Swift Flyer: October 7

Resources

8th Grade Challenge Kick-Off Form
School Bell, October 7th
For Computer Help from the WCS IT Department, click here!

Adjustments to Hybrid Schedule

In the hopes of increasing our productive time during remote classes, we are making a slight change to our remote schedule. We will start humanities and science at 10:20 instead of 10:30. We will also alternate humanities and science instead of fitting them both into a 40-minute block. For example, Group 2 fifth and sixth graders will attend humanities on Monday and science on Tuesday and the opposite will be true for seventh and eighth-graders. Students will find our new Group 2 schedule on Google Classroom, effective Monday, October 12th. The Group 1 remote schedule will make the same change starting on Thursday, October 15th.

Conferences & Goals

The CVSD Update on October 2nd provided an overview of conferences for the fall:

All of our K-8 teachers will once again schedule a conference with their students’ families. As in past years, this conference may be scheduled on October 9th, but also may be scheduled any time between now and the end of the term.

Based on this guidance, Swift House facilitators will be holding conferences at the end of the trimester in November. If you would like to meet before there, please reach out to your child's core teacher.

In the meantime, Swifties have been developing Personal Learning Plan goals to focus on this fall. Please look for an email from your child with a summary of their PLP goals in the next week.

Jumprope & Work Completion

Swifties have gotten into a good routine of sending their weekly email home with a screenshot of their Google Classroom lists.
If we are seeing a pattern of missing or incomplete work, you will hear directly from your child's original core teacher as well.
CVSD is sending a general announcement regarding Jumprope in the near future. You can expect to see Jumprope scores updated when summative assessments have been added towards the end of Trimester One, as opposed to seeing daily assignments. Please email your child's teacher with further questions.

Swift House 2020 PLP Process

Swift’s Background (answering the ‘Why?’)

Swift House, a grade 5-8 team that is part of the upper house (middle school level) at the Williston Central School in Williston, Vermont, was formed in the school year 1990-91 as a response to planning sessions that were held beginning in 1988 to deal with projected rapid growth in school population in the town. Swift has a vision that has sustained nearly 30 years and has been utilizing personal learning plans and student portfolios since its opening year. The research on learning and individuals’ access to the learning process has been the guiding force behind our PLP system. We believe that setting transferable goals that can be applied in many areas of a child’s life, regularly reflecting on growth, and advocating for one's needs are both critical and essential to generating productive, well-rounded citizens.

Swift’s PLP Process (answering the ‘What?’)

This looks a little differently for 2020!

STEP 1: Goal setting.

This process begins during a child’s first year on Swift House. During our hopes and dreams conferences, we begin to know our students on a personal level and they begin developing ownership of their learning and a voice for themselves through this initial process. We typically leave our hopes and dreams meeting with some ideas generated from the students about goals that they would be interested in having as they relate to their strengths and challenges in different areas.

**2020 update**

Historically, we’ve used the VT Transferable Skills as our goal headings (Communication, Problem Solving, Informed & Integrative Thinking, Self-Direction, Citizenship). This year, we have streamlined our PLP, given the nature of our hybrid model, to three goals:

Communication
Problem Solving
Self-Direction/Citizenship

STEP 2: Creating an Online Portfolio

Students have each created their own Google Sites as their personal PLP portfolio. These sites will be the primary platform that students use for accessing their PLP and will also be used to drive our student-parent-teacher conferences at the end of the trimester.

STEP 3: Gathering Evidence and Weekly Reflections

Evidence: Once students identify their three goals, they will begin to input evidence that shows growth toward their goals. This evidence can take many forms such as pictures, documents, slide shows, videos, written reflections, etc. Students input evidence on their goal pages with a short description of how the evidence connects to their goal. We ask that students find at least 4 pieces of evidence for each goal (this includes evidence from in and out of school).

Weekly Reflection: Every Wednesday, students will have the opportunity to reflect on their progress or thinking about their goals. These reflections are quick blurbs that the students write to help them engage weekly with their goals and keep track of their progress and next steps.

STEP 4: End of Trimester Reflection

At the end of the trimester, students reflect on their overall progress on each of their goals and advocate for whether or not they’d like to keep or change their goals. They do this in writing or recording by answering these prompts.

STEP 5: Conference

At the end of each trimester, the students, guardians, and teachers conference together. During this time, the student leads the conference by going over their PLP and talking about their growth on the goals that they chose.

Here is a sample of a former student’s PLP site if you would like to see what a finished portfolio looks like.

*Please note that our 2020 sites will look slightly different based on the changes noted above.

Humanities News!!

Students in Humanities class are focusing on both Civics (on In-person learning days) and Narrative Writing (on Remote learning days)! In Civics students are learning all about the role of Governor in preparation for the Virtual Candidate Forum being held the week of October 26th and the election on November 3rd. Swifties are researching the issues facing Vermont this election year and how each of the candidates, Incumbent Phil Scott and Lt Governor David Zuckerman are campaigning with regard to the issues. 7/8 graders are in the process of composing detailed questions to ask both candidates for Governor, and 5/6 graders are making campaign posters to decorate Swift House.

On remote learning days students are working on the components of Narrative writing. They have spent time building a "tool box" for narrative writing, which includes: dialogue, plot, characters, setting and rising action, climax, conclusion. Writers have turned their focus to Figurative Language (Narrative Craft) this week and will continue next week as they add sensory detail, simile, metaphor, hyperbole, personification and onomatopoeia to their flash drafts. By the end of Trimester 1 each Swiftie will have a polished narrative to share with their family!