November 2024 - Posts
Good afternoon, RJ Grey Families:
I hope you are doing well. As I am writing, it is Thursday morning and I am sitting in an ELA class, covering for a teacher who needs to be somewhere else for a bit. The students are quietly working on their "quick write" assignment, where they must describe a tradition that they follow and its purpose. A few students were stuck on what to write, so we did a quick brainstorm where students talked about annual travel plans, who cooks what for Thanksgiving, and their favorite ways to watch a sports event. I know that these students all have important and memorable traditions that matter to them - getting them to write about these traditions is the work of the day. The tradition I mentioned during the brainstorming is that my family always gets our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. Given how late Thanksgiving is this year, we may break our tradition and get it this weekend! Our usual go-to spot for picking out a tree has permanently closed, so why not break two traditions this year?
A tradition at RJ Grey is that we host grade-level assemblies in the gym on the day before Thanksgiving. This student-only assembly features our band, chorus, and orchestra students as they each perform a piece or two. Along with a few student speakers, a turkey drawing contest, and an all-out relay race with a frozen turkey, pie, cans of cranberry sauce, and potatoes on spoons, the assembly is a great time! We ask students to wear colors representing their team (7 Red, 8 Blue, etc). We then dismiss at 11:10 before we head off to hopefully enjoy some time with family and friends over the long weekend.
Our annual school musical will be coming up right after Thanksgiving, with shows at 7 pm on December 5, 6, 7, and at 2 pm on Sunday, December 8. Frozen, Jr is sure to be a great show. I hope you can join us to see our student actors, singers, dancers, and crew. Tickets will be sold at the door or after school on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 2:45 - 3:30 pm. Tickets for adults cost $15 each and $10 for students. We accept cash or checks.
If your student takes part in any of our after-school clubs or activities, please remember that we are collecting a $50 activity fee for participation in an after-school program. If you've already paid this fee, thank you. If you haven't paid yet, you'll start hearing from us next week about the fee. You are welcome to send in cash or check with your student to their club advisor, or you can pay online. Thank you in advance for your help.
Finally, if your student is applying to a private school for next year, we want to make sure you are aware of the procedures for doing so. Please find the procedure for doing so HERE on the Counseling website. The first step is completing the counseling department's form at least 20 days before the school application is due. When completing the private school's application, be sure to list our Registrar's name and contact info (Kerry Lewis, [email protected]) for transcript requests.
Take care and have a Happy Thanksgiving,
Jim
jmarcotte
Good afternoon, RJ Grey Families:
I hope you are doing well. This will be a brief message this week.
We have several different cycles of grading and changing classes here at RJ Grey. At the end of October, we moved from Quarter 1 to Quarter 2 for our PE and Health classes and many of our Grey Block electives. Hopefully, your children have talked positively about their new classes. In late January, we'll wrap up our Exploratory classes, which are classes like Art, Digital Literacy, and Engineering, for example. We are flexible in scheduling our off-team classes to make sure that students are exposed to a wide variety of options in their classes and try to keep the classes long enough to lead to significant learning. Coming up before Thanksgiving (Nov 26), we will end Trimester 1, which is for our on-team classes. These on-team classes (think Math, English, etc.) will lead to students earning a letter grade on a report card, issued in December.
Over the past few weeks in Advisory, we have been talking about gratitude. Last week, we watched a brief video that highlighted the importance of gratitude. We've challenged students to keep track of things they are grateful for. Things like family, friends, and pets at home were common among our student responses. I continue to be grateful for a very hard-working set of teachers, a really kind set of students, and a supportive set of families. Thank you for your continued support of our work at RJ Grey.
Take care and have a good weekend,
Jim
jmarcotte
Good afternoon, RJ Grey Families:
Judging by the volume of cars in our parking lots on Tuesday, I'm sure many of you came to RJ Grey to vote this week. While you were voting, our staff was in our school working collaboratively and learning together. The professional learning day is a great opportunity for us to work together on our collective teaching practices. Teachers worked with their departments on developing common assessments, analyzing data about student learning, continuing to develop our workshop groups, and more. This professional day was one well spent.
Today and yesterday, our 8th graders participated in team assemblies where they met the principal and other staff members from Acton-Boxborough Regional High School. The high school presentation highlighted course offerings, extracurricular activities, and the general school experience at AB. While the start of ninth grade is still far off, we use the fall to expose students to their options for high school. We will talk more about high school courses and registration in the spring, but in the meantime, check in with your 8th grader to see what they learned about ABRHS this week.
This week, I have reminded students about our expectations for after school at RJ Grey. As your child makes plans for their afternoons, it is helpful for you to be aware of what we expect, as well. Here is the text of our morning announcement: A reminder to all students about staying in the building after 2:36 each day. Only students who stay for extra help with a teacher, or for a club or activity, are allowed to stay at school after 2:36. Any other student without a school obligation must leave school at dismissal. Any student whose extra help or club has ended will remain in the Library to be picked up. Additionally, students are not allowed to return to school after leaving to be picked up or take the late bus. With limited supervision after school, we need to be mindful of the number of students in the building at that time. Thank you for your help with this.
Over 100 of our students and staff have already given hours of their time to put together our fall musical, Frozen, Jr. Our shows will run December 5 - 8. I hope you'll mark your calendars for that weekend and purchase tickets when we release info about them in the coming weeks. I am regularly amazed by what our students are able to do in our theater productions - I hope you'll spread the word about our upcoming show - it will be a great one!
We have published our winter athletic season tryouts on our school webpage. If your child is interested in basketball or cheer, please make sure to review the tryout procedures and pay attention to two important things: Sign up on Family ID, and have a recent physical exam on file with our Health Office. Our winter sports tend to bring out a lot of interested players and we usually need to make cuts in order to create appropriately-sized teams. Thank you for helping to set expectations if your child is planning to try out for a team. We are still in the process of finding an interested and qualified coach for our Cheer Team. If you, or someone you know, would be interested in talking about this opportunity, please reach out directly to Jon Duclos, our athletic director, at [email protected].
There is an interesting webinar from Cartwheel Care next Wednesday evening. I invite you to learn more about it and possibly attend:
Title: Can We Talk? How to have conversations with kids & teens about mental health
Date: 11/13/2024
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Zoom webinar
Registration: LINK
Description: Join Cartwheel and The NAN Project for a free live webinar that will cover mental health questions that kids & teens have but are often afraid to ask, and suggestions for how caregivers can safely and appropriately respond when mental health topics come up in their homes.
Happy Veteran's Day to all, especially those who have served our country. I appreciate your service.
Take care and have a good weekend,
Jim
jmarcotte
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