TA’s Notes:
***Please do not send in any food to be shared among Voyager students***
**April 9th, at 9am at the WCS track Caydance, Kayla, and Amelia are hosting a run for everyone to help Breast Cancer. It is 5$ to get in, that money will be going to the National Breast Cancer Foundation, in order to help find a cure/vaccine for Breast Cancer. Thanks!**
Hello Voyager House!!!
Below you will find the Highlights from the FAP meeting held last Thursday 3/10/15.
PLUS...don't forget, the Voyager Recycle Sale is coming up Saturday March 26th. There are plenty of volunteer slots available still. The link to volunteer is in The Voice http://wcsvoyagervoice.blogspot.com/ , Any amount of time will help. Now is the time to get some early Spring cleaning done and bring it on down to the Sale :) Donation drop-off is from 6-8pm March 25th
Thanks,
Amy
FAPAC March 2016 Meeting Highlights Information
To: Voyager Parents, Teachers and TA
From: Amy Armstrong, FAPAC Representative
The FAP Advisory Council held its monthly meeting on March 10th. 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:
FAPAC Meeting Recording
The March FAPAC meeting was recorded and is available at this LINK online.
Administration Report: Greg Marino reminded the group that the Safety Committee is preparing for relocation drills planned for both ABS and WCS this spring. Parents have received a letter via the School Bell entitled, Parents Expectations During a School Emergency. This letter is intended to provided families with important information in advance of an emergency situation. Local emergency responders, including Williston Fire and Rescue, Williston PD, and the VT State Police will participate in these upcoming drills. Parents will receive a connect5 automated call on the morning of the drills to let them know that a drill is taking place and to inform them that, in the event of a real emergency, other important information would be included in the message. If you have any questions or concerns about this drill, please contact Greg Marino: gmarino@cssu.org.
Student Services
The thorough and thoughtful student classroom placement process begins in early April. Parent input forms will be sent out on April 1st with a return request date of April 15th.
Upcoming Big Basket Raffle
This year’s Big Basket Raffle fundraiser is scheduled for Saturday, April 2nd! Classroom Baskets are now in place for family donations. Here is the LINK to the list of baskets. There are opportunities to help before the event, during the event, and to donate a food item. Some opportunities are “One and Done” type of needs, with just an hour or two of commitment and no prep work. Please follow this LINK to Big Basket Raffle volunteer sign-up to help with this event.
Kid’s Fun Night
Kid’s Fun Night, for children grades K-6th, takes place on April 2nd (6:00pm-8:30pm) and coincides with the Big Basket Raffle. Please follow this LINK to pre-register your child(ren) and receive the pre-registration discount: $8 per child or $15 per family. Prices at the door are $10 per child/$20 per family. Hot dogs and snacks are available for purchase at Fun Night. This is an evening of supervised fun for children and a great way for you to attend the adult-only Big Basket Raffle or to have a few hours to yourself!
Our next meeting is on Thursday, April 14th at 8:15 am at Williston Central School. We hope you can attend!!!
Please contact me at amyarmstrong@hotmail.com if you have feedback or questions on FAP. Thanks.
After school with Ms. Sherman:
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
We continued our study of slavery and the Underground Railroad by starting a Mission US game called “Flight to Freedom”. This is an interactive online history game. Before we played - we started with a Google Form activity on the myths and misunderstandings of this topic. An important concept for this game is cause and effect. Students will take action (cause) and will have consequences (effect) for their actions. We looked at some real life and historical scenarios of resistance in U.S. History and discussed the events, causes, and effects of these forms of resistance (ex. Boston Tea Party, NYC Draft Riots, Suffrage Movement, Worker’s Rights, Civil Rights, and current protests). We reviewed some important vocabulary and completed a primary resource activity on Slave quarters. Each part of the game will start with a primary source activity and a review of essential vocabulary. After playing each part, students will complete a reading and vocabulary comprehension activity and complete a journal entry. You can see this game and the educational resources by searching for Mission US.
