TA’s Notes:
***Please do not send in any food to be shared among Voyager students***
Grades 5-8 Curriculum Night, Learning Expo & Parent Assembly
Thursday, Sept. 22nd
- 6:30 - 7:00 PM Parent Assembly in Auditorium (Jump Rope & PLPs)
- 7:00-8:00 PM Curriculum presentations on house
- 8:00 - 8:30 PM Learning Expo in lobby and dining room
SPARK Enrichment After School ~ Session I
The first session of Spark Enrichment, an after-school applied learning program for students in grades 5-8, starts September 15th and ends October 13th. These small group classes will be facilitated by school faculty and staff. Please access the link to the sign-up form below by September 13th.
Continental Math League information as well as the registration link went in the School Bell last week. Click here for the registration link. Click here for the informational article that is in the School Bell.
Homework Club
The Voyager House Homework Club will be starting soon. Homework Club allows students to stay after to complete work with teacher help. We will announce to students and post the starting date in the Voice once we have the after-school teachers ready to go.
Google Classroom "Summaries for Guardians"
As many of you know, Voyager teachers will now be posting all assignments on Google Classroom, whether or not they are turned in by hand or on paper. We now have the ability to provide parents and guardians with Google Classroom updates! You can choose to receive either daily or weekly e-mail summaries of your child's assignments and whether or not any assignments are owed. You may also opt out of e-mail updates if you wish. We will be sending out invitations next week. When we do so, you will receive an e-mail from Google Classroom prompting you for your preferences. See further details and an example summary here.
Intergen Reading Program / A Monthly Book Group
What is it? FAP teams up with the Dorothy Alling Memorial Library to sponsor a fun book group that brings together WCS middle school students, seniors from our community and parent volunteers. Each book group will read and discuss 6 books over the course of the school year. When? The program will kick-off in October with a “Get Acquainted” luncheon. The book groups will then meet during school hours once a month to discuss books in a relaxed and fun setting. If your 5th-8th grade child is interested in being considered for this program, please register by Wednesday, September 14th using this online link.
WiSH
The WCS Leadership Committee completed work to minimize schedule interruptions and the implementation of the early release day on Tuesdays, the following changes will happen for the WiSH program:
- Students will not sign up for "WiSH" activities through a school counselor.
- Student participation in being a teacher/classroom helper will now be a part of a student's PLP, specifically a personal goal. This will enable core teachers to better manage which students can participate and miss time from classes, monitor progress, and allow students a formal way to provide some reflection on their work.
- Participation and work assignments will be made during their PLP advisory time with their core teacher.
- Students will continue to initiate work placements with elementary classroom teachers on their own.
- Their will not be transportation to ABS due to the early release day on Tuesdays and not wanting students to miss additional school time.
Welcome to Voyager Interns! Here is an introduction from Mr. Menke and Mr. Maika!
Dean Menke is an intern with Colleen O’Brien as he works for his teaching license for 5th-12th grade Science and Math. He comes to the classroom with over 20 years of experience in successful and rewarding careers as an engineer, environmental advocate, and baker. After living overseas in East Timor and Tonga, Dean and his wife Patti moved to Vermont to experience ‘the good life’ of the Green Mountains. They now enjoy their little slice of paradise with their son, Henry, on the Huntington River. He and his family love to travel. When at home, they enjoy gardening, beekeeping, raising ducks and chickens, biking, skiing, and being outside for any reason. Dean is most excited about engaging kids with hands-on, experiential opportunities...hopefully outside.
David Maika is Aron Merrill’s intern for grades 5 and 6 Social Studies. He is in the MAT program at UVM working towards licensure in Middle Level Social Studies. He has studied History at the University of Hawaii for 7 years specializing in Pacific and European History. Born and raised in Hawaii David met his wife Sarah (born and raised in Hinesburg) in a glass-blowing class at the University of Hawaii. They now live in Hinesburg. David looks forward to working under Aron this year and learning all he can. He is also very excited to be working with the 5th and 6th graders of Voyager House!
The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):
We prepared some of our classroom materials this week. Students labeled binder dividers, turned spiral notebooks into a reading response notebook, and transformed a composition book into a writer’s notebook which they used to complete their first free write.
We also started our first book - A Long Walk to Water. A theme that we will be exploring in the book is government and the role it plays in our lives. Students sketched the cover of the book into their response notebooks and completed some sentence starters. They also did a quick outline map of Africa and South Sudan and made a list of new vocabulary words from the book. We then thought about and talked about government, defined democracy and noted that we would be comparing our government to the situation in Sudan. We read the first chapter of the book and will be continuing our read aloud on Monday during Reading Cafe.
The Week in Ms. O’s Room (⅚ Math & Science):
Math 5 and 6: 5th and 6th graders did some math growth mindset work this week care of a great online learning system called You Cubed. Click here if you are interested in the youcubed website: https://www.youcubed.org/ . Specifically we worked on how the brain learns and grows and then we together worked through three problems: The first was a DOT pattern; The second was a hailstone sequence of numbers ; the third was a painted cube. Kids learned about just how amazing they are as individuals and as a group when we shared strategies for the solutions. Students are building great habits of interaction, by working on their own, then talking about their thinking with others, and then presenting ideas in front of the group. This is hard to do, but most everyone has contributed out loud this week!
⅚ Science: We began our Energy, Ecology and Us unit this week by reflecting back on the work done by 6th graders this summer. 6th Graders were asked to take some photos of mathematical patterns in nature so that we could investigate those patterns our first weeks of school. In addition we looked at photographs of bee hives, wind erosion patterns in sands, and peacock feathers as a way to ask the question, why are things in nature the way they are? Patterns, it turns out, are critical for mating, survival, and function, among other things, and this was a new discovery for us! (As an aside, we even learned what seeds are, a total mystery to the groups!). This conversation allowed us to learn a little about how we will be using science notebooks and reasoning publicly in class, in the form of scientists’ meetings. As we focus in on plants in the early part of the unit, we will learn a little more about patterns in nature. In preparation for an engineering task later this month, we planted grass. Not so exciting, but it will lead to some great engineering discussions when we build and test green roof systems later on...
The Week in Mr. G’s Room (⅞ Humanities):
We had a great first week of academics. We started instituting our class routines: independent reading, and class discussion. We discussed the recent controversy around Colin Kaepernick. Students read different opinions on the topic and were able to voice their own conclusions in a respectful way. We began our Civics unit with readings on the composition of the Constitution and began preparing for a series of role play debates on natural rights and state power. We also took time to do a Degrees of Reading Power assessment.
The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):
CMP 7 and 8th
This week we began with setting up “norms’ for our classroom. This included reviewing how effective dyads work, how to keep a respectful and math-focused class, and organizing math journals and binders. We also continued our work with Jo Boaler’s Week of Math. Jo Boaler is a Stanford professor who has done a lot of research on the brain and math performance. Her big take away in a “nutshell” is that no one is born with a math brain, everyone can do math, mistakes help the brain grow, and when you believe in yourself, you can do anything. We worked on some challenging problems, watched some fun videos and had great discussions. We also signed into Google Classroom where all of our work related material will be housed.
7/8 Science
Science began with talking about what an effective class looks like and sounds like. We set up our science binders and journals, reviewed what we are studying this year, and set up our Google Classroom. We began with a series of demonstration experiments. Students were asked to make accurate observations and come up with questions about what they saw. We ended the class with a physics reading and strategies to leave tracks. Next week we begin our new physics unit!
No comments:
Post a Comment