The Eagle Express
Antrim Elementary School Monthly Newsletter April 2019
A Note from Mrs. Syre-Hager
Put on your dancing shoes, AES - NHDI week is coming next week. The New Hampshire Dance Institute will spend a week with us from April 1st - April 5th. (Sneakers are a must for next week.) We will culminate our fun with a performance at GBS on Friday evening at 6. Hope to see you all there!
An update about our diagnostic review: We are still in the middle of the fact gathering stage as we work closely with WestEd, our diagnostic consultants. We have presented artifacts, data, and information to WestEd, and they will be conducting interviews in mid-April to a cross-section of our stakeholders. Once this diagnostic review process is done in May, we will be writing an improvement plan that will consist of a few well thought out long term and short term goals with action steps. Once we have those written, we will present the plan to the larger community. As promised, I will keep you posted every step of the way.
AES has been a part of the NH UDL (Universal Design for Learning) Innovation Network this year. The UDL team and I participated in rich professional development to explore and deepen our understanding of the UDL guidelines. We will continue our work with UDL as we bring more teachers onto the team next year. Below is a video that describes UDL using a bowling analogy. I hope you enjoy it.
News from the Library Learning Commons
Communication is a vital aspect in order to maintain a positive team investment between community and school. Please remember to check take home folders, look for notes, maintain expectations, volunteer, and stay involved. Check your teacher/school's website, check out our Twitter presence, follow PTO, and check for notices on our new monitor in the front lobby.
AES Coding Club Success
PE & Wellness is Strikingly Great
Notes from Nurse Mellon
What is the school Wellness Policy? We have a description of our district Wellness Policy on our AES website under Wellness or see the link below.
Birthdays are a very special time to honor and celebrate students on their special day. These celebrations can be difficult for the students who have severe food allergies or medical conditions that prohibit them from partaking in food items sent in.
Our staff will work to celebrate your child’s big day. We will follow our guidelines in a way that models some wellness options for the children. Here are some alternatives for birthday celebrations that allow each child to feel special:
Have the class write and present stories about the birthday student.
Have the class prepare a list of everything they like about the birthday child.
Let the birthday child pick a story for story time or a game for recess.
Celebrate with an art project.
Celebrate the birthday with an extra recess/game time.
Celebrate with a game and let the birthday student be the captain or referee.
Please take a moment to look at the website and if you need a paper copy see Sarah in the front office.
For more information: http://aes.convalsd.net/parents-and-students/wellness/Cooking with Children
By Robin Gregg
As spring emerges, seed catalogs arrive in the mail and many families begin to plan their vegetable and flower gardens. We are fortunate in the Antrim/Bennington area to have Tenney Farm as a source of local, fresh vegetables, as well as many farmers markets. Area food pantries often have fresh local vegetables among their offerings during harvest season. One way to take advantage of the coming fresh food bounty and to build family connections and memories is to cook and eat family meals with your child(ren).
Children can be involved in growing and picking vegetables, and they also can help to select healthy ingredients at the local farm stand, grocery store, or farmers market. They can help to wash and prepare the ingredients for a particular dish or meal. They can read recipes (and younger children can listen to an adult or older sibling reading the recipe), use their math skills to measure ingredients, use sequencing skills to follow the steps, and can have fun mixing things together. And, of course, they can enjoy eating the final product and enjoying time with the whole family during family meals, sharing their experiences, thoughts and feelings.
Cooking together and sitting down for a family meal nurtures the whole family, builds memories and positive family connections, and nourishes everyone’s bodies and spirits.
For more information and inspiration and for information about the many benefits of family meals:
https://www.stresshealth.org/tag/the-family-dinner-project/
https://www.stresshealth.org/cooking-with-kids-a-recipe-for-family-bonding/
Kindergarten is Springing into Spring
In math we are learning how to add. We have been using number bonds to create addition number stories. Now we are learning how to write number sentences with the equal and addition signs.
In literacy we are almost done with reviewing all the letterlanders! We are starting to learn what happens when certain letters come together on words like sh, th, ch, ve, ng, and ck.
