May 23, 2014

Huge Thank You!

Dear Parents,

Wow, did we feel appreciated by the beautiful luncheon you parents hosted.  We so enjoyed the quiche, ice tea, salad, cookies and cozy ambiance.  What a treat.  Dessert day on Friday was amazing as well.  Thank you for the reminding us that we work and teach in a very special community.  

Sincerely,

Swift House Facilitators

An amazing spread

Thank you!

Expolaravision

Congratulations to our Exploravision participants.  Exploravision is a national science design competition.  Students identify a problem and brainstorm new solutions.  They design a website which explores the background of the problem and shows  visual designs for their solutions.  Participating students worked on their Exploravision projects during our January Independent Project time. 

Adam Z, Seth F and Eric C received a Certificate of Achievement for their project on "Advanced 911 Calling: Creating a Hologram."

John C, Jimmy J and Ananth M received Honorable Mention for their project, "Fighting Addiction with Nanobots."

Swiftville

The residents of Swiftville 2014 made a successful showing this year, generating a total of $746,155 Swiftles in business revenue in four hours.  Businesses included homemade ice cream, knee hockey,  bracelets, tatoos, mini golf, a raffle, mini hoops, an arcade, pet rocks, and a movie theater.  Equally successful were the Town Council members who made sure that operations were running smoothly and Community Police Officers to keep the peace.  The Swiftville Sanitation crew keep in constant circulation, picking up garbage and recycling, and issuing fines for excessive literating.  The employees at the Bank of Swiftville worked hard from beginning to end, completing hundreds of transactions an hour, including payroll, deposits, and withdrawals.

Swiftvillians all felt a major boost to the economy when the cruise ships passengers arrived, otherwise known as third and fourth graders, with cash to spend.  They discovered the frustration of having the bank close before they could make a deposit.  Individuals and banks also "Notice of Insufficient Funds" as needed, which sent them running to check the status of their deposits.

Thank you, parents, for helping schlep all the necessary materials to school.  Swiftville will return in the 2015-2016 school year.

Mr. Hunt's custom-made pet rock

Processed checks

 

 Unified Sports Team

Joe, Caroline and Bryant were among the Swifties who attended the Unified Sports Competition in Saint Albans this week. They commuted to Saint Albans to compete in a Bocce Tournament. 

"Home Team" Events

While 65 of our Swift students are away in New York City in two weeks, the "Home Team" will be immersed in a unit on the local food movement of Vermont.  We will study the environmental, health related, and economic drivers in support of growing and purchasing food locally.  We will work with Sam in the kitchen to learn new ways to prepare great food.  We will also visit Isham's Farm, Adam's Farm and work with a food magazine writer to create our own food-related works.  The culminating project will be producing a local food dish to present and share with classmates after analyzing the source of each ingredient.  Ms. Laberge and Ms. Skapof look forward to this exciting week with the Home Team.

CVU Learns: One School's Journey to Standards  Based Learning 

As mentioned in previous posts, there is a shift happening in evaluation and reporting around the state.  CVU has been documenting their progress towards Standards Based Learning in this blog.  Swift House facilitators are keeping a close eye on CVU's transformation as it is moving to align closer to our own standard's based systems.

5th Graders' Cultural Picture Books

Fifth graders finished their literature studies of cultures around the world by writing and illustration "Cultural" picture books.  A few examples are included here:

Click here to read "Children's Day" by Ella and Maggie

Other titles available on-line...

Abasi the Lion Slayer, by Jagger and

Li and Mei Lan, by Maddie and Melaina

The Story of a Samurai, by Evan and Kyle

8th Graders Migrating Google Drives

As 8th graders get ready to transition out of WSD and into CVU (or some other school), they will no longer have their @cssu.org account. Those will be disabled by the end of June. If students would like to keep the contents of their Google Drive, there are steps they can take to download and then upload the files to a personal Google account.

Here's a link with some information on how to do that. They may choose not to keep any files, but if they want to, they can't just share them with themselves at another account. They won't be able to transfer ownership of the files to an account outside of cssu.org. Just wanted to give you a heads up. Also, if they have Google Sites they've created and want to keep, it is a slightly different process. Bonnie Birdsall has offered to help any students with this process.

Girls' Science Discovery Day

 Alyse F was among three students from WCS chosen to attend Girls Science Discovery Day, hosted by the UVM College of Medicine.  The students attended various workshops led by med students and Fletcher Allen employees throughout the school and hospital.  Look for postings about this opportunity next spring for interested 7th and 8th grade girls.

Simulation Lab, learning ‘how to and then do’ administering oxygen to infant in distress