***Academic Updates can be found at the bottom of this post ***
2018 Polar Express - Volunteer Elves Wanted!!
Sunday, December 9th, 11:30 - 4:00 pm
It’s not too late to sign up as a volunteer Elf for the Vermont Children’s Trust Foundation Polar Express event in Burlington! For the past few years Voyager House has helped with the Polar Express, a child-centered event which recreates the experience from the book of the same name. Children take a short train ride within Burlington and arrive at the "North Pole" (Union Station) where they are greeted by flocks of elves.
We can take the first 25 elves! It's easy, fun and supports a great cause. We ask elves and anyone else interested to help fund raise for this cause. If you would like to donate, go to https://vtchildrenstrust.networkforgood.com/donors/sign_in. The Team page username is: tmilks@cvsdvt.org. The password is: ElfFundraising. Click on “Williston Central School Voyager House’s Fundraiser” to donate.
For now, please click here for more information. And click here if you would like to volunteer.
Voyager FAP Support and Help Wanted:
Voyager House is looking for parent support and help with setting up our Voyager Night. We are looking for a few parents to help set up and lightly decorate the Community Room between 5:00-6:30pm on Tuesday, December 11th. We could also use some parent help at the door of the auditorium to pass out door prize tickets and collect contributions.
Voyager is also preparing for our Survival Unit in January. We are looking for parents who have outdoor survival skills expertise to teach afternoon workshops the week of January 7th. Volunteer instructors would only need to teach once in the afternoon that week. Please contact your core teacher if you are interested.
Finally, Voyager House is hosting the first dance of 2019 on Friday, January 4th. We need chaperones, and help with set up, decorating, and clean up.
Thank you!
Morning Drop-Off & Supervision
A clear and calm morning routines helps students to enter their school day successfully. We are encountering more and more students coming to school between 7:30-7:55 am and we are not equipped to handle the numbers. Please do not drop your child off prior to 7:55 am unless it is absolutely essential. If you have to drop your child off early, please reinforce that the expectation is that students sitting in the front lobby until 7:55 am and engaging in a quiet activities. Ex. listening to music, reading or finishing homework. Thanks for your help with this. - Jackie Parks
Reminder from Ms. Sherman:
8th Grade Challenge help is being provided through our Spark program on Thursdays. Harbor teachers, Ms. Griffen and Ms. Taylor, will be available on Thursdays from 3:00-4:30 to give students assistance from any house! It's a great time to get work done and get great advice and instruction on your challenge. ***
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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 emails are:
cobrien@cvsdvt.org
amerrill@cvsdvt.org
jroof@cvsdvt.org
mquatt@cvsdvt.org
After School Club: CHANGE IN DAYS OFFERED
Voyager House offers an after-school program to all 5-8 grade Voyager students who would like a smaller, quieter setting for work completion. We accept any student who is motivated to be there and willing to work independently and who is open to support. We may also recommend this opportunity to students who are in need of work completion or who consistently fail to complete assigned work. It has been a great program for students and we are happy to have the staffing and funding to offer it again this year. Ms. Kim and Ms. Allison, our two house paras, will be the contact adults for this group.
- Every Tuesday (2:00-3:00) and Thursday (3:00-4:40) right after dismissal.
- Occasionally cancelled due to staffing. We will let you know as far in advance as we know!
- A late bus is available for transportation home.
- Membership is through interest and motivation as well as strong recommendations from teachers.
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/
- WCS Athletics - Click this link to the website to view all information regarding the WCS Athletics program.
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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ACADEMIC UPDATES
Ms. Q
CMP8
This week the 8th graders certainly showed a lot of grit and stamina as we explored different methods of utilizing the Pythagorean Theorem, simplifying square roots and cube roots and creating visual models that explain this process. We revisited rational and irrational numbers in relation to terminating and repeating decimals and began creating class records for our unit assessment.
CMP7
The 7th graders have been exploring questions like: Which geometric structure can withstand force better - a quadrilateral or a triangle? Why? What is the relationship of the angles when two parallel lines are cut by a transversal?
We explored terms like corresponding angles, alternate exterior angles, vertical angles and many more.
Science
We began this week with a brain dump of all we know about light, its properties, how it travels and what it is. We had a series of demonstrations that looked at aspects of how light travels through different media.
For instance, a glass rod in oil vanishes!
Students had a science reading and vocabulary to complete. We watched and took notes from Brainpop and we revised our class record to show our new understanding of light. We ended the week with a Light Lab that was done in the dark! Using laser lights we had a series of stations to see what happened to light when it interacts with different surfaces and substances.
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Mr. Roof
This week, students completed group research projects on one of the main causes of WWI: Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism, Nationalism, and Assassination. They had specific questions and guidelines to answer and follow, and then needed to create a presentation. Along the way, students learned about citing sources so that credit can be given to authors and creators. Students also learned about signposts to follow and investigate to be sure that an internet source is valid. Finally, students worked through a lesson on slideshow expectations and guidelines.
These expectations help to ensure that slideshows are as informative and effective as possible. Less is more, and Slides are support, not report were the two mantras to take away from the lesson. In addition, watched a documentary about the sinking of the British oceanliner, The Lusitania, by a German U boat, and completed an accompanying viewer's guide. Finally, we continued our current events study with CNN 10 and our vocabulary and literary analysis with independent reading log 9. Next week, CNN 10 will move from summary to claim and evidence writing.
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Ms. O’Brien Classes
Many Thanks! Voyager would like to thank the many people who donating food to the Yandow Family Thanksgiving Basket this year. It was a beautiful set of boxes filled with a turkey, fresh farm vegetables from Ms. Sherman’s family farm, homemade muffins, fresh eggs, and lots more. The Yandow’s really appreciated it!
