Please visit the Voyager Web Site to keep in touch with what’s happening in Voyager this year.
Voyager Family Night 2018
You are cordially invited to our annual Voyager Family Night. This is a night of family, fun, and festivities. Come one, come all, and enjoy some food goodies, student talent, cheesy jokes and door prizes.
- The Details….
- When: December 11th, 2018 @ 6:30 - 8:00 PM
- Where: Williston Central School Auditorium for the show and the Community Room for nibbles
- What: Festive cheer, door prizes, corny jokes, and student talent
- At the Door: Each individual will receive a ticket for door prizes. Optional monetary donations will be accepted at the door and will be used for the Voyager field trip fund.
- In addition….
- We are looking for donations of several types. We are in need of food items for our gathering and door prizes. Please see link for additional information.
- Donation Link - https://docs.google.com/document/d/176JRRNu4nPk1mH-E2EnetQ489-NOETF6o7yDxTTR2zU/edit?usp=sharing
Voyager Dance Night - Chaperones Needed!!!
Voyager will be sponsoring a Dance Night on Friday, January 4th from 6:00 - 8:00pm. This is a fun night for 5th - 8th graders to socialize and is an important fundraiser for the Voyager Team. We can’t pull it off without adult chaperones and ticket helpers. If you would like to help us out and be a chaperone or work the ticket table that night, please add your name to our volunteer list. Many thanks in advance for your support!
Wanted for Science Project
We want your cleaned-out, small tuna fish cans or cat food cans (Fancy Feast are the right size!).
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 5:00-6:30 pm 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!
REMINDER - 8th Grade Field Trip to Ridin-Hy - Registration Deadline is 12/21/18
- If you haven’t done so already, please review the documents below with your 8th grader about the exciting 8th Grade Celebration Trip to Ridin-Hy Ranch next spring.
- Registration and permission slips are due on or before December 21st, 2018.
Ridin Hy Behavior Expectations
Ridin Hy Medical Form
Ridin Hy Parent Consent Form
Ridin Hy Release Form
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
- Homework club has switched to Tuesday and Thursdays! No Homework club on Wednesdays anymore.
- 8th Grade Challenge help is being provided through our Spark program on Thursdays. Harbor teachers, Ms. Griffin 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.
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
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
We began the week with creating our class records for “Looking for Pythagoras”. We reviewed the major concepts of this unit, played LFP jeopardy and then took the assessment. Students are beginning a new unit called “Growing, Growing, Growing” which focuses on the rules of exponents and exponential growth. (Think bacteria growth over time....) We took a pause midweek to roll out our PBIS booster incentive which is all about kindness. I challenged students to do random acts of kindness over the next few weeks.
CMP7
The 7th graders finished up the “Shapes and Designs” unit with completing their geometric construction lab. Mr. Sironi led the class in a Snickers bar volume problem. They compare the regular snickers bar to the “Slice and Share” size. Students learned how to draw a 3D image using isometric dot paper. They also figured out the volume of each candy bar and compared them. The Slice and Share Snickers is 12 times larger than a regular size snicker bar. That’s a lot of chocolatey, peanut butter goodness and only a slight 2070 calories. We finished the week with creating our class records and taking the unit assessment.
Science
This week we completed our properties of light lab. We explored a variety of light and its interaction with different surfaces and substances.
Light and mirrors to see the angle of incidence and reflection
Light through prisms and liquid to see refraction
Light through a lumi rod to see how light travels
Light traveling through concave and convex lenses
Finally we looked at colored light and how Red, Green and Blue are the primary light colors. When combined together they make white light.
It was a fun and enlightening exploration! Students are will be working on a brief light project over the next week.
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Mr. Roof
This week, we finished all of our WWI causes presentations. The objective was to learn more specific details about the MAIN causes of WWI, and to practice using slides in a presentation as support. This speaking and listening skill will be taught and assessed throughout the year.
