Friday, March 29, 2019

Week of March 25 - 29

UPCOMING EVENTS, NEWS, and REMINDERS

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

Our Indoor Garage Sale is Tomorrow!

Saturday the 30th from 8:00am - 2:00pm in the WCS Cafeteria.
We hope you will come and support this important fundraising event. All proceeds go towards making our year-end overnight field trip affordable for all Voyager students.
We have lots of high-quality items for sale, as well as fresh baked pies, goodies, and Maple Sugar products from the Yandow Family.
And many thanks to all of you who have made donations or volunteered to help for the event!

Camp Rock Musical - Tickets on Sale!

The curtain goes up on on Camp Rock in only 1 week!  Students have been working hard learning the MANY songs and dances, blocking, building sets, collecting props and costumes, and much more.  We hope you will consider joining us for the big show!  

Tickets are on sale now at www.willistoncentral.seatyourself.biz


The FAP Big Basket Raffle

Collections for the 19th Annual Big Basket Raffle and Silent Auction are underway!  This is one of FAP’s biggest fundraisers of the year, with proceeds funding FAP programs that support all WCS and ABS students, families and staff.  Items donated by our families will be made into beautiful themed baskets that will be raffled off at the BIG BASKET RAFFLE on Saturday, April 13th, 2019. 

Donations must be received by April 5th.

We ask each family to purchase and donate one (or more) item(s) that relate to your class theme: 






School-wide BINGO celebration

The WCS PBIS team is looking for about 10 parent volunteers who want to help us with our school-wide BINGO celebration next Monday morning from approximately 8:00-9:00 am. Volunteers will assist with checking BINGO cards and bringing prizes to classes that win. If you are willing to be a volunteer, please email Jackie Parks is jparks@cvsdvt.org with your name and your student's name and team by Friday, March 29th. Thank you!

Part 2 Summer Camp - Long Trail Hikes

Part 2 is offering a BRAND NEW Summer Camp option this year designed for older students and those looking to get outside and in our beautiful Green Mountains. Part 2 Ramblers will venture through the Green Mountains and explore all that Vermont has to offer on sections of the Long Trail. We are offering three, four, and five day treks that will meet the abilities of all levels. We are also offering Advanced Day Hikes for those that do not want to be backpacking but want to get outside. We will be focusing on Leave No Trace, Trail Etiquette, Backpacking tips & tricks, Naturalist Skills, Camp Craft, & Team-Building.
Deadline for registration is May 1st! You can sign up through our website at: http://www.parttwokids.com/summer.html

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
You can find more information about the daily schedule, registration and tuition on our website: cvusummercamp.cvuhs.org
Contact us at: Email: cvusummercamp@cvsdvt.org Scholarships and financial assistance available.
FAP’s Annual Fund Needs Your Help

Please consider making a contribution to the FAP Annual Fund. The Fund is used to support school field trips and awarding FAP grants to various student activities and projects. It is a vital funding resource to support your student’s educational experiences.

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:
                     cobrien@cvsdvt.org
                     amerrill@cvsdvt.org
                          jroof@cvsdvt.org
                      mquatt@cvsdvt.org

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

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IMPORTANT LINKS
 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

CONGRATULATIONS! To the Voyager team that just won the 3DVT Competition at the Vermont Technical College in Randolph, VT. 

Team members included: Alexa Davis, Tyler Davis, Kady Cassani, Claire Kim, Emma Kim, Julia Lamorey, Ananya Rohatgi, Zoey Skapof and Addison Urch.

Prizes included a $2000 scholarship to the VTC for each member, as well as Chromebooks and other technology for the school. Check out the pics:






Mr. Roof - 7&8 Humanities

This week, we were focused on three areas. For writing and Social Studies, we continued work on argument writing. This involved reviewing the parts of an argument, discussing what makes a good argument, what constitutes the strongest supporting details (facts, statistics, and expert opinions), and how to formulate a counterargument. Students' argument writing was based on a current event story. 

For reading, students shared their third independent book recommendations of the year. Marie Lu, Carl Hiaasen, and Alan Gratz are a few of the more popular authors. We had a great circle, sharing our writing and artwork, along with some hot cocoa, Mmmmm. For Language Arts, we continued work with comma usage, delving into coordinating conjunctions and independent clauses. 8th grade also worked on dependent clauses. For History, we continued work with WWII, looking at an overview of the war, including motivations of the Axis powers, development of fascism, and events that lead the war.



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Ms.Q/ Mr. Sironi

CMP8
Students began the week with completing our “It’s in the System” unit assessment.  On Tuesday, Mr. Sironi led the class with an introduction of symmetry through quilt patterns.  Students explored lines of symmetry and rotations by creating unique quilt squares. For the remainder of the week, we explored a series of hands-on activities where students created images that showed reflection, rotation and multiple lines of symmetry.  

CMP7
The 8th graders began our “Comparing and Scaling” unit with a taste test of delicious lemon-lime soda.  Using this class-generated data we made mathematical statements that compared the different brands.  We also looked at the cost of the soda to see if there was a  relationship between cost and taste. We explored benchmark fractions and percentages (50% 25% 1/3, 1/10) and looked for patterns and relationships in order to find percentages from fractions like 3/8 or 4/6.
  
Science
The week began with discussion of the characteristics of life.  We considered whether a chicken egg, a large single cell, is living or non-living.  After our “Characteristics of Life” reading, we explored why viruses are so tricky to pin down as living or non-living.  Finally, we performed a series of explorations on the yeast organism to see if they exhibit any characteristics of life.  Using our control experiment, we added sugar, water and yeast into a test tube and sealed it with a balloon. We found that a gas was given off when the yeast was activated with water.  Students learned about cellular respiration and then conducted their own test to see if they could get the yeast organism to produce more carbon dioxide by changing a single variable.



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Mr. Merrill - ⅚ Humanities
The students did an amazing job with their Shark Tank presentations this week. Students put the finishing touches on their pitches and slide presentations on Monday and Tuesday. Practice time with feedback was on Wednesday and Thursday morning.
The presentations took place in the afternoons later in the week. The hooks were strong, the inventions were interesting, and the logos, graphics, and final “zingers” of the presentations very persuasive. Check out the pictures!












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Ms. O’Brien 


Hi again, Voyager Families! Lauren Drasler here.

As the beginning of April approaches, I wanted to touch base with all of you regarding my student teaching experience. Since starting my internship with your students in early January, I have had the opportunity to be part of numerous units and activities. It’s been so wonderful getting to know all the 5th and 6th graders here on Voyager House! Beginning next week, I will embark on a two week solo teaching experience where I will be responsible for teaching both the upcoming humanities and science units. In humanities, our focus will be on the Revolutionary War. Students will be reading one of three books, and learning important vocabulary surrounding the American revolution. In science, students will be focused on forces and motion. Many of our lessons will revolve around Newton’s Three Laws of Motion, and connecting these laws to broader scientific concepts. I’m really looking forward to maintaining the classroom culture that you have come to know and expect from Voyager House. Please feel free to contact me with any questions at ldrasler@cvsdvt.org. Thank you for your support! 




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