Grade 1 Naturalists
First graders had an awesome field trip to the Harris Center to learn about porcupines! We heard the story of a day in a porcupine's life from naturalist Janet Altobello, while we looked at all the items on the story cloth and thought about what the porcupine might be eating, how it gets that food, and which animals might be its predators. We looked closely at porcupine quills, molds of its pawprints, skulls, teeth, even scat! We went outside with naturalist Susie Spikol to learn and practice the three warning signs a porcupine gives to a predator: Stomping its feet, making a noise, and making a stink. There was lots of laughing as we pretended to be porcupines--even using our imaginary tail full of quills to whack the predator! We made dens for our paper porcupines by searching for pieces of twigs, hemlock and white pine needles, and acorns to provide food, and choosing a good spot between the rocks in a stone wall, or under a larger rock.
Grade 2 Loves Fairy Tales
This month in 2nd grade, students dove deep into the world of fairy tales! We read about evil wolves, trolls under bridges and a pigs who didn’t make very wise choices about building materials for their houses. We learned about the elements of a fairy tale and then read several versions of the same story so that we could find similarities and differences. Both classes had the opportunity to work with Jeannie Connolly from the Arts Integration program to create Kamishibai stories of famous fairy tales. Kamishibai is a Japanese form of story telling where the illustrations are fed through a small, wooden theater and the words are on the back of each illustration so the audience is only seeing the pictures. Mrs. Fletcher’s class worked together to illustrate and retell The Three Billy Goats Gruff and Ms. Lawler’s class created their own version of Little Red Riding Hood. The students loved having the opportunity to share their story with the other class!
Grade 3 News
Third grade would like to thank everyone who came to Biography Night. Students were very proud of their work and enjoyed showing it to everyone. We had over 100 friends and families come to our big night!
Our next big event is the New Hampshire State Assessment. Third and fourth grade students will be taking this test from April 8th to the 12th. The assessment measures students’ understanding of the Common Core Standards for each grade level. You can encourage students to try their best, and wish them good luck when you see them!
While students are not testing we’ll be exploring and learning about owls. These incredible birds of prey have many adaptations that we’ll discover. One of these is the regurgitation of pellets! In order to see what owls are eating we’ll dissect pellets and examine the tiny bones we find. This is an exciting way to continue learning while we take the big test.
April and May will also bring us back to McCabe Forest for our red-backed salamander monitoring site. We started this project with the Harris Center in the fall, and will need to monitor it three times each spring and fall. Our salamander counts will be given to researchers from SPARCNet where they will compile counts from the eastern United States and Canada. We’re excited to be a part of this research.
Grade 4 Hosts
In March, 4th graders were leaders at the Antrim Community Supper. We created table decorations, decorated place mats, and there was a great turn out from the students to set-up, serve, and clean up. It was an awesome event and chance to represent our school!
In April in Literacy, we will keep working on writing summaries. A summary is a brief overview of a text that includes the main ideas, and leaves out unnecessary details. We are using the two-column notes we write to help us with summarizing. You use summarizing when you tell about your day, write a review, or share enthusiastically that awesome movie you watched the other day!
MUZART NEWS
Students in all grade levels have been creating three dimensional art this month in class with Mrs. Storro. We learned that our 3D art has height, width and depth. We have also been practicing our Studio Habits of Mind by developing our craft, stretching our ideas and persisting through challenges! We have explored an art buffet of materials including clay, beads, cardboard, recycled plastic, pipe cleaners, fabric, textured paper, yarn and more!
Our second grade artists will have their Louise Nevelson artworks on display at the Antrim Town Library for the month of April!
SAVE THE DATE
Our AES fourth grade students will perform
“A Day at the Circus”
on Thursday, June 13, 2019
From 6:00pm to 7:00pm
at the Antrim Town Hall!
Stephanie Syre-Hager
Email: ssyre-hager@conval.edu
Website: aes.convalsd.net
Location: 10 School Street, Antrim, NH, USA
Phone: 603-588-6371
Twitter: @aes_ssh