Weeks of October 13th - 24th

MARK YOUR CALENDARS and SAVE THE DATE

Voyager Family Night at WCS - Wednesday December 10th, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm!

For those of you new to Voyager, Voyager Family Night at WCS is our annual all-house gathering where students and families of Voyager get together to share snacks and conversation in the cafeteria, then move to the auditorium for some fun open-mike performances.

Students should sign up for a performance spot with Ms. Quatt if they are interested. In the past, performances have included small-group singing/dance, poetry or short story reading, playing piano or guitar, magic tricks, and others. It is great chance to meet all the awesome kids and families who are part of the Voyager community as well as support our first important fundraiser.

How can you help?

• Please plan to attend with your family.
• We will be seeking raffle prizes for the evening; we hold a door raffle that has typically included movie cards, pizza gift cards and other great family gifts.
• Each class will be asked to bring a small easy, hand held snack. Mr. Merill and Ms. O'Brien will be "savory" snacks such as cheese and crackers, vegetables, etc. Ms. Wesnak and Ms. Quatt will be "sweet" snacks suck as brownies, cookies, etc.
• We will need help with setting up the cafeteria and cleaning up when we are finished.

A sign up sheet will be sent out in the Voice in early November.

Thanks in advance for your time and support of our incredible Voyager community.

WCS Candidate Forum

You can find the WCS Candidate Forum online here: http://retn.org/show/2014-candidate-forum-williston-central-school.

This forum will be getting a lot of air time on Channel 16 between now and Election Day, especially in the few days leading up to November 4th. Here are some of the upcoming air dates. More dates will be posted online as they are scheduled.

Sunday, 10/26 - 2:00 PM

Saturday, 11/1 - 11:00 AM

Sunday, 11/2 - 4:00 PM & 9:00 PM

The Week in Mr. Merrill’s Room (⅚ Humanities):

On Monday after Reading Cafe students wrote about a character in their book. They had a choice to make a character map, compare the character to another character, or write about why they like the character or not.

For current events, we learned how to identify and use the 5 W’s and 1 H in a news story. Students selected an article from the Burlington Free Press and highlighted the 5 W’s and 1 H. They then filled in a graphic organizer for the 5 W’s and 1 H. Students then swapped organizers with a clock partner and had to try and write their own version of that story using only the information provided in the graphic organizers. Students then exchanged newspaper stories to see if their stories were a close match.

Our second literature group round started on Monday. Our theme is Mystery and Suspense and our big question is “How does the setting of your book create a story of mystery and spook?”

5th graders will be reading “Closed for the Season”, and 6th graders had choice for this round. Ask your student about the book he/she is reading.

We continued our study of state government and preparation for our field trip to Montpelier this week, learning about the 3 branches of government and how a bill becomes a law.  Students had a chance to see this first hand on our field trip. They toured the State House and followed the adventure of a bill by visiting a committee room, the Senate Chamber,  the House of Representatives, and the Governor’s office. They also conducted a mock trial in the Supreme Court room using a real case that was decided by the VT Supreme Court (ask your student about this - it was so fun!). We also had a great tour of the Vermont Historical Society Museum, passing through the history of Vermont from Abnaki times, the Green Mountain Boys, the Civil War, railroads, quarries, and skiing and tourism. It was a great day!

The Week in Ms. Wesnak’s Room (⅞ Humanities):

This week in Humanities has been filled with creativity, fun, and discussion! During our morning time together students started off the week with our usual Independent Reading Monday. Students were asked to find important sections of dialogue from their reading, and explain its importance in their reading journal. As the week went on we returned to our punctuation study of commas and quotation marks. We did a quick review before we began our work on our in-class “Ordinary Object Comic Strip” project. Students were inspired by the youtube sensation “Marcel the Shell” to come up with a character developed from a household or ordinary object. Students created characters such as “Sammy the Spoon”, “Larry and Barry the Marbles”, “Bobby the Door Wedge”, “Stan the Pillow-Man”, and “Arabelle Beans the Croissant”. Students took these characters and created short stories for them to star in. They then created a short comic strip to illustrate their story with dialogue. Now that the comic strips are complete, next week students will transform their comic into a typed, short story to showcase their skills in proper comma and quotation use with the conversation bubbles from the comics. Students had a lot of fun working on their comics and developing characters. We’re looking forward to continuing with the work next week!

During our afternoon classes students brought their work with government and American History to a close, by playing an intense game of Jeopardy! Students answered questions from categories such as “Not the Bill of Lefts”, “The Government Tree”, and “History and Zinnstory”. The questions were student created, and they were pretty tough! We had a great time playing, and it was a really fun way for students to showcase their gained knowledge, work with a team, and think critically and creatively. With our work on our sub-essential question of “What does it mean to be an American?” brought to a close through Jeopardy, we were able to move on to our next sub-essential question. The question we are trying to answer now is, “What does it mean to be a citizen?”. Thursday’s class consisted of some great discussion, definition building, and analysis. Students analyzed the dictionary definition of “citizen”, and then we viewed two clips from The Hunger Games to see what being a citizen looks like in an extreme environment. Some students even questioned whether or not the people in The Hunger Games could be considered citizens because what protection or rights were they being provided by their government? We had a great discussion filled with a lot of critical thinking and analysis. Students will be continuing to learn about what it means to be a citizen by learning about what it means to be an American Citizen through the eyes of the government, and learning about immigration in our country. Students will be reading, discussing, and debating a few articles from Jr. Scholastic, while also responding to questions and writing prompts. Through all of our work we are hoping to come to an understanding around what the national identity is for America. Next week students will start on an in-class mini project around what it takes to become a citizen of our country. Next week we will also partake in an after-school Skype session to discuss citizenship and national identity in New Zealand with our Blockhouse Bay class!

The Week from Ms. Q’s Room (⅞ Math & Science):

CMP8

This week students explored biological exponential models.  We investigated growth patterns of mold, snakes and rabbits in Australia. These cute, fluffy consumers that  were introduced as a game and food source, have decimated many of the native species in Australia and have caused ecological damage to the natural environment.  Students  became more familiar with the exponential equation of  y= a(bx) where “a” is the y-intercept  and “b” is the growth factor and  “x”  is the independent variable.   We created class records on the “landmarks “ of exponential growth within graphs, tables and equations  and completed a Growing, Growing, Growing Check-up.

CMP7

What patterns can we see when adding and subtracting positive and negative integers? Are there rules or an algorithm that could guide us when we compute with these numbers? This week we investigated positive and negative integers using  number lines, chip boards and playing cards to explore their properties.  We learned about absolute value, additive inverses and opposites.  We dabbled in inequalities and rounded out the week with a brief Accentuate the Negative “Check-up”.

Science 7/8th

Ladies and Gentlemen start your engines! Students began this week with researching mousetrap car designs and the science concepts behind how they work. Friction, Newton’s laws, rotational inertia were topics that we read about and then  we pulled out our tools, safety glasses, glue guns, duct tape, and materials and began construction.  As of Friday, students were just beginning to test their designs.  Next week we will begin testing, data collection and our redesign phase.  We hope to have a team wide competition mid-week. The engineering goal: Create a mousetrap car that  travels 5 meters in 5 seconds.  Students will have an engineering lab report due after the competition.