Grazers Restaurant Benefit Day for Voyager – March 20, 2019
Grazers Restaurant in Williston at Maple Tree Place (next to the Majestic 10 movie theater) is teaming up with the WCS Voyager middle school team to help raise funds for Voyager’s end-of-year field trip.
Bring lots of friends and family and enjoy a delicious meal at Grazers any time on Wednesday, March 20th and Grazers will donate 10% of your purchase to Voyager. You can ask for Take-Out, too!
Check out Grazers website to see their awesome menu and learn more about this wonderful restaurant - www.grazersvt.com
Indoor Garage Sale Donations and Volunteers Needed!
Voyager House is holding its annual Indoor Garage Sale Saturday, March 30th in WCS's cafeteria 8:00am - 2:00pm! It's a giant indoor Reuse/Resale that raises money for Voyager's end-of-year overnight field trip.
We need Event Volunteers to pull this off!
- Click here if you can volunteer at this event. We need helpers and food donations (pies!)
- Click here to learn more about what items we need and how to donate.
THANK YOU for your support!
Now accepting registrations for the CVU summer camp - Class of 2023
The CVU summer camp is a great experience for any student who will be joining CVU as a ninth grader or transfer student in the Fall of 2019. We pride ourselves on providing a welcoming and fun camp to help ease the transition to CVU while making new friends. Upper-class students are counselors of the camp and help to promote team building and grow social bonds between campers while have a blast during the summer. CVU camp T-shirt, lunch and snack provided!The camp offers two sessions:
- Session A July 8 - 11, July 15 - 18, and...
- Session B July 22 - 25, July 29 - Aug 1
Contact us at: Email: cvusummercamp@cvsdvt.org
Scholarships and financial assistance available.
FAP’s Annual Fund Needs Your Help
Click here to learn more.
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:
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
CMP8
The 8th graders worked hard this week in their investigations of systems of linear inequalities. These elegant systems create beautiful graphs and we had the opportunity to explore a problem called “Money Making”. The problems deal with a high school student who wants to make at least $120 per week, working no more than 15 hours and charging $6 for babysitting and $10 for tutoring. The graph looked like this.
We explored what all the shaded and unshaded areas mean in the context of this problem. We also learned when to use solid and dotted lines with inequalities.
CMP7
This week the 7th graders completed their “Stretching and Shrinking” unit assessment. Students then selected graphic images that they could scale up, shrink down and skew for our scaling project. This project takes lots of patience and focus.
Science
This week each student traveled to a different celestial body in the solar system. They created five-paragraph essays describing their voyage and what they saw when they got to their destination. This was an assignment where we combined science fact with science fiction. On Friday, we took some time away from the screen to create an artistic rendering of a location that they visited on their trip. Students received written feedback on their work and we explored important elements of a travel essay. The essay and paragraph are due Monday the 18th before class.
Mr. Roof - 7/8 Humanities
This week, we spent a lot of time learning about using commas. We thought about all the different ways in which we can use commas. The 8th grade class came up with 14 different ways! We then focused on some of the most common in writing, and practiced using worksheets or creative writing. We also worked on current events through CNN 10. Additionally, we spent some time introducing the basics of argument writing by reading an opinion article about the need for physical education in schools to be on an equal level with core academic subjects. Also this week, I asked for feedback from the students about how and what they wanted to learn, what they wanted more of and what they wanted less of. It was a powerful experience, and students put a lot of thought and meaning into their feedback. One result is that we are not going to have reading logs moving forward. However, students are still expected to complete independent reading, and we will have related assignments and/or classwork.
Mr. Merrill - ⅚ Humanities
Reading Cafe:
Students picked a short biography of an inventor to read from our online catalogue. Once they finished reading, they identified key events that led to their success.
Stock Market Game:
After a rough week for the stock market, the latest market rebound took 4 of our teams into the top 5 in the entire state. One team saw a 77% unrealized gain on one of their stock investments! With 5 weeks left to play, we will see if these teams can hold their positions in the rankings.
Shark Tank:
Students have come up with some amazing products and services to pitch in the upcoming competition. With a completed business plan, students used a variety of online tools to design and create logos and models. Thank you to Ms. Wilson for teaching our students to use Adobe Spark and Sketchpad. Finally, we started to write the pitch - including in the introduction a hook to grab our audience and a claim about the product or service.
Ms. O’Brien
5th Grade Math: We wrapped up our whole number multiplication and division unit this week. We have arrived at standard algorithm for multiplication and I have seen some huge growth in this skill area and am super excited about this. Some students are still finding area model easier and this is okay. What I want for students is to have a strategy they feel comfortable with and can work each time. The standard algorithm will come. Some students are close to standard algorithm for division using the partial quotient method. This method leans on the use of a ratio table for the divisor. To solve the problem 345 divide 3, students will first build a ratio table for 3. It’s okay if it is disorganized and out of order.
Ratio table for 3
Groups of
|
1
|
10
|
100
|
5
|
50
|
2
|
25
|
3
|
Total
|
3
|
30
|
300
|
15
|
150
|
6
|
75
|
9
|
Then the student will use the ratio table to slowing reduce the dividend until she/he cannot get any more groups of 3 from the inside number.
We also spent some time ensuring that students can subtract. It’s a skill that is often lagging at this level, and so obviously, it is important to address it. We made big progress on that skill too but sorting students into groups and isolating that skill as the goal for the day. Other students worked on other standards missed on assessments and took a new stab at meeting the standard.
Math 6: We finished up our unit on decimal operations this week, and took an assessment that mostly addressed multiplication and division of decimals. It was a fast and furious unit, but so many students made great progress on the standard algorithm for whole numbers, that decimals were much easier for them. Beginning Wednesday, students chose a standard that we have already learned this year, to focus in on and practice a little further. We called this our WIN standard. Some students were working to meet the three while others the four. Students were supported by me, or each other, in the room to build a plan of attack. How will I meet the standard? Some students watched videos, received extra instruction from me or a peer, and practiced, practiced, practiced independently. It was a good way for students to go back and take another look at skills and understandings from the year. I really appreciated the independence demonstrated and the focus required to do this.
Science ⅚: We had a great time figuring out the reason for the moon phases! What a complex model it is! On Monday, students worked on building a physical model with the moon, earth, and Sun. How can the moon change in such a predictable way each day for 29 days? Student figured out that the moon must be orbiting counterclockwise, held close by the Earth’s gravitational attraction, but in motion because the original explosive event theorized to have taken place in the galaxy. We then used styrofoam moons, our heads as the Earth, and lamps to represent the sun, in order to figure out why we see what we see. Later this week, students were tasked with drawing this model on paper, a very tough thing to do in two dimensions. We’ve done a decent job on this! See some of the models below.
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