Week of December 19th - 22nd

TA’s Notes:

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

No School: December 23rd - January 2nd

Have a safe & happy holiday break!!

Hello Voyager Families,

I hope you are all looking forward to a fun and peaceful holiday season!  Below are the highlights from the last FAP meeting.  Please note that there is a "Speaker Series" event occurring toward the end of January.  Also, we are looking for some folks to fill slots for several of our activities including the Lake Monsters game so if you are a baseball fan, this might be the job for you!  It is not a huge amount of work and it provides a fun summer activity for our families to attend together as well as raises money for the school so if you are interested, speak up!  Also, this is the final month for donations to the  Annual Fund to be made online and this is the perfect time to make them since they are tax-deductible!  So, if you haven't already given to the Annual Fund, PLEASE consider doing so for several reasons.  First, your children have already benefitted from it several times.  Second, it is SO much easier than having to sell wrapping paper or candy bars or candles and getting a return of 15-30% of the money raised.  ALL money raised through the annual fund goes directly to your children.  Finally, it is much easier for the faculty to not have to collect money for each field trip from families so their time can be spent in better ways.  OK. End of my soap-box sermon.  I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and a happy New Year!  

-Julia Nesbit

FAPAC December 2016 Meeting Highlights Information

To:  Voyager House Parents

The FAP Advisory Council held its monthly meeting on December 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.  

You can now follow us on Facebook and Twitter (@FAP_Williston)!

Below are the meeting highlights:

FAPAC Meeting Recording

The November FAPAC meeting was recorded and is available at this link online.

FAP Annual Fund

We are in the final month for online Annual Fund.  After December 31, checks and/or cash are still welcome.  All donations are tax deductible.  We are currently down from last year at this time.   A reminder that the Annual Fund directly funds house accounts for field trips, guest speakers and other activities your child participates in.  EVERY student, in EVERY grade receives a direct benefit from the Annual Fund!

The link to donate to the Annual Fund can be found here.  Online donations will be closing at the end of December.  After December 31, checks and/or cash are still welcome.

Upcoming Events

Speaker Series: “Mindful Self-Care & Stress Reduction for Parents & Caregivers”

January 30th, 6:30 – 8:30 @ WCS Dining Room

This series will be led by Williston-based therapist, Angie Ferenc, MA LCMHC.  While parenting can be full of joy, it can also leave us feeling stressed, anxious, overwhelmed and spread thin. In this 2 hr workshop we will explore the role of stress in our lives and the negative impact it has on the mind and body.

Big Basket Raffle: March 25th @ WCS

Williston Runs for Education: May 20th

The committee is actively seeking additional people to help plan the event. Please contact kao_wolverine@yahoo.com for more info.

New FAPAC Chair Search

The FAP is searching for a new chair or co-chair at the end of this year.  Ideally the person would start “unofficially” in the next couple of months so they can attend a few meetings to see how things are run.  Stay tuned for a list of duties that the position entails.

Lake Monsters Committee Chair Search

The Lake Monsters Event is looking for a new chair.  The position involves coordinating with the Lake Monsters, getting the word out about the game, and coordinating the sales of 50/50 raffle tickets.  Please contact Shani Varricchione if you are interested.

Administration Update

Decision Packets: 4 groups voted on the decision packets that were received; the Program Council, FAPAC, WSD Board members, and WSD Administration.  The administration has sent forward 5 decision packets to the school board for budget purposes.

SBAC: The FAP reviewed the SBAC results.  One area of concern indicated by the results is a gap in the achievement between boys and girls, especially in the 3rd grade ELA.  There were also gaps with students on IEPs and socio-economically challenged students.  The administration and data teams are looking at what other measures could explain these gaps.  Our job is to shrink the performance gaps by accelerating the progress of students who are not performing as well as their peers.

#FAPAnnualFund - We want to make the Annual Fund more visible.  When Tweeting about a trip covered by this fund, please use the hashtag #FAPAnnualFund to get more visibility.

Please contact me at jnesbit938@gmail.com if you have feedback or questions on FAP.  Thanks.

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

Week of December 12th - 19th

TA’s Notes:

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

Parents welcome at all Dec 21st events!