AND...to those that helped with Harry Potter setup...Christina Sicard, Tom and Ann Lawrence, Sarah Kim, Kate Connors, Kara Cassani, Deb Miuccio, Wendy Hillmuth, Bobby Russell, Ella Russell’s grandma, and Brianna Armstrong. It was a fun filled bundle of hours that these parents put in, to make our Harry Potter unit feel authentic. Aron and I both really appreciate it! AND of course thanks to Ted Milks for all the inside work he did to prep materials etc.
Math 5: We have had a fun week of learning about the Properties of Numbers! We began our next unit, Prime Time, which builds on student understanding of numbers. Specifically, students are thinking about what makes zero, zero (or any number itself)? Understanding numbers in this way builds strength when reasoning with them and this is why we impress upon students the importance of really understanding a number’s properties. Properties of a number include: evenness, oddness, primeness, factors of a number, multiples of a number, squareness, and of course what happens when you operate with that number. We will be breaking into different groups in math, as often as is possible, so look forward to hearing about the specialized instruction each student is getting!
Math 6: We reviewed estimating and addition/subtraction of fractions this week. Some students were concerned that we were going back to review a fifth grade skill. The justification for this on my end, was that fractions can be difficult for students and so reviewing is essential for them. In addition, this is the last time we will deal with this skill. Leaving instruction behind on a skill that is essential for algebra, requires proficiency for all! We were pretty darn close to getting everyone proficient, which is a great thing. Scores from 5th grade did not indicate proficiency, so it was worth our time. Moving on to multiplication and division of fractions!
Science ⅚: We began our next unit this week on Properties of Matter. In the spirit of Harry Potter and the constant reference and use of potions in the books, we will be looking at what makes substances unique and how can they change! This will culminate in a demonstration lab with the community the last week of school before winter recess. Look out for the dates for this fun event! Specifically this week we explored water. Water is the only substance on Earth that exists in all three states of matter naturally, so it’s pretty unique and cool. A claim made by many students is that water is sticky. We are in pursuit of evidence that can back this claim up! See photos below for some of our explorations!
Harry Potter Photos from the week!
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Mr. Merrill
We kicked off our Harry Potter Unit this week. We started with the sorting ceremony and students were place on a Hogwarts house. The unit is 4 weeks long with team and individual challenges that can earn points towards winning the House Cup.
The first challenges were for team building, like the Human Knot and a Bertie Botts Flavor Beans Jar Guessing Game. Throughout the week, students also earned individual points for SMART behaviors in class. Our final challenges for the week included a Harry Potter Trivia Game and our Harry Potter meet and greet, which gave students the opportunity to earn points by coming in costume and playing a character.
Students are reading Harry Potter fast and furiously. Students that have finished a book will be participating in a book talk during our reading cafe on Monday. Students that are reading the first book, and keeping up with weekly chapter assignments, will be participating in a literature circle on Monday. To prepare for the meet and greet, students made a character sketch of the character they plan to be. We are also playing some vocabulary games to practice with all of the fun Harry Potter wizarding words.
Ms. O’Brien Classes
Many Thanks! Voyager would like to thank the many people who donating food to the Yandow Family Thanksgiving Basket this year. It was a beautiful set of boxes filled with a turkey, fresh farm vegetables from Ms. Sherman’s family farm, homemade muffins, fresh eggs, and lots more. The Yandow’s really appreciated it!
AND...to those that helped with Harry Potter setup...Christina Sicard, Tom and Ann Lawrence, Sarah Kim, Kate Connors, Kara Cassani, Deb Miuccio, Wendy Hillmuth, Bobby Russell, Ella Russell’s grandma, and Brianna Armstrong. It was a fun filled bundle of hours that these parents put in, to make our Harry Potter unit feel authentic. Aron and I both really appreciate it! AND of course thanks to Ted Milks for all the inside work he did to prep materials etc.
Math 5: We have had a fun week of learning about the Properties of Numbers! We began our next unit, Prime Time, which builds on student understanding of numbers. Specifically, students are thinking about what makes zero, zero (or any number itself)? Understanding numbers in this way builds strength when reasoning with them and this is why we impress upon students the importance of really understanding a number’s properties. Properties of a number include: evenness, oddness, primeness, factors of a number, multiples of a number, squareness, and of course what happens when you operate with that number. We will be breaking into different groups in math, as often as is possible, so look forward to hearing about the specialized instruction each student is getting!
Math 6: We reviewed estimating and addition/subtraction of fractions this week. Some students were concerned that we were going back to review a fifth grade skill. The justification for this on my end, was that fractions can be difficult for students and so reviewing is essential for them. In addition, this is the last time we will deal with this skill. Leaving instruction behind on a skill that is essential for algebra, requires proficiency for all! We were pretty darn close to getting everyone proficient, which is a great thing. Scores from 5th grade did not indicate proficiency, so it was worth our time. Moving on to multiplication and division of fractions!
Science ⅚: We began our next unit this week on Properties of Matter. In the spirit of Harry Potter and the constant reference and use of potions in the books, we will be looking at what makes substances unique and how can they change! This will culminate in a demonstration lab with the community the last week of school before winter recess. Look out for the dates for this fun event! Specifically this week we explored water. Water is the only substance on Earth that exists in all three states of matter naturally, so it’s pretty unique and cool. A claim made by many students is that water is sticky. We are in pursuit of evidence that can back this claim up! See photos below for some of our explorations!
Harry Potter Photos from the week!
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