WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16th, 2020
LETTER FROM THE PRINCIPAL AND ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL December 15, 2020 Dear St. Albans City School Families, We hope your family is doing well and looking forward to the Holiday Break. We will not be in session from Wednesday, December 23rd through Sunday, January 3rd. Currently, we anticipate being back in session on Monday, January 4th. At this time, multiple family gatherings and travel outside of the state will continue to require that students and staff need to quarantine and test to return to school. We appreciate the sacrifice that our families and staff are making to keep our school community safe. If you are unsure of the current regulations or have any questions, you can reach out to any of the members of our COVID team; which includes our Administrators, Nurses, or Home/School Coordinator. Next week we have school Monday and Tuesday, then we will leave for the Holiday Break. To support families with food over the break, we are sending home a bulk package Monday for all families PreK-8 and Friday for Green Families in grades PreK and grades 7-8. This will be in addition to the meals normally sent home this week (Monday and Thursday). Our Virtual Academy families can pick up their bulk package Monday from 10:00am to 1:00pm. This bulk package includes a jar of peanut butter. For families with known peanut allergies, we will send home sun-butter. For all others, we will send home peanut butter. This package will also include a half-gallon of milk, chocolate milk, bread, fruits and vegetables, cereal, breakfast rounds, Sun chips, tuna, American cheese, and mac and cheese. Finally, we had another positive COVID case last week. All of those that were affected were contacted, tested (or quarantined), and are back. We will continue to practice mitigation procedures. By remaining diligent to our procedures, wearing masks correctly and consistently, staying in our pods, remaining 6 feet apart as much as possible, and washing hands, we can continue to keep our school family safe. Also, we must stay home when we feel sick - even if in past years we would not have done so. When we have a case, our team works quickly with the Vermont Department of Health to get the contact tracing correct and communicated to all affected. When we call to inform families they are kind and understanding. This is not an easy time for any of us, yet it feels good to know that we are working together. Again, we appreciate the support of our families and staff in keeping our school family safe and our school open. We wish our school family a safe and healthy Holiday Season. Joan and Stacie |
| IMPORTANT DATES DECEMBER Bottle Drive for Homelessness. Bring bottles to school on Thursday and Friday, or drop-off on Sunday, December 20. 12:00 - 2:00 PM. Winter Break - No School Wednesday, December 23rd - Friday, January 1st. JANUARY Winter Break continued - No School Friday, January 1st. MRUSD Board Meeting Wednesday, January 6th. 6:00 - 9:00 PM. Zoom Meeting link at https://www.maplerun.org/o/mrusd/events when available. Martin Luther King Jr. Day - No School Monday, January 18th. Inservice - No School Tuesday, January 19th. MRUSD Board Meeting Wednesday, January 20th. 6:00 - 9:00 PM. Zoom Meeting link at https://www.maplerun.org/o/mrusd/events when available. |
BOTTLE DRIVE TO HELP WITH HOMELESSNESS This year for my How I can Change the World project with Ms.K I decided to help with world homelessness. For this school project if we wanted to we are allowed to do a fundraiser. I thought because it was around the holidays I would help out. I came up with an idea for a bottle drive. With the bottles that are collected, I will go to my local bottle donation center. With that money, I will buy toothbrushes, hats, gloves, blankets, food, etc. to donate to the homeless. If you would like to help, you could donate bottles from around your house. I am planning to do the bottle drive on December 20. From 12 pm-2 pm. I will be in front of the school that day so you can just drive by and drop them off. If it is easier for you, at arrival or departure on Thursday or Friday you can drop bottles off in boxes we supply by the bus side and the flagpole/front entrance sides of the building. I would appreciate it if you could help out if you are able to. Thanks so much! ampeak@maplerun.org |
MONTH OF CODE CONTENT Artificial Intelligence is one aspect of computer science that is being explored in a lot of detail. Watch one of these videos to learn a little about what Artificial Intelligence is and then try out the Google QuickDraw application to see first hand how it can work! What is Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NsilUpnRY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_uwKZIAeM0 Now that you know a little about AI, try this application! It is a quick link with no installation required, and you can learn by playing for as little as five minutes! Have fun! Can a neural network learn to recognize doodling? Help teach it by adding your drawings to the world’s largest doodling data set, shared publicly to help with machine learning research. https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/ Want to learn more? Here are some more videos about AI, Check out https://code.org/ai#ai-videos Want an additional coding activity? Help teach a computer to recognize the difference between trash and fish to help clean up the oceans in this coding challenge: https://studio.code.org/s/oceans/stage/1/puzzle/1 |
CODING PRESENTATIONS ON WEDNESDAY Month of Code Presenters Wednesday, December 16th **Please go to the zoom meeting a couple of minutes early, we will be starting right at the scheduled time** Grades: 4-8 Simba 3D Modeling 11:00am 3D Modeling with Simba, we will talk about where we can use 3D modeling in our everyday life. How even the most complicated models can be broken down to basic shapes. Learn some cool Tinkercad tricks and tips, and build our own 3D day of code model! Grades: 7/8 Josh "Necro" Content Creation 1:00pm He will start with how he came across the idea of content creation by watching YouTube videos and justin.tv before it became Twitch He will talk a little bit of what my day to day looks like as a content creator He will also take a moment to highlight mental health as doing the same thing all day every day can take a mental toll pretty quickly and then cover things he does to counteract that. Video games are fun but isolation and sitting around can hurt mental state. There will be time for questions! |
PICTURES VOYAGERS ART - HABERMAN Here are some of the finished graffiti art pictures created by 6th grade Voyagers in Ms. Haberman art class. Their work was posted in Ms. Chisholm’s classroom. The brilliant colors used in the name lettering really stands out against the dark “brick-wall-effect” background. 12-15-2020 TRIUMPH - ALBRECHT These 6th graders were quietly writing and editing in Ms. Albrech’s classroom on Monday, 12-14-2020. Link to 22 Pictures | ||||||||||
NEW LIBRARY BOOKS TO CONSIDER READING. Link to the list of books highlighted in previous announcements. |
MENU BREAKFAST
LUNCH
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WEATHER EXPECTED FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK |
BIRTHDAYS DECEMBER 14TH - 20TH
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