Today we held our last assembly of the year where we honored volunteers and said a farewell to staff who are moving on to new adventures. We thanked guest teachers Rosemary Nugent and Ashley Naglie. We could not have gotten through the year without them! We honored PTO volunteers Erica Ingalls, Kristy Harris, Nina Zabriskie, Ashley Tommila, and Shannon McNulty. Other volunteers celebrated were Rick Seavey, Arlene Soule, Carol Lunan, and Laure Cass-Griggs. We thank you so much for your time and commitment to AES. We said farewells to teachers who are moving on to new opportunities. We will miss Katherine Lescarbeau, Molly Moore, and Tom Morris.

Next week is the LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL!

June 13th - Field Day

June 16th - Step up day

June 17th - 4th grade sendoff 10:30am

June 17th - noon dismissal for the year

Thank you so much for your encouragement and support this year! I wanted to direct your attention to an article that some of the teachers and I wrote about our professional development with Universal Design for Learning over the past 4 years. It was published by the NH Department of Education, and I am proud to share it with you as an attachment to this newsletter. You can also find the story at this website. Thanks for taking a look!

Have a wonderful weekend. Don't forget FIELD DAY on Monday. See the detailed information about it below.

Stephanie

No bird study is complete without owls, so Mrs. Moore's class is ending the year learning about them. The students already knew a lot about owls (probably in part to the Harris Center presentation during the NH Animal Symposium), but they also developed questions to build upon their prior knowledge, or about things that they didn't know and were curious about. After reading about owls and watching several videos they were able to answer all their questions and deepen their knowledge. Did you know that owls have special feathers? The ones around their face enhance sound, and their wing feathers are silent so they can catch their prey. After learning about an owl's pellets, the 3rd graders did a virtual dissection before moving on to the real thing. It was a little gross, but also very interesting and the students worked to identify bones and thus the small mammal the owl that their pellet had come from had eaten.