Wednesday, Dec 21st, 7:30 - 8:15am: 7/8 Meet the Authors Open House

Wednesday, Dec 21st, 10:00 - 11:30am (time change): 5/6 Harry Potter Open House to celebrate unit: Muggle Magic Show & Filmfest

Wednesday, Dec 21st, 1:15 - 2:30: 7/8 Physics Expo

Wednesday, Dec 21st, 2:05 - 2:45: 5/6 Quidditch Match in New Gym

Muggle Magic Show and Filmfest ⅚ Voyager students

Wednesday, December 21st 10-11:50 AM

• Slytherin and Hufflepuff will present magic @ 10-10:40 and @ 10:50-11:30 a short Harry Potter film
• Ravenclaw and Gryffindor will present a short Harry Potter film @ 10-10:40 and a magic show @ 10:50-11:30.

Thank you to all the Elves that participated in this year’s Polar Express!

It was a huge success for the Vermont Children’s Trust Foundation and meant a lot to all the families who participated in the Polar Express.  Congratulations to all of our fabulous Elf Volunteers for making that day special for so many!

8th Graders:

In order for 8th graders to participate in the overnight 8th grade trip this year all forms need to be signed and turned in by December 20th along with payment.

If there is a need for a scholarship please let me know and I can help with this.

Any questions, feel free to contact me.

Thanks!

Katie

Permission Slip Form

Behavior Contract

Medical Information Form

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

Short film making: Students are working in teams to write and film an adapted screen scene from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. We are using WeVideo to make our short films. Mr. Maika taught the students some film and editing techniques to use in their films. Groups have  had to collaborate, problem solve and improvise along the way to make their final product.

We have also been working on a writing piece that compares the book to the movie. Students made long lists of differences, but had to really think about how those differences impacted the story.

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

***Dean Menke, Ms. O’Brien’s intern is finishing up his internship next week.  We have so appreciated all the work that Dean has done for us all this fall.  He has poured his heart and time into each Voyager student and we will all miss him.  His professional colleagueship will also be sorely missed.  If you have a chance, stop by and wish him well!  Good Luck Dean!  

Math 5:  Division modeling was introduced this week.  Bridges has a nice way of introducing this concept with the use of base ten pieces and linear base ten pieces.  Students revisited the structure of the rectangle while thinking about the relationships between dimensions of a rectangle and the area of the rectangle.  Students have a lot of experience with multiplying dimensions of a rectangle to get the area, but less experience when given the area of the rectangle and only one dimension (thus a division problem).  We are making these associations regularly, by looking at what we know and what we have to find out.  I had a few ahh’s yesterday when students saw the relationship between multiplication and division in the modeling.  It confirms how important the visual side of mathematics is for students. I know it is difficult for you as parents to understand what we do each day and especially how we do it.  Like all math, we eventually arrive at the algorithms and generalizations you do know and understand.  Thanks for your patience as they develop conceptual understanding.  I will be giving a unit assessment before break...I will likely break it up into parts as we review ideas Monday-Thursday next week.

Math 6:  This week we finalized our work in the last investigation by looking at 18 word problems to determine the operation/s necessary to find a solution.  We also reinforced our understandings of fact families, integrating variables into the expressions in order to find the unknown value.  For example, given the equation N x ¾ = 2 ⅔ students would need to understanding the following fact family:

N x ¾ = 2 ⅔

¾ x N = 2 ⅔

2 ⅔ ÷ N = ¾

2 ⅔ ÷ ¾ = N

We recognized that only the last equation, 2 ⅔ ÷ ¾ = N, is solvable for N.  And now students are able to see a solution strategy for that original problem, N x ¾ = 2 ⅔ .  

Today, Friday, we wrapped up the Let’s Be Rational unit, with a unit assessment.  Students have come a long way since the beginning of the unit back in early November!  And we have covered some big ideas - all operations with fractions, fraction story problems, fact families and their value in solving one step algebraic expressions, determining operations needed to solve problems.  I have been very pleased with the work ethic and stamina of this sixth grade group.  They have worked hard!  

