Voyager Voice: Week of October 15-19th

UPCOMING EVENTS, NEWS, and REMINDERS

Please visit the Voyager Web Site to keep in touch with what’s happening in Voyager this year.

Absent Student? Appointment? Change in Bus ride home? Please email tmilks@cvsdvt.org and your core teacher if your student will be absent, needs to be picked up during the day for an appointment, or will ride a different bus home. Core teacher e-mails are:

cobrien@cvsdvt.org

amerrill@cvsdvt.org

jroof@cvsdvt.org

mquatt@cvsdvt.org

5th AND 6th GRADE FIELD TRIP TO THE VERMONT STATE HOUSE

Why? - To learn about the Legislative process. Students will participate in a mock trial in the Vermont Supreme Court, and tour the Vermont History Museum
When? - Thursday, October 25th , from 8:30 to 2:30
Chaperones needed. Please contact Aron Merrill at amerrill@cvsdvt.org if you can help out and join the fun.

FUN NIGHT!

Friday, October 26th for grades K-5.

Pre-registration forms are available with the link below or the front office.

Pre-registration forms will be picked up at noon on Friday, October 26th, after that time payment will at the front door only.

Fun Night October 2018

Please do not bring in food to share. We have many food restrictions on house. Thanks!

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IMPORTANT LINKS

Student Assistant Professional (SAP) - https://spark.adobe.com/page/ssMYvqB70CDFQ/

Voyager House Learning Tools

for teachers, students, and parents

Google Site - an important site for regular communication coming from Voyager. This site will be modified weekly and should be bookmarked on your desktop or laptop. This site contains a link to weekly academic summaries as well as important upcoming events. https://sites.google.com/cvsdvt.org/voyagerhouse/home

Google Classroom - an online planner platform where students can check on daily assignments. This is in lieu of a paper planner. Just ask your child to log in using his/her email. It is important to know that this is not an assessment database. We do not check completion of the assignment on this platform. However, we do ask that YOUR CHILD press the button MARK AS DONE when an assignment is completed. This will make it easy for you and your child to discuss completion of work.

Google Mail - an email system used by Williston Central School. All students have an email account and students use it regularly to communicate with peers around collaborative work and project-based learning. This is a great way for teachers to communicate with students and a great way for students to get reminders about assignments from Google Classroom.

Jumprope - an online platform for assessment of the targets. Students can view weekly or biweekly his/her achievement on the targets by logging in using his/her email and a password. This password was emailed to each student in a letter last week. *Habits of Learning, like homework completion and collaborative learning skills will be posted on a biweekly schedule. This is where you CAN SEE whether your child is in good standing on daily assignments.https://nyc.jumpro.pe/login/

Protean - an online Personalized Learning Plan (PLP) platform used primarily at this point by 7th and 8th graders. ⅚ students may post executive function skills reflections, personal interest projects, and other measures of growth and reflection after 1st trimester. https://app.protean.me/index.html

IXL - a program that supports students on math and language arts skills. https://www.ixl.com/signin

Moby Max - a math program used by ⅚ math students to build computational fluency and fill gaps in understanding on major concepts. Students have a username and password for this program.

Typing Club - a program used by the ⅚ humanities students to build typing skills.

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CLASSROOM UPDATES

Ms.Q

CMP8

This week the students had a math work-out. We explored visual models of solving and writing equivalent expressions with Ms. Sherman and dabbled in collecting like-terms with polynomials. Finally, we pushed our thinking on non-linear models and came up with an equation for inverse variation and a quadratic.

These models look like this graphically:

Inverse variation Quadratic

CMP7

We completed our class records and math assessment this week and are now beginning our geometry unit called Shapes and Designs. This unit is designed to look at common properties that regular and irregular polygons have. We will look at triangles and the properties of angles and side lengths. Students will need to have their protractors and rulers for class.

Science:

This week was a research week on the physics of how mouse traps work. Students needed to fill out their engineering template in order to begin building their mousetrap cars. The physics assessment have been graded and the scores have been placed in Jumprope. This weekend students need to finish filling in A-E on their template and be ready to defend their ideas to the “Science Shark Tank”

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7/8 Humanities

This week, students worked hard on their informative "who would I vote for, and why" or "who is the best fit for the office of ________, and why" essays. The learning targets assessed for this essay

5/6 Humanities

If you have not had a chance to see the WCS Candidate Forum click here, it is replaying on RETN up until the election. The forum is a truly authentic learning experience for our students, featuring student campaign posters and thought provoking, well researched questions for the major party candidates for US Senate, US Representative, Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General. Watch it and talk about the issues with your student!

We have been working on many literacy skills since the start of our Election 2018 unit. Below is a review of the skills your student has been working on.

Informational text - We have been working on two skills when reading informational text. The first is previewing. The first thing we do whenever we have new reading is to preview it. We read everything but the text! We read the title, subtitles, bold words, captions, and look carefully at the pictures. Then we have a discussion about what it is we think we are about to read.

We have also practiced highlighting. When we highlight, we must read the text first, then go back and highlight. We try to limit our highlighting to key words and phrases. This keeps us from highlighting too much. Less is more when highlighting. We can always dig deeper and learn more by reading for a second or even third time.

Writing - Students have been writing short essays to start the year. Currently students are writing an essay on the candidate forum, explaining who they would vote for and why. Students have selected a candidate to watch and use reponses as evidence to support their claim. Once they have evidence, they need to explain what it means and how it proves their point, always wrapping their essay up with a conclusion. I am starting to notice some patterns in student control of punctuation, spelling, grammar, and word use. I have been noting and working with students individually on these standards, but will begin to address the common struggles with the whole class next week.

Vocabulary - There has been a` rich collection of vocabulary words introduced to the students through our Election 2018 content. Check out the list of Election 2018 vocabulary posted in Google Classroom. Students are asked to use these words in their LEAF writing, make word maps, put the words into categories, and use the words in class discussions. We will be playing Jeopardy next week, which will feature many of these words.

In addition to the vocabulary work students have been doing in class, the 5th graders just started their spelling / vocabulary programs during their extra period. Most students are either working in Scholastic Spelling or Wordly Wise, based on the results of a recent spelling assessment.

Next week I will update you on our Mystery and Spook unit. Students should be wrapping up their book in a couple of weeks.

Students creating word maps from our “Election 2018” vocabulary list.