Volume 2, Issue 1
Discovery Day A Big Hit
New to AECS this year is Discovery Day. This scienceoriented hands-on learning day seeks to make the outdoors
our classroom. We are lucky to have retired Ashland High
School science teacher Bruce Prentice as the leader of Discovery Day, which will take place most Thursdays throughout the year.
Thursday, September 4th was the first Discovery Day. Mr.
Prentice took some students with him into the adjacent
school forest to set live traps for small mammals. Within a
few hours, we captured a long-tailed weasel, two chipmunks, a vole, a mouse, frogs and toads. Mr. Prentice then
brought the animals back into the classroom and the students weighed and measured them. Students had a chance
to closely inspect our little classroom visitors and learn
about them with wonder and awe.
September 12, 2014
When to Contact
the LSI Office
The LSI office serves
AECS as well. Please
contact both the office and your student’s advisor with
any bus
number changes,
early releases, absences, and similar
issues pertaining to
your child. Calls to
the school during
the day are best
made to the office,
as phones cannot
always be answered
in classrooms.
“This is all my
daughter has
been talking
about all day.
Great job to
Bruce for getting
the kids' attention and keeping
them involved.”
—AECS Parent
Leadership Training with
Doug Liphart
This week, students received a two hour training on
leadership and working effectively as a group from
Doug Liphart of University of Wisconsin Extension.
Mr. Liphart led the students through a number of engaging activities to get them thinking about how they
can develop their own leadership skills. Highlights included a consensus building activity on how to construct a multi-ingredient trail mix that works for everyone in the group, an “arm wrestling for M&M’s” activity that taught the value of thinking collectively instead of just individually, and a brainstorming session
on what qualities make a good leader.
Goal Setting
Goal-setting is an emphasis
for us this year. We will set
goals each week for math
and English Language Arts
to help to focus our study.
We will set personal goals
to give us something to
strive for. Students were introduced to goal setting this
week, and worked in small
groups to create large towers using just dry spaghetti
and marshmallows. They
came up with some great
creations, as you see below.
What to ask your students about this week:
What are the qualities that make a good leader? What kind of skills do leaders have?
What kinds of mammals live in the forest around AECS? What is 9 times 8? (and any
other multiplication table questions). What are the Habits of Mind? What personal
goal do you have for next week? What is a school goal you have for the year? What
book are you reading now? How can we keep tract of the books you read?