Next, students worked on a WWI webquest, using video and an online source to find facts and details about the war, including major battles, agreements, and important figures. We reviewed the answers as a class. Additionally, students are focusing on making and claim and supporting the claim with evidence.
The two assignments that reinforced those targets are Reading Log 10 and CNN 10. Both of those have new instructions in which students make a claim. For the Reading Log, students are focused on making a claim about a big idea connected to their reading. This means that their claim connects with abstract nouns such as Democracy, Freedom, Survival, Independence, etc. For CNN 10, the focus was to make the switch from writing a summary to making a claim related to the news story they chose.
Finally, students began a reflection on their trimester one independent reading habits, making a plan for improved performance in trimester two.
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Ms. O’Brien Classes
Math 5: We had a great week of exploring factors of numbers. For some that exploration including intensive modeling using equal size groups of and rectangular models while others explored prime factorization as a way to find factors. Either way the goal is to increase fluency, explore properties of numbers, and use strategies that work every time and fit our current level as students.
Next week the fifth grade class with host our first Math Studio of the year. If you are not familiar with this, studio is a model we use as teachers to learn from each other, as well as a training ground to showcase strategies or experiment with new structures for teaching math. This year, we are doing two as ⅚ teachers, one in the fourth grade classroom and one in the fifth grade classroom to explore what the transition between fourth and fifth is like for students. The ultimate goal is to strengthen our understanding of the needs of a fourth grader so that we make more seamless their transition to fifth. It’s a worthwhile goal and we are part of it. Many teachers will be in the classroom during this showcased lesson, and so it’s a big change in structure for the kids. Usually when I do these lessons with a host of teachers in the room, the students do really well. I think the kiddos will do great!
Math 6: We are really buzzing through Let’s be Rational and I’ve been pleased with the level of engagement and understanding so far. This week was in service to understanding how to multiply fractions. You all know how to do that and I could have taught that lesson in one day! But as you know, we are trying to build a deeper sense of why it works and for the most part, kids are discovering why the multiply numerators, multiply denominators works! We built area models of ‘fraction of’ problems all week and kids arrived at the standard algorithm all on their own. How do you find ⅔ of ¾? Check out student learning logs! They are colorful and full of some deep learning! We will have a quick quiz on multiplication this coming week and will fully launch an investigation in division of fractions!
⅚ Science: This week we engaged in a fun experiment on hot and cold water and have settled on another claim about water: Hot water molecules move more quickly than cold! Students ran their own experiments on water and came to the same claim, adding to our growing understanding of water. We also learned how to model moving molecules knowing this about matter: Matter is made up of an unimaginably large number of unimaginably small particles called atoms. Exploration of the thermometer on Friday produced a new claim. All liquids have moving molecules. Students worked to figure out how a thermometer works? Why is the fluid inside a thermometer going up? Down? We arrived at yet another claim...when molecules are moving fast, the spaces between them get big, they are less sticky, they are less dense and they will expand into any new space provided, namely up the thermometer! When they are cold, they are slower, more sticky and the spaces between molecules decreases. They get more dense. Kind of a fun understanding. So temperature is a measure of molecule
movement. And then the comment came, “wait, the molecules in our body are moving!” Ah ha!
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Mr. Merrill
Students started the week by participating in a literature circle or book discussion, depending on where they are in the Harry Potter series. As students finish a book, they join a book discussion. While chapter reading, they join a literature circle. Many students have read more than one book in the series at this point!
We are working on our writing craft by creating ‘Ode’ poetry for our portraits in the Hall of Mirrors. Students are writing about things or people they love and are using expressive language, comparisons, and other writing techniques to enhance their poetry.
In addition to our Harry Potter work, students are learning to identify the main idea and supporting details of informational text during our current events time, and will be learning and practicing their public speaking skills in preparation for their science demonstrations in a couple of weeks.
Harry Potter House Challenge Pictures
Wand ceremony
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