Friday, September 8, 2017

Special Message from School Nurses to Fusion Parents

Hello parents.

According to the Field trip Emergency Information and Medical form some of you submitted recently, you indicated that your child will require medication(s) to be administered during this field trip.
    -  Any prescription medication not taken in school must be delivered in the original container with written permission from the prescribing medical provider (MD order) and the parent.

    - Over the counter medication (i.e.Tylenol, Advil, Allegra, Zyrtec, Lactaid, Claritin, etc ) must be in the original container with written parental permission & instruction (dose/time of day) - this can be emailed to me for your convenience.

Please bring in the above items to our health office no later than
TUESDAY, SEPT. 12, 2017 MORNING.

You are receiving this email because we have not yet received the MD order and/or the medication as of today. Your child may not be able to attend the field trip without these medicines and orders.

Your child's medical provider could fax us the order (fax no: 802-899-4281). The following is a link to our school district's medication permission forms:


If you plan to chaperone, you do not need to provide our health office with the medication/MD order/written permission since you will be the one to administer the medication.

Please let us know if you have questions/concerns via email or phone.

Thanks in advance!

Ainee & Tina
BRMS School Nurses

Fusion Communication: September 8

Hi all,
We are in full field trip planning mode.  Thanks to all who have contributed to this effort so far and to everyone for what you will do this weekend:) Please check in with your child about what they need to bring and contribute to this effort; mr. Pless will be available this weekend to help if your child can’t remember.

Calendar
September 13 - Two Hour Delay
September 14-15: Overnight Field Trip
September 26 - Open House (generally starts around 6:30pm)
Early to mid-October - Tentative field trip to Burlington
October 11 - Two Hour Delay
October 26 - Fusion Sponsored School Dance
November 8 - Two Hour Delay

Reading
All students were asked to get a book this week (from the library or brought in from home). Books should be brought to all study halls and LA class each day.

Overnight Field Trip
**Every student has been assigned a camping family and has been working to create meals for the trip.  Please check in with your child about what is needed for supplies, food for this camping group.
Other information:
  • A small typo on the permission form caused some families to underpay - many apologies. The field trip fee is $25. Mr. Pless will be in touch with affected families this weekend.
  • That said, scholarships are available. And a big thank you to families that donated extra to help with the scholarships and defray chaperone fees.
  • And we have enough chaperones to make the field trip a go!
  • Chaperones - an email will go out this evening about meal plans.  If you did not attend the chaperone meeting, please arrange to speak with Mr. Pless before the trip.
  • Groups are putting together a list of supplies they need for the field trip. Please ask your child and see what they have have volunteered to bring.  This includes:
    • Food for meals
    • Two burner, propane stoves
    • Hard, sided coolers (two per group)
  • Please make sure your child brings everything to the field trip that they might need - every child was given a packing list (which is also attached to this email).
Schedule for equipment to arrive at BRMS:
  • Personal camping equipment: Monday - Wednesday morning (placed in Mr. Pless’s room with name taped on each bag)
Group Equipment: Dropped off Mornings or afternoons at end of school
  • Stoves: Monday-Tuesday in Mr. Pless’s room (name labeled in tape)
  • Coolers: Monday - Wednesday in Health/Wellness storage room (name on tape)
  • Food: Monday-Wednesday in Health/Wellness storage room
    • Ready-made foods on Thursday morning only
    • Two Lunches on Thursday morning only


Computer Contracts
The computer contracts went home this week.  A student must return their contract before they will be allowed to take home their laptop home.

Curriculum Updates
LA: Our focus for the week was to get reading routines and expectations in place. Students were introduced to the reading log plan for this year.

You can view the reading log/journal plan here: Reading Journal Directions/Expectations
Other resources made available to students in class and on Schoology in the Reading Toolkit folder:

Students will be assessed every other week to check that they are taking and applying feedback consistently. Their end of trimester score will be based that was made along the writing about reading progression (see link above). Any questions, please feel free to check in with me!

8 - Investigative Journalism: In preparation for this narrative/information writing unit, we have spent some time looking at narrative non-fiction articles from Scholastic Scope magazine. Conversations have revolved around journalists’ process for researching and writing an article, finding a focus, and choosing a text structure to guide the reader through a topic. We will use some of these articles as mentor texts when the time comes for students to write their own investigative piece.

7 - Building a Community of Readers and Writers: Students have been working on their own or in small groups to create Book Trailers. The goal was to create a video that would get others excited about reading and to convince each other to try new books. Next week we will begin to look at schoology and other LA routines to get set up for the year. Next up: Traditional Information Writing Mini Unit.

Math
7 - Students started off with YouCube’s Week of Inspirational Math to help develop group work skills and further their growth-mindset in math. We will be starting the regular curriculum next week beginning with the geometry unit, Shapes and Designs.

8 - Students started with some select activities from YouCube’s Week of Inspirational Math to get back into the practice of group work and developing a growth mindset. We jumped right into the curriculum today defining slope in linear relationships. We will continue to explore slope-intercept form of linear equations to build skills for our first unit, Thinking With Mathematical Models. This unit explores modeling linear and inverse real world relationships with graphs, tables, and equations and finished with statistical analysis of bivariate data.


Science
7 - Students are beginning their study of life science by learning how to observe and identify common tree species that live on the school grounds and at home. We are reviewing specific vocabulary and features of leaves that help distinguish one species from another.  Next week, we will put our identification into context by comparing species diversity of different regions.

8 - Students in 8th grade have been discussing the phases of the moon and eclipses.  They practiced developing and critiquing models that explain how these phenomenon occur.  The weather has not cooperated for completing nightly lunar logs, but we plan to incorporate regular observations of the night sky beginning next week.

SS
7 - Like everyone else, social studies has been a lesson in expectations and routines.  Ask your children about the map activity, where they created maps - with expected and unexpected behaviors - of the room.  Also, much of the organization for the field trip took place during social studies time.
8 In class we are currently discussing the topic of borders and what the word means to us. We have discussed some of the borders in our world that have a good or a bad impact and their purpose.

A thank you to Carly Jenkins and Kayla Popeleski for providing some of the writing in this newsletter. Their participation is an outgrowth of the Connections class Ms. Windhausen and Mr. Pless are teaching on Fridays.

Thanks and have a great weekend,
The Fusion Team