Message from Principal Mills

Dear TES Families,

I wanted to take a moment to honor and express our heartfelt gratitude to all the men and women who have served and continue to serve our country with unwavering bravery and dedication.

Our freedom and security are preserved by the sacrifices made by these incredible individuals. Their selflessness, courage, and commitment to our nation are qualities that we should celebrate and acknowledge, not just this week, but every day.

In honor of our Veterans, we held a special Veterans Day Assembly at TES. Joining us on this special occasion were Veterans Morgan Ogreen and Leland Hemgren from Dartmouth College who spoke at our assembly. It was certainly an honor to have them with us today.

An additional special thank you goes to Veteran Michael Abraham for his assistance with folding the flag, and for the other Veterans who were members of our audience.

As we reflect on the importance of honoring our heroes, I encourage you to continue these discussions at home with your children. It is an excellent opportunity to instill in them a deep respect for those who serve our country and a sense of appreciation for the freedoms we enjoy because of their sacrifices.

Thank you for your time and for your continued support in fostering these essential values in our children.

Best, 

Principal Mills

Mrs Rogers' Kindergarten Class

Both Kindergarten Classes had a PBIS Celebration in the outdoor classroom on Wednesday. We cooked hot dogs over the fire, had chips, hot chocolate, and roasted marshmallows too! Yum!

Ms Kate's 1/2 Class

Ms. Kate's class has continued to enjoy learning about Earth Science. We learned about the three rock types - sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic. To learn more about how sedimentary rocks form we made a "sediment jar" with materials from the playground and observed how it settled over the course of a week. To learn more about how metamorphic rocks are formed each student got three different colored starburst candies in a small plastic bag. They applied heat, pressure, and movement to the baggie until they got a brand new colored Starburst rock. We've also started exploring Plate Tectonics and how plates move by placing graham cracker "plates" on top of Cool-Whip "magma."

In addition to science, Ms. Kate's class has enjoyed learning about the 5 narrative elements: character, setting, motivation, problem and solution. We have found the narratives in several different picture books and used them to retell a story. We've written a class narrative about a stuffed bear having an adventure in our classroom. Students are now writing their own individual narratives about stuffies having some sort of adventure. 

Miss Audrey's 3/4 Class

The Great Mail Race is about to begin! Students in 3rd and 4th Grade have been working hard on choosing schools across the country and writing letters to fellow third and fourth grade classes. Our letters are written and envelopes are addressed and stuffed! I will be bringing the letters to the post office and then we wait for replies from peers in other states. The completion of this writing and social studies unit moves us into our next unit - The National Parks of The United States. Students have begun researching their chosen National Park. I am excited to see how this fun unit unfolds!

Students worked hard gardening with Cat last week putting our gardens to bed for the cold seasons. We are looking forward to science learning to continue with Cat indoors and outdoors as the snow falls over the next few months. 

In third grade math, we are diving into multiplication! This is a fun and important introductory unit as multiplication is one of the high leverage concepts taught in third grade. We begin teaching multiplication using groups, arrays, and repeated addition. This helps students understand what multiplication is and how it can be used in the real world. 

Our class has the responsibility of putting the flag up each morning and taking it down and folding it each afternoon. Because of this important responsibility, Tucker Dubuque was chosen from our class to help with the flag folding demonstration during our Veterans’ Day assembly on Thursday. He did a wonderful job!

Mrs Atherton's 3/4 Class



Workin' hard or hardly workin'? It's hard to tell by these photos, but I can assure you that the third and fourth graders in Mrs. Atherton's class are working just as hard as they're playing! 

Students in fourth grade math have completed the addition and subtraction (with regrouping) unit and have moved into multiplication. They are currently exploring area models to solve double digit by single digit multiplication. The focus of this unit is to expand student understanding of multiplication by learning to identify and compare factors and multiples. Students will apply what they know about factors and multiples to double digit by double digit equations, and division.

Third and fourth graders have been working hard to complete their literacy menus throughout the week. They have a list of tasks they need to complete, as well as a few tasks they can choose to complete. These tasks range from independent reading and 15 minutes of Lexia, to creative word sorts and engaging word games. Menus keep students focused and on track, while giving them the autonomy to choose when they do an activity. 

All of this hard work resulted in another earned class celebration. A few weeks ago students brought in remote control cars to rip around the playground. Students who have extra vehicles brought them in to share with students who do not own an RC car. The result was an epic afternoon of pump track, gaga pit, and basketball court racing!

Mrs Lacasse's 5/6 Class

Historians in Mrs. Lacasse's class have been working in groups to compare democracy in Ancient Athens to U.S. Democracy. We have just begun a cross class city-state project where groups are assigned a city-state they will be researching and presenting on! 

We have been busy preparing to facilitate the Veterans Day assembly. Students did an amazing job leading the assembly! 

Students also worked hard to reflect on their learning so far this year and set goals for themselves moving forward. They presented their reflections at their student led conferences. Well done 5th and 6th graders! 

Our class earned another celebration!! We enjoyed watching the movie Wonder and then thinking about how it compared to the book. While students enjoyed the movie, the majority felt the book was better and were glad we had read the book first!  

We have begun our next class read aloud Lightning Thief and are using that as a mentor text for analysis of text, to practice citing evidence of text and as a connection to our Ancient Greek studies.  

5th grade mathematicians wrapped up their unit on multiplying mixed numbers by whole numbers. We explored this concept through area models.  

Mr LaRoche's 5/6 Class

Mr. LaRoche’s class recently learned about Veterans Day and the history and meaning behind the holiday. We supported our all-school Veterans Day Assembly by reading a short book to the rest of the school that described what Veterans Day is and who veterans are. We also talked about the British and Canadian tradition of making and wearing poppies, as they celebrate a very similar holiday of Remembrance Day on this same day. Both Veterans Day and Remembrance Day can trace their origins back to the end of WWI, when the holiday was originally called Armistice Day to celebrate the end of that war.