Good afternoon,
My umbrella didn’t seem like quite enough protection during the morning drop-off this morning! My shoes are just about dry, and it’s 12:21! I hope you’ve all fared well with our dreary weather these last few days.
Tomorrow afternoon, we will host our annual March Madness basketball tournament. We expect that lots of our students will stay to watch their classmates compete in a tournament of back-to-back games. A few things make this event ideal: it’s immediately after school, it’s wrapped up before dinner time, and doesn’t have the social pressure of a dance or an evening event. If your child is joining us, I know they’ll have a great time! We also welcome you to pick them up at 4:30. The pick-up can get pretty busy, so my advice is to park in our lot and let your child know where you are, rather than trying to drive through the front circle. Major thanks to everyone who has volunteered to donate snacks for the tournament!
March Madness means several things at RJ Grey this year. When we planned for our second year of Advisory, we wanted to do something fun and different for the month of March. During each advisory session in March, we are planning school-wide activities where individual advisories accrue points for their group. On Tuesday, we played head-to-head Pictionary with two teams competing in a single classroom. My group tied (21-21) with Ms. Nielsen’s group. Today, each group participated in school-wide Trivia. This message will go out after our game, so I feel okay sharing a few questions:
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What number do you get if you take the number of keys on a piano, and subtract the number of strings on an acoustic guitar? (82)
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In which state was Taylor Swift born? (Pennsylvania)
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What color sits directly opposite blue on the color wheel? (Orange)
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When Jason Kelce just retired from the Eagles, what was his jersey number? (62)
It was fun to see which students had an expertise and confidence in certain questions! In my small group of 8, we scored 8 correct out of 14. None of us knew the combined (rounded) populations of Acton and Boxborough from the 2020 Census…30,000!
We administered an iReady Reading diagnostic to our students yesterday. We use iReady as a way to check in on our students’ progress in reading and math two times during the year. I used the morning announcements to encourage students to do their best work so that we can see how much they’ve grown. I also told them that since it’s a dynamic assessment, the test is designed for them to get 50% of the questions wrong! We share this info so that students don’t spend hours on a question that is well beyond their current grade level. I am pleased with the effort that students put into their work yesterday, and we’ll repeat this on Tuesday for our math assessment.
Upcoming Dates
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Fri, March 8: Trimester 2 Ends
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Fri, March 8: Sports Jersey Day
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Fri, March 8: March Madness Basketball Tournament, 3 - 4:30 pm
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Tues, March 12: iReady Math assessment for all students
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Mon, March 18: Early Release at 1 pm
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Wed, March 20: Youth Risk Behavior Survey administered to 8th graders
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Thurs, March 21: Trimester 2 Report Cards Emailed (if not earlier)
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Tues, March 26: MCAS 8 ELA
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Wed, March 27: MCAS 8 ELA
Take care and have a great weekend!
Jim