Science ⅚:  This week has been all about planning!  Students have chosen a puzzling phenomenon to present at the Muggle Magic Show and are coming up with exciting ways to explain what is happening and why it is happening to ¾ grade students.  The Muggle Magic Show will be Wednesday morning tentatively planned for 10-11:30.  (There will be two 45 minute rotations...Slytherin and Hufflepuff will be in the first 40 minutes (10-10:40)and Ravenclaw and Gryffindor in the second 40 minute rotation 10:50-11:30).  We look forward to your audience if you can make it!  Also, on Tuesday, each small group (of which your child is a member) will present their phenomena and a small workshop to our students, as a way to share a little bit more of what they know.  We got a glimpse of this on Tuesday, during one of our group challenges.  We presented a challenge in which students took N.E.W.T. s, a series of tests of wizarding magic (actually like a science quiz) to prove their understanding of their topic area.  It was a team challenge, so they helped each other complete the NEWT specific to their topic area and for the most part each house passed!  They have a basic understanding of the science concepts for their chosen topic.  So needless to say, this week has been spent planning for that too!  Monday is a dry run practice day and pulling together materials for phenomena.  Please ask your child what he/she is doing and be sure he/she has the materials needed.

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

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

CMP8

Students completed their Growing, Growing,Growing Unit test at the beginning of the week. Students were given an opportunity to work on “4” level learning target problems on exponential growth and decay to close out this unit.   We are moving on to our new unit called “Looking for Pythagoras”.  In this investigation  we will explore the proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem through drawing squares, triangles, diagonals  and finding multiple ways to find the lengths of sides.  

CMP7

This past week we reviewed inequalities, operations with fractions, finding averages, and reviewed operations with positive and negative integers.  At the end of the week students retook assessment questions where they did not meet the target. They were also given the opportunity to work on “4” level learning target questions related to operations that utilize positive and negative integers.

Science 7th/8th

Students are finishing up their project work for our Physics Expo that will take place on Wednesday, December 21st.  Students are practicing with their models, making sure that their written material is accessible to our audience and preparing to field questions from the audience.  It has been very busy!

Week of December 5th - 9th

TA’s Notes:

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

What holiday gift to get for you student?  Pencils!!!  Many students are short on pencils and could use a resupply.

Great job to all Voyager students who participated in our Voyager Family Night Variety Show!!  

Thank you to the families who donated yummy treats & drinks and fabulous door prizes!!  Fun was had by all!!

Dates to Remember:

Sunday, Dec. 11th, 11:30am - 4:00pm: Polar Express Elves (for those who signed up- email with details to follow soon)

Parents welcome at all Dec 21st events!

Wednesday, Dec 21st, 7:30 - 8:15am: 7/8 Meet the Authors Open House

Wednesday, Dec 21st, 9:30 - 11:50am: 5/6 Harry Potter Open House to celebrate unit Wednesday, Dec 21st, 1:15 - 2:30: 7/8 Physics Expo

Wednesday, Dec 21st, 2:05 - 2:45: 5/6 Quidditch Match in New Gym

No School: Fri, Dec 23rd - Mon, Jan 2nd

A Plea for Voyager House:  Hello all wonderful Voyager families….sadly, our Keurig coffee maker has pretty much quit on us. We are wondering if anyone out there has one that is not in use or is about to be perhaps upgraded? If this sounds like you, would you kindly consider sending your gently used version our way so we can stay sufficiently caffeinated through the school day and beyond. Thank you in advance!

~Ms. Sherman on behalf of all Voyager staff.

P.S. I look forward to seeing all your shining faces at our Voyager night on Wednesday as well as those that will be helping out at the Polar Express!

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

Students worked in Literature Circles this week to wrap up our reading of Harry Potter. Students took on roles (Summarizer, Discussion Director, Word Wizard, Connector, Researcher, and Literary Luminary) and ownership of the discussion, holding each other accountable to share their work and participate in this student led activity.  We also continued our script writing work, preparing for our final project. Students will be selecting a part of the book to turn into a screenplay and create their own short film.

To end the week, we watched the Harry Potter movie and will be comparing the book to the movie next week. The House Cup competition is still very close. We have awarded over 500 individual points for collaboration, problem solving, and on task work over the past two weeks. That is amazing engagement!

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

Math 5:  We are working so hard on decimals.  The noticings are fantastic.  Students have forever been using the traditional algorithm for adding and subtracting, but it has never been more obvious than when operating on decimals.  Some 5th graders sighed an, “Ohhhh, I see it,” when we had more than 9 tenths and needed to trade for a one, or had more than 9 hundredths and needed to trade for a tenth.  It was hilarious and another good reminder that understanding place value is a big part of math!  The portal for Jumprope will soon be open, so expect to see quiz and test scores reported there.  Also, Aron and I would like to promise all work will be home on the 22nd, so that you can spend your holiday break reviewing assessments, wink wink!  Just an early present from us!  In the future, I will send all assessments home once they are reported on Jumprope.  This way you can compare what you see to the scores on the portal.  This may put your mind at ease.  I’ve been so pleased with the commitment students have made to private reasoning time and turn and talk.  I will start to put these kinds of habit scores on Jumprope, as a biweekly collaboration scores so that you can see how those scores are derived.  Quiz on Wednesday and then continuing on with more decimals.

