UPDATE ON MRS. VERHAGE: As many of you have heard, Mrs. Verhage, the MS Secretary, has been hospitalized for the past week. We expect that she’ll be arriving home shortly, and should soon begin to resume a light work schedule. Thank you for all your good wishes to Mrs. Verhage, as well as your patience as we work to "make do" without her!
CONTACTING THE MS OFFICE: Please remember that we ask that all notes, phone calls, and emails about early dismissals or lateness come to the MS Office by 8:15. This enables us to send to teachers each morning a complete list of absences and anticipated late arrivals/early departures.
CORRECTION: The Red Book incorrectly lists November 2 as a MS No Homework Night. The correct date is November 21 (for the Thanksgiving Holiday).
6th GRADE PARENT-DAUGHTER BOOK GROUP: All families in the 6th grade are welcome to participate in parent-daughter book groups organized by Mary-Louise Wooley and Jessica Blau. The first title is Olive’s Ocean by Kevin Henkes, and the meeting will take place on November 15 from 7:00 to 9:00 pm in the Faissler Library.
PROGRESS REPORTS: Students will bring home mid-semester reports this month, shortly before parent-advisor conferences. These are narrative reports with a focus on your daughter’s effort and work habits; in short, the emphasis is on the process of learning. They are a good starting point for the discussions you will have with advisors in conferences on November 16. Letter grades in academic subjects will be sent home when the semester ends in January. Please note that the effort grades focus on the degree to which a student is meeting the expectations of the course. By and large, we expect most students to be at a Level 2, “Meets some expectations but needs improvement” or a Level 3, “Meets expectations.” A few students will sometimes be at Level 4, “Exceeds expectations”, or Level 1, “Does not meet expectations.” It is our hope that these descriptors will give you a helpful picture of your daughter’s strengths and areas of challenge.
INTERNET SAFETY: In a follow-up to last month’s Parent Coffee on Internet Safety, Mrs. Scandora has published information on her web site about how to remove your phone number from Google’s search engine. Click here to link to her web site: http://sp.rpcs.org/faculty/scandoraj/default.aspx
MS GRANDPARENTS DAY, Wednesday November 21: This year, the Middle School welcomes grandparents and special friends to visit classes and attend a concert performance on the day before the Thanksgiving Holiday. Invitations were sent directly to grandparents last month. On-campus parking will be available for all grandparents. Please contact the MS Office with questions or RSVPs. Parents are also welcome to attend the concert, which begins at 10:30 am in the Sinex Theater. If your daughters' grandparents haven't received an invitation, please contact the Middle School office.
MIDDLE SCHOOL WINTER CONCERT, Thursday November 29, 7:15 pm . Please make plans now to attend our Winter Concert. Nearly all students will be a part of the event, whether by performing on stage, displaying artwork, or assisting with the lighting, sound, and stage. The concert lasts approximately one and a half hours. ALL 6th and 7th graders, plus 8th graders in Chorus, are asked to wear.
- - Seasonal solid colored blouses or sweaters (not white)
- - Black skirts (below the knee) or long black dress pants
- - Seasonal color dresses are also fine as long as the length is below the knee
- - Dark dress shoes which enclose the heel and toe
Many thanks to artist Shelby Smith 2013 for providing a helpful illustration!
A professional videographer will be taping the performance for us so that parents can enjoy the children camera-free! Tapes may be ordered prior to or at the concert. As always, students who need to stay on campus from the end of the school day until the performance are welcome. Those students should go to After School Study Hall. At 6:00 pm, any students who have signed up in advance in the Middle School office and who have brought in $5.00 will be served pizza in the cafeteria. Students should bring their own drinks or have change for the vending machines. Call time for all performers is 6:45 pm. This evening has been designated a no-homework night for Middle School to allow the girls to relax and focus on the concert.
PARENTS' ASSOCIATION HOLIDAY FAIR, Saturday, December 1, 11:00 am - 4:00 pm: Come one, come all! The Holiday Fair, sponsored by the Parents Association, is a winter highlight here. It will include crafts, games, food and holiday shopping for the entire family. We hope you can attend! Middle school students will be involved in various ways –as performers, as booth assistants, and of course, as avid patrons!
THE MIDDLE SCHOOL “BOOK THING”: Thanks to a donation of about fifty paperbacks from a former middle schooler who was cleaning her shelves, we now have a collection of free books to share among students for casual reading. Additional donations of interesting, appropriate books your daughter would like to pass along are very much welcome. Look for the bright red cart in the Hampton Commons!
MIDDLE SCHOOL SLEEPOVER, Thursday Dec. 20, 8:00 pm This is one of our favorite events of the year, an opportunity for the girls to bond as a class and enjoy fun and games with teachers and students from other grades. In the past few years nearly 100% of our students have attended! Please support this event by allowing your daughter to attend and by refraining from offering conflicting social events on this night.
SECURITY: Please remember to use the main entrance in the Harris Center when you come to the Middle School during the school day. For security, the other doors are locked, and faculty, staff and students are asked not to open them for anyone. When picking up from After School Study Hall, it is okay to knock on the door near the Middle School Commons and ask to be let in; at all other times, please enter through the Harris Center and sign in as a visitor.
ALL ABOUT MIXERS – THE PARENT’S ROLE: Because we cooperate with five other schools to organize mixers, it is important that all students and parents honor the guidelines agreed upon by the schools. (RPCS has a terrific reputation in this regard – thank you!) A few things to remember:
These rules help us to ensure consistency and enable us provide structure for an experience that can involve as many as 300 students, most of whom are not known by the hosting school. Your cooperation is essential, and we value it highly!
EMAIL CONVENTIONS: Much of our communication these days takes place by email. As a faculty, we have developed the convention of not including students’ names in the subject line of an email as a way of preserving privacy (in case a student should accidentally get a glimpse of a teacher’s screen.) As parents, you can help us with this practice by keeping your daughter’s name out of the subject line of an email. Instead, you could title the email something like “my daughter” or “a homework concern.” Thank you for your help.
LOOKING AHEAD -- NEW DATE – 6TH GRADE PARENT COFFEE: 6th grade parents are invited to join Rebecca Malone and Sally Harrison for coffee and conversation on December 6 in the Apgar Lecture Room from 8:00 to 9:00am. (This event was rescheduled from October 26.)
~ R.M.