CCS 7th and 8th Graders Work with the Clemmons Family Farm

CCS Omega students had a wonderful afternoon earlier this week! This visit was a collaboration around the Vermont Reads book March, Book 1, and was made possible by the Clemmons Family Farm with the support of a Schip's Grant.


Social Justice Workshop with Clemmons Family Farm

All seventh and eighth grade students participated in a workshop that touches on social justice include themes like identity, diversity, courage, and helping one another in the face of injustice. This work connects to the earlier field trip this year to CVU and the reading many did this summer of March (and other books). Four artists came in to share their own experiences and skills with the students.

Group 1
Mr. Desmont, Visual artist #1/Painting activity: The students engaged in a painting activity. He added in stories of his childhood in Haiti

Group 2
Miss Hannon, Visual artist #2/Drawing activity: The students did a line-drawing activity.

Group 3
Mr. Dyke, Musician/Musical storytelling activity: Mike brought some musical instruments and told stories of Jamaica and how music was used to combat poverty and achieve education for many young people growing up there

Group 4
Ms. Edsomwan, Poet/Poetry activity: She shared a presentation about her own story and did a poetry activity with the students.

Thanks to Karyn Lunde for the photos in this slideshow and to Heidi Huestis for sharing the details for this post. 

HCS Students Give Back

Hinesburg Community School recognizes three students who have gone above and beyond to help hungry children in our school community. As part of their Personalized Learning Plan project (PLP), seventh-grade students Ezra Dziurzynski, Kate Roberts and Sage Peterson have been working hard to raise money to purchase food for HCS students in need.

In addition to putting a posting in Front Porch Forum and canvassing neighborhoods in Hinesburg, they designed their own website to spread the word and raise money. They managed to collect an impressive $505.00 worth of community donations! The girls then went to Lantmans, where they purchased $330.00 worth of groceries. After separating the groceries into 15 equal bags, they brought the food items to the Hinesburg Food Shelf. The students donated the remaining $175.00 to HCS to make snack packs for needy students. What an awesome group of students!

Thank you to the folks at HCS for sharing this story with us. 

SCS Students Create a Digital Tour of the Shelburne Museum

It's never too late to share exciting happenings as a part of the CVSD story! This project happened a few weeks ago with the 6th graders at Shelburne Community School. Teacher Diana Rich contributed the following to help describe the work.

This was our 3rd year doing a project based learning partnership with the Shelburne Museum and we were supported by the museum educators, Mollie Davis and Holly Miller. 

The driving question for this project is: "How do we as historians create a digital tour that engages middle level students?" 

At the project launch, students experienced a "boring tour" and then they were presented with the task of creating a digital tour. The students gathered evidence and analyzed evidence from the museum and created a digital map using the platform ThingLink. 

Here is one of the projects created by 4 students. This was the first year that all 6th graders at SCS experienced this project.

New Murals At WCS

If you walk into Williston Central School any time soon, you're bound to notice some incredible new art greeting you. Teachers Julie Rogers and Sara Beeken submitted and were awarded a CVSD Innovation Grant to make this possible. Artist-in-residence, Sally Duback, worked with students to create these powerful, bright, and welcoming installations. Julie provided us with more information about the project and outlined the next phase.

The smaller of the 2 murals (4' x 6') is entitled "All Are Welcome"  and was completed by 3rd and 4th graders. It is located in the front entrance on the left as you enter the building. That space has particularly nice lighting and welcomes everyone into the building. The larger of the 2 murals (6' x 12') is just inside the back entrance to the building which gets a lot of traffic as well. That mural is entitled " Sustainable Vermont".

Students were asked to make drawings about the themes of diversity & inclusion and sustainability. Students began by discussing what the themes meant to them and then sketched designs. The student sketches were sent to Sally Duback who took bits and pieces from them, traced them onto good old fashioned overhead paper, and composed a cohesive piece with many students' work represented in each. The students took that design and using an overhead projector then copied the design onto the large wooden mural boards (1 board for the smaller one and 3 boards for the larger one). Then the painting began. First backgrounds and sky, then outlining and detail, all the while adding layers and shading. Finally they added shadows and touch up work. It was really an amazing process to watch. Sally is amazing!

We have an artist scheduled for January and another in March which center around photography and kinetic art. There is a possible 3rd artist but we haven't worked out the details for that as of yet. 

Here are some photos of the work in progess. Go see these murals; they are stunning!

Harvest of the Month

The CVSD Food Service program has incorporated Vermont Harvest of the Month into its menus. From their website: "Vermont Harvest of the Month is a program run by three nonprofit organizations in the Green Mountain state to promote seasonal eating, encourage healthy diets and support the local economy. We provide ready to go materials for the classroom, cafeteria, and community that promotes the use of local, seasonal Vermont foods."

The November food is sweet potato! Our food service directors will share information and special additions to the menus throughout the month. We encourage you to supplement the learning and recipes at home as well. Here are some tips and recipes for home use. 

You can also visit the November Sweet Potato page from Vermont Harvest of the Month to view additional recipes. 

    

Creamy Sweet Potato Apple Soup

** Have you seen the updated menu page for our K-8 schools on the website? Nutrition and allergen information is now available for the main meals! We'll share more about that soon.

Spelling Success!

We'd like to congratulate of our middle school spelling teams on their recent accomplishments.

Hinesburg's 5th-6th grade team

Hinesburg's 6th grade spellers won their regional spelling competition.

Williston's 7th-8th grade team won their regional spelling competition. They came back from behind to win by 2 points.

Both teams compete in the State Finals on November 16th in Montpelier. 

Williston's 7th-8th grade team

Artistic Contributions to the Community

Last Friday we were walking from the school district's offices in Shelburne across the parking lot to the new Shelburne town library. We were going there to hang flyers for the upcoming Community Budget Meeting on October 7th. (7:00 pm, CVU room 160!) The Pierson Library just completed an entire rebuild and it opened a week ago. It's a beautiful building.

As we got closer to the library, we spotted a teacher from the Shelburne Community School, Vasanthi Meyette, along with a group of 6th grade students. They were painting on the pavement in front of the new library's front door! Here's the story that Vasanthi shared about what was underway: 

We met Kristen from the Winooski Natural Resources Conservation District last year during our Ecosystems/Water Quality Unit. She came to talk about runoff/storm water and the pollution from our daily lives and it’s affect on our local waterways. This fall Rethink Runoff sponsored a storm drain mural art contest with the Stream Team. The murals were to be painted in Shelburne! We decided to enter. Students worked alone or in partnerships, explored the Rethink Runoff website, and looked at other storm drain murals. They got inspired and drew some amazing designs and came up with many catchy slogans. We eagerly awaited the news about our designs. Finally, we found out that our designs had not been chosen, BUT, one of the artists whose design was chosen needed at least 50 community members to participate in painting her design! Kristen thought of my 6th graders. Julie Holmes, the artist, is a former SCS parent and now a CCS parent. She graciously connected with us and invited us to collaborate on the mural. She visited us earlier in the week so that we could talk about design, her vision and practice painting water drops. Today was the highlight when we actually got to leave our mark! We are so lucky that it is at the library for all to see and for students to show their families!

After that, we talked with Kristen to hear more about this and the partnership between the Winooski Natural Resource Conservation District and the Department of Public Works. We found out that another mural was being painted outside of the Shelburne Country Store practically across the street. We went over there and found two CVU students hard at work on a beautiful fall day. Heatheranne Lee also won the contest and her friend Muriel Spell was helping her paint the design.

We are thrilled to see students from CVSD contributing artistically and making a difference in our communities. Go to Shelburne to see the finished products!