Math 6:  This week we arrived at the algorithm for division of fractions.  I’m constantly in awe of the ways that we get to these generalizable algorithms or rules that are true all the time for a given math idea.  They discover it on their own, with no hint from me!  Yes, we have learned about the rule you all know, dividing by a number is the same as multiplying by the reciprocal.  This tends to snag many students.  I get flipping of the first number instead of the second, and then flipping on multiplication.  Watch for these errors on homework and help them correct!  We will spend the next few days working on fact families and how we know when to add, subtract, multiply, and divide in story problems.  

Science ⅚

Reading and research:  Wow what a wonderful skill they are learning.  I was so pleased with the quiet reading and practice on two column notetaking.

Development of a Public Record:  We combined topic groups and then came to a common understanding about the topics.  For example, for students studying light energy, we all agreed that light travels in straight lines.  This will help them when they go to explain the phenomenon they have chosen to present.

Introduction to Anchoring Phenomenon:  Our new way of teaching is to give students a puzzling phenomenon that they must explain, often over the course of several days or weeks. Coaches (Mr Menke, Dan the Engineer, and Ms. O) introduced students to some cool phenomenon so that they can then try to figure out what is happening and present them to you and ¾ students.  By the way...this open house style Muggle Magic Show will be between 9:30-11:50 on the 21st.  More details to follow...

The Week from Mr. G's Room:

It was a close vote and a heated debate, but in the end the proposal to begin revising novels right away narrowly defeated the option to wait for January by 5 votes. As a result, students will be working together to edit and revise their work this month leading up to our Authors Breakfast presentation on Dec. 21st.

This week we shared our first rough drafts with each other and started getting feedback for revisions. In current events, we discussed the Dakota Access Pipeline.

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

CMP8

Students made a quick study of exponential decay and its similarity with growth.  Through our investigation into water cooling we found a decay curve of “best fit” and developed an equation from the table.  We completed our unit with a review and jeopardy game.  The Growing, Growing,Growing assessment began on Friday.

CMP7

This week we have been muscling through order of operation or (PEMDAS) for short.  In 7th grade the equations become far more complicated and require students to pull from previous understanding of fractions, exponents, and integers.  We created a class record on all the major concepts from Accentuate the Negative and presented them.  We played a rousing game of jeopardy and began our assessment on Friday.

 

Science 7th/8th

We are in the midst of researching our essential questions for our physics exposition.  Students are finding great demonstrations, creating visuals and working to understand the concepts behind their physics topic.  The challenge for all is to make their work accessible to a younger audience (3rd-4th graders).  Next week we will be pulling all the pieces together and presenting in front of the class for feedback.  Students are also being assessed this week on their engagement and collaboration.

Week of November 28-December 2

TA’s Notes:

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

Dates to Remember:

Friday, Dec 2nd, 7pm: 6th - 8th graders are invited to Shelburne Community School Dance (permission slip attached and were handed out to students)

Wednesday, Dec. 7th: Voyager Family Night in Voyager Kiva & WCS Auditorium

Sunday, Dec. 11th, 11:30am - 4:00pm: Polar Express Elves (for those who signed up- email with details to follow soon)

Parents welcome at all Dec 21st events!

Wednesday, Dec 21st, 7:30 - 8:15am: 7/8 Meet the Authors Open House

Wednesday, Dec 21st, 9:30 - 11:50am: 5/6 Harry Potter Open House to celebrate unit Wednesday, Dec 21st, 1:15 - 2:30: 7/8 Physics Expo

Wednesday, Dec 21st, 2:05 - 2:45: 5/6 Quidditch Match in New Gym

No School: Fri, Dec 23rd - Mon, Jan 2nd

A HUGE thank you to all the ⅚ parents who helped make our “Harry Potter” learning spaces a big success!!

Voyager's Annual Family Night and Talent Show - December 7th, 6 - 8pm!!

It's that time of year again for Voyager Family Night!

