Chaperones and Snacks Needed... for the Voyager Team Overnight Trip to Camp Hochelaga in South Hero!
We are still looking for chaperones to help with our multi-day and night trip to Camp Hochelaga in South Hero, Vermont from June 5th to June 7th. If you can help for any day(s) and/or overnights, please add your name to our volunteer list. We are also looking for some donated snacks to help keep all the hungry bellies happily full. Ads always, we are immensely grateful for all your support!5/6 Lake Champlain Maritime Museum Field Trip
Thursday, May 30. We will be studying Revolutionary War events that occurred on Lake Champlain. Please dress for the weather and bring a bagged lunch, snack, and a water bottle. We will return by the end of the school day.To Parents of 7th Grade Students
The families of 8th graders need you! Each year parents of 7th graders help with the graduation reception at WCS. We need help setting up food, serving and cleaning up. Providing this help allows families of 8th graders to focus on celebrating their children and this milestone. Graduation is on June 13 and the reception is held in either the WCS Courtyard or the Cafeteria, depending on the weather. We are seeking help between 6:30pm and 9:00pm.Please use the sign up below or email Shelley at shellcore@comcast.net with questions.
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/20F0544AFA72EAA8-help
Cell Phone Use
Please refrain from texting your child during the day. If you need to communicate a message to your child, please contact Ted Milks (tmilks@cvsdvt.org; 871-6148) and the Core Teacher. If your child does receive a text from you, please do not expect a response until the end of the school day. - Thank You!
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
A Note from Ms. Sherman
7/8 Field Trip: We are excited to announce that we will be able to offer a 7/8 field trip on May 24th; an excursion in Burlington! We are looking for 3-4 parent chaperones to help us make this trip a great adventure! Forms for the trip will go out soon, but if interested please let Ted Milks know by email at tmilks@cvsdvt.org.HOMEWORK CLUB: We will continue to have HW club for the next few weeks. Our last day of HW club will be on May 30th as long as kids are still attending. If we have sessions without attendance will cancel the remainder of HW club sessions.
Ms. Quatt- Math/Science
CMP8It was so wonderful having a regular work week without any interruptions! The 8th graders are currently investigating the area model for showing factored and expanded forms of quadratic equations. We utilized algebra tiles and worked through problems going back and forth from both forms.
Students also explored what happens to parabolas when you change the coefficients and constants in the ax2+ bx + c equation.
CMP7
This week we looked at how many calories it takes to burn off a burger and french fries. We gathered data about our walking rate, extrapolated it to see how many miles per hour we walk and how many calories our walking burns. We looked at the different rates that people walk, how you can graph them and interpreted how to compare the slope or steepness of the lines to our equations and tables. We have also been working hard on solving one-step and two-step algebraic equations.
Science
This week we continued to investigate the microorganisms that we had observed last week.(amoeba, paramecium, euglena, tardigrade, stentor, hydra) Students researched how they move, what they eat, how they reproduce, grow, and react to the environment. We then looked at samples of creatures from our local ecosystem. We found a diverse collection of ciliates, rotifers, and algae. Students were invested and excited in our work. We finished the week by discussing how these small creatures play a major role in our ecosystem. Next week we are going to shift our attention to plant and animal cells.
Mr. Roof - 7&8 Humanities
Busy week here in Humanities! We are moving quickly through some important World War II battles, including the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the battle of Stalingrad, and the battle of Midway. Students have been awesome in asking great questions and participating in class discussions. We used a lot of primary sources, including video, photographs, telegrams, journal entries, and radio communications. The stories of decision making, whether intelligent, intuitive, or stubborn, are fascinating, along with countless acts of bravery under horrific circumstances. We examined how brutal war really is and how and why nations decide to take such drastic steps.
In our pm classes, students were amazing in their research and participation in some lively debates. Our classes debated topics such as the wage gap between women and men, the validity of the electoral college, the legal age for smoking tobacco, gun laws, and pollution laws. Some students had to argue for sides that they did not believe in, which was very difficult. Nevertheless, they did an excellent job in making convincing arguments.
For homework, students should be working on IXL Z.6 8th grade for both sections. They also have Holocaust literature novels that they should be reading independently. Ask them about their books, as these are great historical fiction novels.
Mr. Merrill - 5/6 Humanities
Wordly Wise - students played “mile a minute” to talk about and introduce the words in the lesson to each other. We had a test on the lesson on Friday.
PIP Informational Writing - Students continued to research and write their 5 paragraph essays. We focused on writing a thesis statement, body paragraphs, and conclusion. Students reviewed and have access to a citation google slideshow to create a bibliography.