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
Math 5: More exploration in geometry. Students are building understandings of how to name a point on a coordinate grid and put that to use when graphing growing cube patterns. Because geometry has a very specific language, it is imperative that students build this visual and spatial language continuously. Lots of exposure to different kinds of triangles and quadrilaterals.
Math 6: The focus of our week has been on triangles. We began the week looking at misconceptions of triangles in terms of perimeter. Students discovered that the diagonal sides of a triangle are hard to measure on a piece of grid paper, thus beginning the process of early Pythagoras thinking. The legs of a triangle, or the base in the case of a non right triangle can be more easily measured if those triangles are placed on a piece of graph paper. See example below for a visual.
The rest of our week focused on area of a triangle and strategies to find area. We spent several lessons talking about subdividing and enclosing triangles, important in the sense that it digs at the algorithm ½ b h (the area of a triangle algorithm). These discussions were really productive!
Science ⅚: Students spent the bulk of their week researching for the human body project. Reminder that the presentation evening is March 31st beginning at 4:30 for those schedule at this time slot. Please ask your kiddo when they are presenting. I will confirm these times with you as we creep closer.
The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
This week flew by!
During our morning classes we started the week off with independent reading and a quick reading response. As the week continued on we participated in 2 days of creative journal writes. Our journal prompts ranged from story starters and narrative writing, to informational responses, to argument pieces. These fun and creative writing prompts were partnered with videos and discussions, mimicking what could be similar to our Performance Task for our SBAC testing. We reviewed the 3 different styles of writing and students were encouraged to recognize in their own writing how their voice or tone changed from piece to piece. On Thursday students were introduced to the Cold War and started to build their knowledge of this war that lasted over 40 years. Students were given vocabulary, readings, and some light geography and map work to complete over the next week in preparation for our Cold War project. On Friday we spent some time with the English Language Arts Practice Test for SBAC. Students had a chance to practice with some readings and questions on their own, in order to get used to the feeling and expectations around the tests. At the end of class we shared out things we noticed about the tests, and then put together a list of suggestions to find success in the test.
We started off the week in our afternoon classes with current events and a debate around whether felons should be allowed to vote. The classes were evenly split on the subject, which resulted in a lively debate! As the week went on we put our Space Race knowledge to the test with a little Jeopardy. Both classes picked the more difficult Jeopardy board, but we still had a great time! At the end of the week we created a list of all of our prior knowledge about the Cold War, and then we created a list of questions we had about the Cold War. These lists will help to guide our lessons, studies, and project ideas. We finished up the week by watching a quick BrainPOP video on the Cold War in order for all of us to be on the same page about the 5 W’s (who, what, where, when, why) of this over 40 years war.
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP7
This week we took a little walk down the hallway and recorded our walking rate for 25 meters. From there students needed to convert it to a unit rate of meters/second. With that unit rate we found out how many miles per hours we walked. Finally, we considered a 500 calorie Big Mac and how many miles we would have to walk in order to burn that burger off. For some of us it could mean walking 8+ miles. Something to consider when you're tucking into a Happy Meal. We began looking at constant rates and how we create tables, graphs and equations to extrapolate future points. We rounded off the week with SBAC practice and performance tasks.
CMP8
We learned a new form of linear equation this week called standard form that looks like Ax + By = C. We used this form to consider how many shirts(x) and caps(y) we would have to sell to earn $600 profit. If we made $5 on a shirt and $10 on a cap the equation would look like this: 5x + 10y = $600.
We created tables and graphs for this situation. The next task was practicing changing Ax + By = C back into the y = mx + b format. We had to practice a lot of our algebraic skills that were a little rusty. We finished the week with SBAC practice and performance tasks.
Science 7th/8th
We began the week with more modeling of chemical reactions with colored dots to show the reactant and the products that contain atoms, molecules, compounds and elements. We looked at how these models show the Law of Conservation of Matter. We began to take a closer look at endothermic and exothermic reactions and took time/temperature data from prepackaged heating and ice packs. We began an engineering task where students will utilize the chemicals that create exothermic and endothermic reactions, to construct, test, and modify a compact heating or cooling device that can be taken on a hiking trip deep into the woods. To find information on this engineering task,students can show you their google classroom information.
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