We will have snacks first in Voyager's Kiva, then go to the auditorium for some fun and open-mike performances.

Students can sign up for a performance spot with Ms. Fieldsend if they are interested.

Throughout the evening raffle prizes are awarded as a fun way to celebrate the night.

We do ask that families to please donate a raffle prize or bring a small snack to share, based on the core class your child is in.  Such prizes in the past have been movie tickets, gift cards or any sort of small treat.

Sign up sheet is here: Voyager Family Night Sign Up

​

Please park & enter at the back of school near the Cafeteria.

We look forward to seeing you all the night of December 7th!

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

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Unit Highlights:

• Sorting Ceremony - Students were magically placed in houses using our sorting hat. Houses work together to earn points throughout the unit to win the House Cup.
• Students can earn individual points for their house by displaying awesome collaboration and problem solving skills and by completing tasks.
• House Challenges - There were 4 house challenges this week: Harry Potter Trivia, Jelly Bean Jar, Human Knot, and Harry Potter Characters Wheel of Fortune.
• Harry Potter Character Meet and Greet - students dressed up as a character and had to meet and socialize with at least 10 other characters (while being “in character”)
• Screen writing: We learned how stories are told in a visual way. We used very simple stories with a crisis to model each of these important building blocks - characters, setting, dialogue, and action. Students then wrote their own stories. We also analyzed a short film (Jacob Frey - The Present - https://youtu.be/96kI8Mp1uOU ) and created our own visual story boards to map out the setting, characters, crisis, climax, and resolution. Students will be working in teams to write their own script and create their own short film by the end of the unit.

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

What an awesome week!  I’ve had so much fun, yes, FUN!  Thanks to all who helped to make this magical experience at Hogwarts happen. Everything the kids say and do each day had been powerful learning and you can just tell that the motivation to learn is bubbling up!

Math 5:  Busy week of learning and events at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  We ended many classes with group challenges and points were awarded towards the House Cup Challenge, a competition of Goodness and Greatness for all four houses at Hogwarts.  Who knew that competition would help us keep kids on track!

Focus topics included:

• Understanding of the effects of multiplying by 10, 100, 100 and dividing by 10, 100, 1000.  
• Use of Base Ten pieces when representing numbers and adding and subtracting decimals.
• Deeper understanding of the place value system.
• Relationships between one place value and another in the Base Ten Number System.

Math 6: We ended many classes with group challenges and points were awarded towards the House Cup Challenge, a competition of Goodness and Greatness for all four houses at Hogwarts.  Who knew that competition would help us keep kids on track!

Focus topics included:

• A deep focus on division. See public records below.

Science ⅚:  We have begun our learning about the topics related to Harry Potter - flight,properties of changing matter, light energy, and simple machines.  We watched four video clips to launch our topic introductions.  Harry Potter learning how to fly for the first time; Harry making powerful potions, Harry receiving his Invisibility Cloak for Christmas; and Harry, Hermione, and Ron on the moving staircases on their way to the Gryffindor Common Room.

We then launched our reading and research by learning about two column notetaking.  We practiced this system for taking down details and main ideas, in that order.  The kids did a great job!

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

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

CMP8

This week we tweaked out the difference between growth factors and growth rates from exponential tables.  We learned some handy tricks to finding the growth rate from the growth factor and several methods of how to find it mathematically.   At the end of the week students worked together on a partner quiz.  Finally exponential decay was introduced by looking at mortality rates.  What if Voyager House was exposed to virus that had a 95% mortality rate?  What is the decay rate and factor in this situation. It was seriously scary!

CMP7

We explored multiplication and division of positive and negative integers, reviewed multiplication and division of mixed numbers and finished off with order of operations.  At the end of the week we completed a Partner Quiz!  Next week we will  review and complete this unit with an assessment.

Science 7th/8th

This week the 7th and 8th graders began a project that will take us through to our holiday break.  We are going to complete our Forces and Wave Interaction Unit with a Physics Exhibition.  Students will work by themselves or with a partner to create an interactive model that will capture their essential questions based on a physics topic.  Topics range from how sound travels, how light passes through materials to electromagnetic forces. Students will be researching their topics, answering their essential questions, creating visual and interactive pieces for their exhibit.  Before we open our exhibits to the public, students will present their material to the class, so that everyone is exposed to the science content.  Finally on December 21st we will have an open house at 1:30- to the end of the school day.