Historical Role Plays - We have been focusing on what was going on in North America prior to the Revolutionary War. We mapped the 13 English Colonies and then shifted our focus to Lake Champlain. We role played the arrival of French explorers to the Champlain Valley and their first encounter with the Algonquins. We later reenacted a scene from Champlain’s journal in 1609, detailing the battle between the French and Algonquin explorers and the Iroquois. This set the stage for the next 150 years as the French and English battled for control of North America.
⅚ Lake Champlain Martime Museum Field Trip -Thursday, May 30. We will be studying Revolutionary War events that occurred on Lake Champlain. Please dress for the weather and bring a bagged lunch, snack, and a water bottle.
Ms. O’Brien
Math 5: We tackled two really big topics in fraction operations: multiplication and division of fractions. It was really great to lean on the visual area model for this, so students could understand the connection between multiplication and area of something. The challenge is to take a 1 x 1 square and subdivide the dimensions into the fractional pieces necessary to model a problem.
We also tackled fraction division by considering problems of sharing or splitting into equal size groups. Problems like “ a recipe calls for 7 cups of flour but you only have a ½ cup measure. How many times will you need to use the ½ measure to get the full 7 cups?”
I will be providing ample summarizing and review time next week to complete the fraction computation standards work for 5th grade. Assessment will happen some time at the end of next week.
The rest of the year will be project based learning.
Math 6: The experiences in math this week are a culmination of work with variables, terms, and coefficients. We have been playing around with equations for weeks, but this week we tightened things up by working on relating one thing to another. For example if Cate is 4 years older than Josef, we might show the relationship with two variables, c for Cate and j for Joseph. But our new learning this week gives Josef the variable j and Cate becomes j+4. Then we are working with one variable instead of 2. We can actually determine both kiddos ages, if we know one person’s age. We also took another look at percentages of a number and determining values in inequalities that would make the inequality true. More work with inequalities next week and then the final big assessment of the year, at the end of the next week.
The rest of the year will be project based learning.
Science ⅚: We had a fun week tackling our new unit on energy. Students began the week exploring rollercoasters to determine which rollercoasters have the right kind of energy for a marble to complete its run and which do not. I heard phrases like “it doesn’t have enough momentum”, “it can never work”; “it’s impossible”,” it works one way but not the other”, and” the start is high, so it works!” Students were working on building ideas about energy by having fun too! Our long block provided students with some background knowledge for energy. Potential and kinetic energy were key learning ideas, and we then consider those, as they related to the rollercoasters. Students then had a challenge to create a marble roller coaster, using 4 tubes of pipe insulation and two vertical loops, for the rest of the day! See the great ideas in photos below. Friday was our domino challenge, to introduce the idea of energy transfer. Super fun and challenge engineering task for sure!
Ms. O’Brien
Math 5: We tackled two really big topics in fraction operations: multiplication and division of fractions. It was really great to lean on the visual area model for this, so students could understand the connection between multiplication and area of something. The challenge is to take a 1 x 1 square and subdivide the dimensions into the fractional pieces necessary to model a problem.
We also tackled fraction division by considering problems of sharing or splitting into equal size groups. Problems like “ a recipe calls for 7 cups of flour but you only have a ½ cup measure. How many times will you need to use the ½ measure to get the full 7 cups?”
I will be providing ample summarizing and review time next week to complete the fraction computation standards work for 5th grade. Assessment will happen some time at the end of next week.
The rest of the year will be project based learning.
Math 6: The experiences in math this week are a culmination of work with variables, terms, and coefficients. We have been playing around with equations for weeks, but this week we tightened things up by working on relating one thing to another. For example if Cate is 4 years older than Josef, we might show the relationship with two variables, c for Cate and j for Joseph. But our new learning this week gives Josef the variable j and Cate becomes j+4. Then we are working with one variable instead of 2. We can actually determine both kiddos ages, if we know one person’s age. We also took another look at percentages of a number and determining values in inequalities that would make the inequality true. More work with inequalities next week and then the final big assessment of the year, at the end of the next week.
The rest of the year will be project based learning.
Science ⅚: We had a fun week tackling our new unit on energy. Students began the week exploring rollercoasters to determine which rollercoasters have the right kind of energy for a marble to complete its run and which do not. I heard phrases like “it doesn’t have enough momentum”, “it can never work”; “it’s impossible”,” it works one way but not the other”, and” the start is high, so it works!” Students were working on building ideas about energy by having fun too! Our long block provided students with some background knowledge for energy. Potential and kinetic energy were key learning ideas, and we then consider those, as they related to the rollercoasters. Students then had a challenge to create a marble roller coaster, using 4 tubes of pipe insulation and two vertical loops, for the rest of the day! See the great ideas in photos below. Friday was our domino challenge, to introduce the idea of energy transfer. Super fun and challenge engineering task for sure!
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