following a character of their choice and keeping track of their actions, emotions, and personal choices. Based on the notes students took in their books for their reading, we began creating character maps to represent their character of study. During the rest of our classes we have been talking about informational writing. What does it mean to write an informational piece? What are some forms or types of informational writing? Where can informational writing be found? These are just some of the questions we have been tackling in class. To answer these questions we have been digging into informational texts to see what makes them different from other pieces of texts. We have also found that informational writing includes a lot of facts and data, so we have been practicing our note-taking skills and discussing note-taking strategies. Students practiced their note-taking skills by watching the global adventure of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and discussing its connection to our unit and its big themes. Students have also been practicing taking notes on informational videos and nonfiction text by taking part in a postcard unit using a program through Scholastic called Global Trek. Through the program students have been able to “travel” around the world exploring different countries of their choice and building information postcards. These postcards will be on display during our Global Village in November.
Our afternoon classes have been extremely focused on researching and building arguments for our Model United Nations debate. I have been SO impressed with the level of dedication, professional attitudes and behaviors, and the overall high level of preparedness from our 7th and 8th grade community. Their arguments and debates have been clear, concrete, creative, supported, and strong. Their voices have been confident and they have been quoting statistics, data, historical evidence, and using current events to help build arguments and create resolutions. We are extremely proud of all of their hard work! Enjoy the photos!
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP7
The last two weeks students have been concluding the geometry unit Shapes and Designs. We created a class record that captured our understanding of the properties of polygons. We played an exciting game of jeopardy and then completed the Shapes and Designs Unit test. Our next area of study is positive and negative integers. We investigated our number system by defining different sets of real numbers which include, natural, whole, integers, rational, and irrational numbers. This puts us in a great place for exploring positive and negative numbers and mathematical operations which utilize them
CMP8
After completing the Thinking with Mathematical Models Unit Test, we took a pause to review Order of Operations and exponent rules. Being more familiar with exponents is very helpful while learning about and working with exponential functions. We investigated math problems with voting ballots and a fictional reward scheme using rubas. (Kingdom of Montarek’s currency) We explored exponential functions through graphs, tables and equations. We began to formulate ideas around growth factor and patterns in a table and graph.
Science 7th/8th
The 7th/8th graders having been working hard to grasp how cells allow materials in and out of their semi-permeable membranes. We did several experiments around diffusion and osmosis. We had a very smelly situation in my classroom as we timed how long it took for each student to smell our Mango Passion air freshener. We were able to see a linear trend in time and distance from the source. We also discussed how scent diffuses from higher to lower concentration. We shifted this idea to our Gummy Bear lab. In this exploration we utilized a gummi bear as a model for a cell and placed it into several different solutions; salt water, sugar water and plain water. We found that different solutions caused water to enter and to leave the Gummy bear, just as water leaves and enters the cell through a process called osmosis. We finished the week with a quick overview of cell division. Using stained onion tip cells we searched for different stages of mitosis. Students reviewed in Google Classroom a unit overview for the upcoming test on Wednesday.
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